It was a champion’s drive from Oscar Piastri in the main race on Sunday at Spa. The kind of performance reminiscent of the likes of Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen in this modern era.

A small error at Stavelot cost him pole position to team-mate Lando Norris, who had impressively homed in on peak performance overnight, but then Piastri read and stalked his championship rival from the eventual rolling start, exited turn one La Source more cleanly, followed closely through Eau Rouge and Radillion, and kept momentum to sweep past into a lead he would not relinquish. This also gave him the all-important pit stop priority between the two

Because we waited so unnecessarily long to get under way, the race was much drier than expected, and this meant managing intermediate tyres through their compound destruction phase into a tread-less bald contact patch.

The other McLaren side of the garage cleverly agreed with Norris to opt for the hard dry compound tyre, after Piastri’s medium compounds were already fitted the previous lap, which meant Lando wouldn’t have to pit again.

Piastri then had to completely reset and coax his tyres for the remaining 70 per cent of the race, which he did with utter calmness and without error despite Norris coming back at him with increasing chunks each lap. Basically, he needed to deploy all the driving tools in the toolbox on the day and made it look easy.

Lando was unlucky with having to go an extra lap on the intermediates because they were too close to do a double stack pit stop, and then to compound that his stop was slow. As he said in the cooldown room post-race ‘I just thought bye-bye Oscar’.

Piastri is making fewer errors than Norris

Now the best part of 10 seconds behind, Lando nonetheless got his head down and was absolutely flying. Once again in certain phases we saw the McLarens a second or two clear of the field every lap. Lando threw caution to the wind, he had nothing to lose, and he had to somehow disturb Oscar’s tyre economy run, but three errors we saw on TV meant he came up short and had to settle for second and a further loss of eight points.

I’ve felt the same way all year, when all the stars align I believe Lando is marginally the faster, but Oscar is more consistent, makes fewer errors, and is more clinical in combat. And his head is always rock solid. He’ll take some beating in the closing stages now.

Lando will need absolutely all he’s got, all the time, to win this. We’ve very often seen two championship combatants find an overdrive and move to a scarcely believable level of delivery, it will be interesting to see if that happens over the next three Sprints and 10 GPs.

Max Verstappen once again did a great job of mentally parking all the noise around his team and won the Sprint race on Saturday morning for the 12th time. He set his car up with strong straight-line speed to slipstream his way into the lead at the Les Combes chicane and then defend from there. But to make that possible he had to be near the front of the Sprint grid by still carrying speed in super-fast corners despite less downforce, which he duly did. That takes a lot of bravery and skill.

Having paid a heavy price at Silverstone with a similar low downforce set up for qualifying but then facing a lot of rain on race day, for the main race qualifying in Spa, Red Bull elected to carry more downforce and this would confine Max to fourth on Sunday because their car seems to be less efficient and driveable in this configuration. And his ability to breeze past people on the long climb to Les Combes had evaporated.

Will we have a classic wet race again?

Like many drivers, and commentators, and especially fans, Max was very unhappy that once again race control delayed and slowed proceedings until the point where the track was significantly drying. Those who had chosen a wet wing level because of the forecast of guaranteed rain on Sunday felt unfairly disadvantaged.

And pretty much everyone on the planet who watches F1 was very reasonably asking why we bother to have full wet tyres anymore, because extreme caution over visibility means they will hardly ever be used. Furthermore, will we ever have a classic rainy F1 race again?

We must get to the bottom of this and understand if there are any recent internal FIA mandates on this subject, or whether race control is simply being too cautious of its own volition. There are inherent risks in being a racing driver and we can’t simply edit those out by only effectively racing in the dry. It’s up to the driver to manage the cars and risks in all reasonable conditions, but the reference point of what’s reasonable has moved to extremely risk-averse.

‘Old’ Hamilton shone on Sunday after dismal weekend

Ferrari had a floor upgrade which seemed to bring benefits and Charles Leclerc did a fine job both in qualifying and finishing third in the main GP, holding off Verstappen’s close attention for the entire race. They were both 20 seconds shy of the McLarens but these days that’s a good effort.

Lewis Hamilton endured two dismal qualifying sessions, one for locking his rear axle and spinning off, and the other for breaching track limits, but we very much saw some of the ‘old’ Lewis as he scythed through the pack from a pitlane start until he stalled out just behind Alex Albon’s very well driven Williams which held onto sixth place.

Mercedes had a weekend to forget but George Russell did at least salvage a lonely fifth place 35 seconds off the lead. We are used to them going well in such cooler conditions, and it doesn’t seem five minutes since he commanded the Canadian GP, and presumably they’ll be furiously evaluating and backtracking on all the changes made since then.

Kimi Antonelli is having a torrid time in the sister Merc. He’s only scored points once in the last seven GPs (a podium in Canada) and it’s not too difficult to observe that he’s really feeling that pressure on his very young shoulders. He’s lucky because he’s effectively a protected species at the team and won’t be living in fear of his career like a Red Bull youngster, but the summer break can’t come early enough for him I suspect.

I still wonder why they didn’t give Kimi a couple of years to learn his trade in a lesser spotlight as they did with George Russell, he’s a generational talent as my Sky colleague Nico Rosberg would say, but they can’t let his head spiral.

Horner to return to F1 with ownership?

After 20 years at the helm Christian Horner no longer runs Red Bull and that immediacy was a shock to most, including him. Christian has done a stellar job in building the team to where it is today, ensuring two dominant championship phases and a stat sheet which is indisputable.

When Dietrich Mateschitz, the Red Bull company boss and co-owner, died in 2022, this left a significant vacuum, and like all vacuums it’s been filled by others with ambition, alternative ideas, and egos. Dietrich was universally respected and admired, he had a bold vision and presence, he enabled people and then delegated, seemingly always happy to be in the background.

I followed him into a big Red Bull function in Austria one evening, he was driving his relatively modest car. A team member at the entrance stepped forward to take his car from him, but I could see him politely decline, and he then parked in the nearby field along with everybody else and we walked back. That’s stuck in my mind in a very positive way.

His hallmark was on every Red Bull F1 decision, the majority of which he wouldn’t even know about, but everything was wrapped in ‘what would Didi want/think’.

The management he structured when he knew his health condition was terminal subsequently wanted significant control, as reportedly did Porsche when a partnership was on the cards around that time.

Christian wanted full control of what he felt he’d created, and in the best interests of the team in a fast-moving highly specialised business. I rather suspect he overplayed his hand, and once the support of the 51 per cent shareholders Yoovidhya family fell away in the bigger picture, Red Bull Austria HQ parked Christian at the first opportunity.

Given other events which have played out since Bahrain last year, especially regarding Max’s uniquely powerful and vociferous father Jos Verstappen, it was game over. I’d be pretty sure Christian will be back sooner than later, this time with some ownership and control.

Max will go into the summer break in third place in the championship and so any team performance contract exit clause falls away, but Red Bull wouldn’t have played the Christian card without team Verstappen being fully onboard anyway.

Formula 1 is an extreme business which attracts extreme people. Thank goodness.

MB

F1 immediately heads to the Hungarian Grand Prix for the final race before the sport’s summer break, watch live on Sky Sports F1 from Friday. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime