🇧🇪 Belgian GP — The Skinny-Wing Sprint & The Quali That Could’ve Been

🎯 Setup Wars and the Rise of the Skinny Wing

Teams like Red Bull and Haas committed early to a low-downforce philosophy — the now-famous “rear skinny wing”. At Spa, where the Kemmel Straight and Blanchimont demand drag reduction, this setup can be race-defining. It sacrifices cornering grip, sure, but when overtaking opportunities mostly exist at the start of the lap, that straight-line speed makes all the difference. If you lead out of Turn 1 and you’re fast down the straights, you’re untouchable for the rest of the lap. That exact logic paid off for Red Bull and Haas — both looked far quicker than they had any right to be, simply by committing to the right aero compromise.

🧡 McLaren: Bitter from Silverstone, Sharp in Spa

Oscar Piastri is quietly making Spa his signature track. He was electric all weekend — topping practice, taking Sprint pole, and once again showing that his 2023 performance here was no fluke. After missing out at Silverstone due to McLaren’s strategy gamble, there was a different edge to his driving. Every lap had intent. His qualifying margin was razor-thin, but enough.

Lando Norris, on the other hand, didn’t put a wheel wrong. But sometimes being error-free isn’t enough — not when your teammate is just a fraction sharper and the car isn’t perfectly dialed in. He couldn’t match Oscar’s speed, and when it came down to the final runs, he just didn’t have that tenth in hand.

🔴 Ferrari: New Suspension, Same Problems

Much had been made about Ferrari’s upgraded suspension. Hype ran high. But Spa is not the place to test. With the Sprint format giving teams very little setup time, they were locked in early — and Ferrari backed the wrong horse. The result? A weekend of imbalance and underperformance.

Lewis Hamilton, now in a Ferrari, qualified P18 after losing the rear, and while the mistake was visible, it wasn’t down to skill. He simply didn’t have the rear grip. The team misjudged the setup window entirely. On the other side, Charles Leclerc did better with P4, but neither car looked planted, and neither driver sounded confident. If the new suspension is a long-term bet, it’s not paying short-term dividends.

🔢 Midfield Mayhem (P4 to P10)

Behind the top three, the rest of Q3 saw interesting movement but no real shakeup of the front. Charles Leclerc led the rest in P4, but the real surprises were behind. Haas pulled off a miracle with both cars in P5 and P7, their skinny-wing gamble giving them that extra boost on the straights. Carlos Sainz kept things tidy in P6, Pierre Gasly shocked many with P6 in Q3, and rookies Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto rounded out the top ten with P9 and P10, both showing poise beyond their years. It was a good day for outliers, but none of them quite managed to challenge the McLarens or Red Bull.

Just behind them, Mercedes had a weekend to forget. George Russell qualified only P13, and Kimi Antonelli was dead last in P20. Antonelli later admitted he was “a little greedy with the throttle” — on one push lap, he ran into gravel; on the next, he picked up floor damage. But even in ideal conditions, the car lacked pace. For a team once fighting for poles, this was astonishingly poor — a symptom of deeper setup confusion and lack of top-end stability.

💤 Sprint at Spa: Great Start, Then DRS Train

The Sprint, though, was another story. Spa’s beauty is in its length and strategy — not its suitability for short-form chaos. And yet, we got a 15-lap sprint here. The start was everything: Piastri defended brilliantly into La Source, but Verstappen, with that brutal straight-line setup, got the tow and passed him like clockwork down Kemmel.

Norris actually had a moment where he was nearly close enough to challenge Max, but a tussle with Leclerc cost him dearly. He lost momentum, track time, and, in the end, finished just six tenths off Piastri. That gap is the story — we might’ve had a fight for P2, even P1, if that Leclerc battle hadn’t interrupted the rhythm.

Further back, we were treated to a DRS train from P11 to P20, a Spa classic — and not in a good way. No real movement, no chances, no flair. Verstappen’s overtake on Piastri and Hamilton’s isolated charges were the only real moments of life. Leclerc finished nine seconds behind Norris — a damning stat in a 15-lap race — and even told his engineer to just “let me know when it’s the last lap.” The frustration was clear.

The Sprint felt more like an extended procession. And if sprints are meant to entertain, Spa might not be the place for them. The Shootout was electric — the Sprint? Not so much.