Mercedes didn’t just win the Belgian Grand Prix, its winner also outfoxed everyone else on strategy to do so. Who saw that coming on Friday, when there were such great fears about tyre degradation at Spa?
Was this just a George Russell masterclass, pure and simple, or should team-mate Lewis Hamilton really have won? How encouraging was a proper four-way fight for victory for the rest of the 2024 Formula 1 season? And will this result turn Max Verstappen’s head?
Here’s how our team reacted:
A victory gone begging for Hamilton
Scott Mitchell-Malm
Hamilton looked every bit as disappointed not to win this race as I expected him to, because he’ll know this was a victory that’s gone begging.
The inquest might not last long but the questions are obvious. Did Mercedes pit him too early? Should he have pushed more at the start of his stint? Was he too patient when he initially caught his team-mate?
It looked like the killer for Hamilton was he couldn’t get the car rotated into La Source and the power down on the exit. Every time, four laps in a row, Russell just eked out enough in that crucial traction zone to have enough of an advantage to be safe from Hamilton even with the tow and the DRS.
Maybe some more credit should go to Russell for how he managed his tyres, not just in getting them to the end, but saving enough to push in those critical corners when it mattered.
Either way, it was a shock winner for a shock winning team. Mercedes was so far from victory contention on Friday. To come away with a 1-2 is beyond its wildest expectations – and even Hamilton, disappointed as he was for himself, recognised that.
Now it’s just a matter of making sure the upgrade that got taken off wasn’t a dud!
Best example yet of great 2024 racing
Glenn Freeman
This was a brilliant race to send F1 into its summer break. As McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari have all got closer to Red Bull this season, they’ve tended to take turns finding the sweet spot from weekend to weekend. At Spa we had four teams right in the mix.
Close competition between multiple teams is more decisive in how exciting F1 can be than the thing people usually focus on: overtaking being easy. If overtaking is too easy and the spread between the cars is too big, then even when a faster car ends up out of position, it can easily work its way back to where it should be. And where’s the fun in that?
But if competition is close, and overtaking isn’t too easy, you can get what we had at Spa: a race that was fascinating from start to finish, with various drivers looking like they were the favourite to win at different stages of the grand prix.
And overtaking being challenging creates more strategic variety, because you can gamble – as Russell did – on getting track position and seeing if you can hold onto it. You don’t have to simply copy everyone else to maintain your place in the queue.
Hopefully we have much more of this to come over the rest of 2024 and 2025. What a shame there’s another rule change coming for 2026, which will surely spread the pack out again.
Adaptability won out
Edd Straw
This is a great example of what can happen when there isn’t certainty about the way the tyres will behave. It turned out a medium/hard strategy worked a treat and both the race overall and the midfield battle, with Fernando Alonso in ninth, were won taking that approach.
But they also had to be adaptable to do it. All teams go into races with a menu of options but Russell in particular wanted to commit to his strategy relatively early, while Aston Martin thought on its feet.
It was also great for F1 that the Mercedes drivers were able to race to the end even with Oscar Piastri’s McLaren threatening, illustrating how exciting a finish you can have when diverging strategies collide.
It also underlined that F1 lately is increasingly edging towards tight races that are decided by execution from both team and driver. Whether that continues is another question but it’s wonderful to have truly unexpected results and races that keep the fans on the edge of their collective seat to the end.
The best advert to an audience of one
Valentin Khorounzhiy
After two years of taking grid penalties and turning them into absurdly easy victories at Spa, Max Verstappen took one and came nowhere near winning this time. The first thing Russell uttered coming into the pre-podium cooldown room was an expression of surprise that Red Bull wasn’t quicker.
Verstappen maybe would’ve won from pole anyway, but his RB20 looked like just one of the cars at a track where it is supposed to be the car. His points lead remains in very healthy shape, but the machinery to keep running up the score is no longer there, even at a ‘calling card’ track, and in 2025 of course the points table will be reset.
In the meantime, Mercedes – a prospective employer that has made it clear it would free up a seat for Verstappen at a moment’s notice and would quite like him to come over – won the race through an alternate strategy and would’ve also won it with a conventional strategy.
It surely wasn’t the strongest car on the balance of the weekend, but it was strong enough for a driver – say, a driver like Verstappen – to have a real shot at making the difference.
The sample size of strong Mercedes form is increasingly robust. If there is still a way for Verstappen to make the switch as early as 2025, he should at the very least think about it again.
Little doubt that Mercedes is back
Matt Beer
You can’t really argue with – or pick apart the circumstances of – three grand prix wins in four events for Mercedes. That’s more than flukes and even if there’s been a degree of capitalising on others leaving open goals, no one else is doing that. Not Ferrari, which once seemed so far ahead of Mercedes. Certainly not Aston Martin, with which Mercedes was scrapping not so long ago.
This is a team that should have no doubts whatsoever about going into 2025 as a title contender. Russell’s form on Sunday suggests he’s ready for that.
But if either Mercedes or Kimi Antonelli has too many qualms about what he’d do with a potential title-winning car as a teenage rookie, then now is the time to go for a safer bet. Mercedes’ decision on that front definitely looked easier when its car looked like it would be off the pace for the foreseeable future. At least Antonelli’s F2 form isn’t making the dilemma even tougher anymore.
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