Piastri wins rain-delayed Belgian GP after Norris overtake

Yahoo

6 hours ago

Oscar Piastri passed McLaren team-mate Lando Norris on the first racing lap of a wet-dry Belgian Grand Prix to take his sixth victory of the year and extend his championship lead.
The Australian swept past Norris as the race started after an hour-and-a-half delay for heavy rain and two laps behind the safety car and controlled the race from there.
Norris' side of the McLaren team chose a divergent tyre strategy when the drivers pitted to switch to slick, dry-weather tyres as the track dried.
The hope was that Norris would be able to go to the end on the hard tyres chosen while Piastri, who stopped one lap earlier, would have to make a pit stop for a second set of his mediums.
But Piastri, despite expressing initial misgivings about whether his rubber would last, made it to the end without stopping again.
His impressive win, mixing keen racing instinct with calm tyre management, moves him 16 points clear in the championship heading to the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc hung on ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the tricky opening laps on a wet track despite using a lower-downforce set-up, and was able to consolidate the final podium place in the dry part of the race.
Verstappen took fourth in a largely static race and is now 81 points behind Piastri in the championship, his hopes all but over.
Mercedes' George Russell took fifth after passing Williams' Alex Albon in the wet early stages, while Lewis Hamilton drove an excellent race to take seventh from his pit lane start.
Another decisive move from Piastri
Piastri sealed his win with a trademark committed, decisive move on Norris when the conditions were at their most treacherous when the race finally started.
The original start was abandoned because of heavy rain and poor visibility after formation lap behind the safety car.
The drivers then sat in the pit lane for an hour and 20 minutes, followed by four laps behind the safety car before the race was finally allowed to start 90 minutes later than scheduled.
Piastri tracked Norris closely through the first corner and through the high-speed swerves at East Rouge before diving around the outside into the les Combes chicane at the end of the long Kemmel straight.
Norris complained over the radio that he was down on battery power, but was told he had used it up at the start behind the safety car.
And after the race he admitted that Piastri had simply done a better first lap by pushing harder through Eau Rouge, where in the wet drivers have to choose how much to lift off, when it is flat in the dry.
"Oscar did a good job, nothing more to say," Norris said. "Committed a bit more through Eau Rouge and had the slipstream and got the run and that was it. Love to be up top but Oscar deserved it today."
Piastri said: "I knew that lap one was going to be probably my best chance of winning the race.
"I got a good exit out of Turn One and then lifted as little as ai dared through Eau Rouge and it worked out pretty well. We had it mostly under control after that.
"I was a bit disappointed it was a rolling start because I thought that would take away some opportunity but when I was that close I knew I was going to lift a little bit less than Lando did. A bit lively over the hill but then the slipstream helped me out."
Once in front, Piastri inched away in the lead until he was just under two seconds in front when he chose to stop for slick tyres on lap 12, his position in front giving him priority on stop timing and forcing Norris into a difficult position.
Piastri fitted the medium tyres while Norris had to do an extra lap on a drying track on highly worn intermediate tyres.
His engineer asked him if he would like hard tyres and try to run to the end, a decision Norris agreed with, and he rejoined 9.1 seconds back from Piastri after his stop.
By around lap 20, Piastri told his engineer that he thought it would be "tough" to get his intermediates to the end but for a long time he held the lead at about eight seconds or so, and it slowly became apparent that he had decided not to stop again.
In the final few laps, Norris began to make significant inroads into Piastri's lead, and was within four seconds of the leader with three laps to go.
But Piastri managed the gap expertly to win by 3.4 seconds.
Behind the leaders, the drivers were stuck in their positions after the pit stops, even if there was some tension for Leclerc as Verstappen pushed him hard in the closing laps.
Much of the excitement in the race was provided by Hamilton. The seven-time champion started from the pit lane after Ferrari decided to change his set-up after his error in exceeding track limits in qualifying left him down in 16th on the grid.
And Hamilton justified the decision with a series of excellent, improvisational overtaking moves to move up to 13th place before becoming the first driver to stop for slicks on lap 11, one before Piastri.
That won him a chunk more places, and Hamilton was promoted to seventh by the pit-stop period, which he held to the end of the race.
He closed to within a second of Albon on the final lap but was unable to pass.
Full results
Red Bull focused on retaining Verstappen - Mekies
Andrew Benson Q&A: Send us your questions