The unthinkable has become the reality. Red Bull Racing will start the Formula 1 mid-season break undefeated after 12 grands prix.
It’s the most races any team has won in succession in one season. It’s also the 13th grand prix win in a row dating back to Abu Dhabi last year and 16th win of any kind, sprints included.
The reigning constructors champion and current title leader has won 22 of the last 23 races, the only blight being last year’s São Paulo Grand Prix.
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Max Verstappen will head into the holidays with eight wins on the bounce and needing just two more to break the record for most wins in a row by a driver.
His victory in Belgium was in equal parts impressive and predictable.
The Dutchman started sixth with a gearbox penalty but gained two places on the first lap alone. He was up into second behind teammate Sergio Pérez by the end of the ninth lap, and he barged past the sister car on lap 17 to cruise to a comfortable 22-second victory, an advantage of around 0.8 seconds per lap.
For all the talk of Red Bull Racing’s RB19 being decisively dominant, there’s no escaping the almost embarrassing margins Verstappen has been putting on Pérez for the better part of the last three months.
It means he starts the holidays not only sitting on a stack of records for himself and the team but also with his astounding purple patch of form completely undimmed despite the long stretch of time he’s spending at the top.
“This keeps the fire going,” he told Sky Sports. “If I have to rock up and I have no chance of winning, then the fire starts to go away.”
It’s just that the fire is burning too hot for any other rival to handle.
THIS IS THE PÉREZ WE’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR
It’s unspectacular and hardly the kind of thing motor racing legend is made from, but Sergio Pérez put in exactly the kind of Sunday performance in Belgium that Red Bull Racing hired him to execute.
When Verstappen was penalised for changing gearbox components, Pérez inherited a place on the front row, which he turned into the lead before the end of the first lap.The Mexican looked comfortable in first place, easily gapping Charles Leclerc.
Of course the demoralising part is that Verstappen, starting sixth, was able to snatch the lead before half-distance and win by more than 20 seconds.
But Pérez consolidated with a strong second place, still well ahead of Leclerc and the rest of the grid, to complete a Red Bull Racing one-two finish.
The summary is: he was quick enough to win the race if Verstappen couldn’t but not so fast that he troubled his teammate once he took the lead.
That makes him the ideal Red Bull Racing teammate — at last.
What’s behind the form turnaround?
Pérez says he’s needed only to get some momentum going with some clean weekends. Others might suggest he’s finally accepted that he’s no match for Verstappen in the title battle, which has allowed him to reset his focus on achieving his personal best.
“I really look forward to not leaving the podium anymore from now until the end of the year,” he said afterwards.
The prospect must be music to Christian Horner’s ears, who despite protestations a season clean sweep hasn’t entered his thinking, must surely know he needs Pérez to shadow Verstappen to insure against any freak occurrences that might threaten the streak.
PIASTRI AND SAINZ AT ODDS OVER RACE-ENDING CRASH
Oscar Piastri’s promising weekend came to a sudden thumping halt just seconds after the start of the Belgian Grand Prix.
The Australian, who had scored a career-best second in Saturday’s sprint race, was pinched against the barrier at the La Source apex. His suspension broke and he was immediately out of the race but for a crawl to a marshal post halfway around the lap.
The incident had started innocently enough. A strong start from fifth of the grid earnt him what appeared to be wide-open space to take the inside line into the first turn.
But Carlos Sainz was about to fill it in a passing attempt on Lewis Hamilton. The Spaniard swung towards the inside, locked up briefly, and suddenly three cars were trying to claim the apex.
“He kind of jinked to the inside a bit and I had to get out of the brakes to not get hit,” Piastri said. “My nose was there and at that point it was too late to try and back out, so unfortunately it ended up in contact. A shame to end so early.”
The stewards investigated and declared it a racing incident, but Sainz wasn’t pleased after being forced to retire with damage, accusing the Australian of making a rookie error.
“If you want my honest opinion, I think it was a bit optimistic by Oscar trying to go three side by side into one,” he said. “If you look at the last seven eight years, everyone who has tried that move, it has never really worked and has generated a bit of a crush.
“Maybe a lack of experience, a bit optimistic, but a racing incident that cost us a race.”
Insult to injury was that Ferrari was enjoying one of its stronger weekends, with Leclerc secure in third for almost the entire afternoon.
“I’m very frustrated because today the pace of the car looked to be good, and it’s a bit unfortunate to not participate in that fight,” Sainz said.
