Sixteen points now separate Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in Formula 1‘s drivers’ championship, but the Belgian Grand Prix was a reminder of how close the battle can be between the two McLaren drivers on any given race weekend.
Prior to Spa-Francorchamps, momentum seemed to be gathering behind Norris with wins in Austria and Great Britain, but those victories, too, could have gone the other way in different circumstances. It didn’t take much for the pendulum to swing back in Piastri’s favor at Spa, and he capitalized on his chance in a typically clinical manner.
The key moment of Sunday’s contest came on the first lap under racing conditions as the 20 cars disappeared in a cloud of spray heading down to Eau Rouge. Spa’s most famous corner is flat out in the dry, but it requires a lift of the throttle in the wet as drivers ride the compression and following blind corner of Raidillon on pure instinct.
As Piastri found out in Saturday’s Sprint race, starting from pole position at Spa is rarely an advantage as your car creates a slipstream for the second-place car to benefit from. And just as Max Verstappen passed Piastri at the end of the Kemmel Straight in the Sprint, Piastri lined up Norris in Eau Rouge, gained significantly as they popped up and out of Raidillon and passed in a straight line on Kemmel.
The two big differences on Sunday were a rolling start — as opposed to the cars lining up on the grid as normal — and the wet conditions. Piastri would have favored a standing start on Sunday, not least because his side of the grid appeared drier but also because it would have increased his chances of positioning his car closer to Norris heading into Turn 1.
As it turned out, he still managed to keep his car close enough heading on to the pit straight to feint to the inside of the first corner and force his teammate to think about covering the gap. By taking a slightly more acute angle into La Source, Norris compromised his exit, teeing up Piastri for the run he needed through Eau Rouge, over Raidillon and onto the Kemmel Straight.
But it still required a large dose of bravery from Piastri in the compression of Eau Rouge to convince his right foot to lift less than Norris’, and again in Raidillon, where telemetry from the cars shows Norris lifted slightly while Piastri remained flat to the floor.
“To be honest, I was a bit disappointed it was a rolling start because I thought that was going to take away some opportunity, but I got a good exit out of Turn 1, was able to stay close,” Piastri said. “When I was that close, I knew that I was just going to lift a little bit less than Lando did and try and keep it on the track. A bit lively up over the hill, but managed to make it stick. From there, the tow helped me out. Proud of my first lap.”
A radio call from Norris about his battery pack made it sound like he might have had a crucial disadvantage in power on the opening lap, but McLaren’s initial investigation into the issue after the race suggested both McLarens were dealing with the same problem.
“When it comes to the usage of the battery at the restart, I understand that there was a slight anomaly which actually happened on both sides, so nothing that should have penalized Lando in particular compared to Oscar,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said after the race. “We’re still checking the data, but this is the initial feedback I received.
“So, I think the overtaking ultimately came because it’s very difficult for the car that leads the pack to actually arrive first in corner 5 [Les Combes]. It’s not impossible, but it does require to have a decent advantage as you cross the finish line, which was not the case for Lando already at the restart.”
After the race, Norris conceded there was an element of inevitability about the overtake, especially with his compromised exit from La Source.
“I didn’t have the best Turn 1, so hard to know how much that played a part,” he said. “At the same time, Oscar came past me pretty easily. So even if I had a better Turn 1, his run and the slipstream probably still would have got me. Not too disappointed.
“Of course, I am disappointed to finish second. When you saw Saturday and you saw today, then P1 didn’t look the best place to begin with. I also didn’t get the best Turn 1, so I need to look at what I could have done better.”
And it was not lost on Piastri that a mistake at Stavelot in Saturday’s qualifying session had, arguably, left him in the best position to start Sunday’s grand prix.
“I was pretty disappointed with myself after yesterday, but turns out starting second at Spa is not too bad after all,” he said with a grin.
Leading after the first racing lap meant Piastri was always going to get priority from McLaren when the time came to switch from intermediate tires to slicks. That left Norris with few options: if he followed his teammate into the pits, his stop likely would have been delayed slightly due to the cars double stacking and he would have followed Piastri on the same strategy of switching to medium tires.
Instead, he stayed out an extra lap to allow the team to ready a set of hard-compound tires instead of the mediums. Although the hard tire had proved slow in practice, its extra durability had the potential to allow Norris to push harder in the second half of the race and manufacture an opportunity.
Unfortunately for Norris, he not only lost time by staying out an extra lap on intermediates, which was an inevitable downside to his strategy, but also gave away a crucial second with a delay fitting his front left tire.
“We did consider double stacking,” Stella said after the race when questioned about the timing of Norris’ pit stop. “At the same time, it was possible for Lando to deviate. He opted to deviate, which would have given him the possibility to go on hard tires, which is what he decided to do.
“Actually, I thought at some stage that that could have been a very good move, but I have to say that Oscar managed a very solid and strong stint on the medium tires. Even if Lando was, on average, a little bit faster, that was not enough to attack Oscar at the end. So, double stacking, yes, it was considered, but there was the option to deviate, and it’s the option that Lando took.”
The harsh interpretation of the race from that point onward is that Norris threw away a chance at victory with a series of small mistakes while chasing Piastri. A snap of oversteer at the high-speed Pouhon on lap 23 undoubtedly cost him 1.5 seconds as he started to close down his teammate, and two further mistakes at La Source more than doubled that time loss in a race in which the two McLarens were split by 3.5 seconds at the checkered flag.
But running the simple math on Norris’ mistakes versus the gap at the finish underestimates how much Piastri was holding in reserve.
“Lando had a couple of lockups in Turn 1 and also a little oversteer in Turn 9 that cost him time,” Stella admitted. “And I think this, overall, prevented us from having an interesting battle, possibly, at the end. But in fairness, even Oscar had a couple of times in Turn 1 a little bit of a time loss.
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Drivers react to Oscar Piastri winning the Belgian GP
Take a look at the drivers’ postrace reaction to Oscar Piastri getting his first Belgian Grand Prix win.
“It’s very difficult when you push so much in these conditions. It’s very difficult to always drive within the limit of the grip, and also it’s not easy to always keep the car on the racing line where you have the maximum grip, considering that away from that you can lose it very rapidly because of the track being still a little damp.
“Oscar, even in the long run of medium tires, I think he was able to control the degradation, and in fact I think he scored his best lap, if I’m not wrong, in the second last. Meaning that he was ultimately controlling his mirrors and the time to Lando.”
As has been the case throughout the year, it was again small margins that made the difference in Spa and will continue to determine the outcome of the championship battle going forward.
“There is very, very little between our two drivers,” Stella added. “And this is because the two drivers are racing at a very, very high level. We are lucky at McLaren to have two drivers that, deservedly, are fighting for the world championship.
“I think the difference will be made by the accuracy, the precision, the quality of the execution. We saw in Silverstone an issue — a sporting issue for Oscar during the safety car restart — and that penalty consequently cost him the race. And here we saw that, somehow related to the circuit characteristic, like we said before, it would have always been very difficult for Lando to keep the position, starting first at the safety car restart.
“At the same time, I think Lando didn’t help himself by not having a great gap on the finish line [at the restart]. So I think the execution is what is going to make the main difference.
“We, as a team, we will try and make sure that, from a reliability point of view, from a team operation point of view, we are as good as possible, such that it will be the drivers deciding their own outcome in terms of competing for the drivers’ world championship.”