Sainz is right to say La Source is infamous for these sorts of crush incidents, but it’s just the nature of having a tight hairpin as the first turn. Drivers can’t help themselves in the chaos of such a slow corner so near to the start line. Knowing that chaos is the likely result does little to dissuade them from having a crack.
At least in Piastri’s case the Australian can walk away pleased with his weekend overall.
“We can still be happy with what we’ve done,” he said. “Obviously first top-three finish yesterday, we’ve been very competitive in the qualifying sessions — I think we can still be proud, especially of the last few weekends we’ve had as well.”
DAMAGE LIMITATION FOR McLAREN
For a time it didn’t look like Piastri would be missing much anyway, with the MCL60 looking woefully ill-equipped for a dry race.
Lando Norris said on Saturday night that the sprint confirmed McLaren had added too much downforce to hope to be competitive in the grand prix. The fact Sunday was largely dry would only exacerbate the problems with the set-up choice, leaving the car too slow down the straights for comparatively less gain through the corners.
Norris started the race seventh and held position on the opening lap, but he sunk like a stone once the race got going and was out of the points after four laps.
He switched from mediums to hards on lap five — much too early for a conventional strategy — and spent the next 12 laps meandering uncompetitively in 16th.
What happened next was a combination of good fortune and inspired decision-making.
Rain began to shower the circuit — not intense enough for intermediate tyres but enough to considerably slow the pace.
With nothing to lose, Norris pitted again on lap 17 — with 27 laps to go — for a fresh set of soft tyres still warm from their blankets.
It dropped him to 19th and last, but it was a genius move. His fresh, hot rubber cut through the field like butter. Once the rest of the field made their stops, he was back up to seventh, from where strong tyre management got him to the flag.
Seventh is comparatively unimpressive after the team’s super-strong recent rounds, but the MCL60’s performance on Sunday isn’t reflective of the potential of the package.
Instead the pace came down largely to a bad set-up gamble on too much downforce in the hope the rain would stick around — and in turn that came from a lack of practice time on Friday owing to heavy rain. Had Sunday been wet, a repeat of Piastri’s P2 sprint performance would have been on the cards.
We’re still yet to see any signs of major problems from the upgraded McLaren.
WHAT HAPPENED TO DANIEL RICCIARDO?
AlphaTauri collected a third point for the season thanks to a superb Yuki Tsunoda drive to 10th in an excellent return serve on Daniel Ricciardo’s impressive return to the team.
Ricciardo had made a lunge for the reins with an excellent outing in Hungary last week, and the Australian was similarly strong on sprint day in the wet, when Tsunoda was struggling to string things together.
But when things counted in qualifying and the grand prix, Tsunoda stepped up this weekend.
Qualifying 11th in treacherous mixed conditions in qualifying was impressive considering the machinery at his disposal. Improving only one place in the race doesn’t sound like much, but in dry conditions the AlphaTauri has no business troubling the top 10 on pure pace.
It earnt the Japanese driver the chance to head into the mid-season break with some confidence that he can mark his territory inside the team.
As for Ricciardo, the Belgian Grand Prix — sprint excepted — didn’t deliver in the same way Hungary did.
It started and ended with qualifying, when he had his best lap deleted at the end of Q1, leaving him 19th, from where recovery in the dry was extremely difficult.
He tried an early pit stop to mimic the big undercut of last week’s Hungarian Grand Prix, but the track wasn’t as amenable to his car, and it delivered little.
“What made it really hard is I feel like a lot of the cars at the back are really quick on the straight, so to overtake, it’s so tricky,” Ricciardo said. “We even tried to set the car up to be better for the race and give ourselves a chance of overtaking, but we really struggled.
“Then when you’re fighting, you kill the tyres so early, so that was pretty much the race.”
But the good news for Ricciardo is that he’ll walk away from Spa with plenty to think about, having experienced a wide range of conditions in his new car.
“I’m quite keen now to get to the truck and learn a little bit more about it and just feed back some things I felt and see what we can find,” he said. “I know obviously we don’t have the quickest car on the grid, but I feel like we were just lacking a little bit today, so we’ll try to understand that a bit more.
“I’m actually quite grateful to have two races before the break, so it gives me something to work off and certainly think about — even race fitness, just to know what I can keep improving on.
“So as much as I would love to keep racing, I think the break is a good chance for me to keep working behind the scenes.”