August 2020

The defending champion Lewis Hamilto won his 89th grand prix this sunday at Spa-Francorchamps. This puts him two wins away from Michael Schumacher’s record 91 wins and may also equal the veteran’s seven title wins if he wins this year. The Mercedes’ driver only made one pitstop on lap 11 after the safety car came out after Antonio Giovinazzi(Alfa Romeo) and George Russel(Williams Racing) incident that saw their two cars off the race. The next 33 laps for Hamilton were successful although he had expressed concerns over his hard tyres which were vibrating. After finishing the race he did a ‘wakanda salute’ on the podium paying tribute to Chadwick Boseman who was the main actor in the movie ‘black panther’. The black american actor passed on Friday night after a 4-year battle with colon cancer. The 35-year-old had dedicated his pole position to Chadwick Boseman on Saturday. “Today’s a really important pole for me because I woke up to the saddest news of Chadwick passing away” “It’s been such a heavy year, I think, for all of us and it just really, really broke me so it was really not easy to get back in focus coming into today, with that hanging on my heart.” said Hamilton on Saturday after getting the pole position. His dedication to the ‘Black Panther’ actor paid off with his undisputed win at Spa. “As a kid, dreaming of superheroes, and finally seeing a superhero of the same colour for me was really a remarkable moment for the black community, I broke down when I heard the news,” said Hamilton after the race.

Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly presented an impressive performance at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday evening’s Belgium grand prix. He finished the race position 8 which was a good performance and also a tremendous improvement from the Spanish Grand prix at Catalunya. The frenchman dedicated his success to Anthoine Hubert who passed on a year ago after a crash in the 2019 Formula 2 race at Spa. This was not the only factor giving him ‘the best driver of the day’, his car was the only one on the grid to start on the hard tyre and he also decided to stay out when the safety car came out after a crash that involved Antonio Giovinazzi(Alfa Romeo) and George Russel(Williams Racing). What impressed many was the impressive pass that he pulled off as he tried to pass Racing Point’s Sergio Perez while they were running downhill from La Source to Eau Rouge. The 24 year-old managed to squeeze between the RP20 and the barrier. “Honestly I thought we were in the wall,” Pierre Gasly recalled “I’m not kidding I was inside…I was like I can’t move more than that. And at that point we’re probably going 280 or 300km/h”. “Sergio is a hard racer,” Gasly continued “I knew it but there for sure, My heartbeat went slightly high when he started to squeeze me, but I was committed and I was like, there is no way I’m gonna lift, I’m gonna make this move work, and it was a great one.” Pierre Gasly also pulled off another pass on Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel who tried to hold him off. He later commented on Ferrari’s problems saying he had seen their struggle with higher and lower wings and it was painful for him considering their achievements, however he was happy to be ahead of them. The AlphaTauri driver also admitted it wasn’t easy for him in the fist laps due to the hard tyres.”so I tried to keep it clean, stay close to the guys ahead. I was happy to make these two positions on lap one, because we didn’t expect that.”

Mercedes’ driver Lewis Hamilton won the Belgium grand prix at Spa-Francorchamps followed by his teammate Valtteri Bottas having a gap of 8.448 seconds between the two Mercedes’ cars. This made it the 4th victory for the brit to have earned at Spa. Redbull’s Max Verstappen finished third in the race making it his 7th podium in the 2020 Formula 1 season(a podium for every race so far). Max was 15.455 seconds slower than Hamilton. Bottas had tried to keep his teammate Lewis behind him in the onset of the race but was forced to remain behind through the La Source turn as he went to the outside. Thanks to the tow from Hamilton, Bottas was able to maintain his position but lost some speed through Eau Rouge which made him experience a challenge from Max’s Redbull. The Renault Formula 1 team has a reason to smile after Daniel Ricciardo finished 4th in the race only missing Verstappen by a mere 3.422 seconds. Esteban Ocon finished 5th after overtaking Verstappen’s teammate Alexander Albon in the final stages of the race. Maclaren’s Lando Norris followed in closely finishing seventh just 1.062s behind the No.6 Redbull. However, his conterpart at Mclaren Carlos Sainz did not start his race as his Mcl 35 car experienced a power unit problem which led to a faulty exhaust system. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly took the 8th position as Daniil Kvyat, his teammate finished 11th missing the window to earn himself some points which were scooped by the Racing Point duo,Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez who got the 9th and 10th position respectively. The troubled Ferrari SF1000 drivers Sebastian vettel and Charles Leclerc Finished 13th and 14th respectively. There was a huge incident on the track as Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi lost control of his C39 and crashed on to the barriers on the outside of turn 14, due to the intensity of the crash a tyre from the Alfa Romeo bounced back onto the track as Kimi Raikonnen was able to manoeuvre through but it was too late for Williams’ driver George Russel to avoid the same. The Williams’ FW 43 hit the tyre rupturing the suspension system. The car went on to hit the barriers prompting the immediate deployment of the safety car, a lot of debris had remained on the track but was cleared for the race to continue. None of the drivers got hurt.

This year’s qualifiers turned out to be the worst for the Ferrari team after Leclerc and Vettel ended up ranking 13th and 14th in the overall qualifying standings, they also had the worst second round qualifiers after they had been both eliminated. Sebastian Vettel said they had tried everything and also put a lot of effort the previous night to make things a little better. They had tried to add more downforce to the car but things got even worse through the second qualifying round as Charles Leclerc ended up 17th and Vettel last. Miserable enough is that their two cars were slower than their pace at Spa-Francorchamps last year having a gap of 1.317s as willims turned out quicker by making a 2.424s difference from 2019. A close comparison to the stats shows that the SF1000 is slower and less stable than the 2019 car, the 2020 car also lifts along the flats which is unlikely in other cars. Data and analysis which were pulled out from the speed trap at the top of the Kemmel straight shows that Charles Leclerc is 12km/hr slower than 2019 having recorded a speed of 345km/hr, this shows that lack of power is also a problem. Trying to solve the power issue problem they reduced the downforce from the SF1000, but they ended up creating a problem with getting the tyres to the right window so the drivers are lacking grip both when accelerating and braking and this badly influences their performance. However their car has made it two times to the podium with Leclerc despite their struggles this season, it shows their strategies have not paid off. They could end up being in the midfied in the constructors’ championship which is unheard of from the team that ranks among the top. It could be their worst performance since 1980(40 years ago).

Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo is just the man to watch in the Belgin grand prix. This is after he ended up ranking 4th in the Saturday’s qualifiers. The Renault team has been struggling to remain in the mid-field battle after enduring a tough time at Catalunya in Spain, but the Saturday qualifier gave them high hopes as Ricciardo’s teammate Esteban Ocon finished 6th. This may have all been contributed by the downforce options that the team tried out making the RS20 ‘come alive’ as Daniel described. “We are pretty light, we feel this was a characteristic of the car last year. I feel like for whatever reason, the cars seems a bit more happier with a little bit less load on it” said the 31-year-old. “Obviously you can’t run this low around a circuit like Barcelona, but when we do come to these more high speed flowing circuits it just seems like it’s in a better place with a smaller rear wing.” This was his ever best qualifying perfomance at Spa being his 10th visit to the track. The Australian had turned out second in thecond free practice session on Friday before stopping on the track after the team spotted a hydraulics issue. He also expressed a feeling that the R.S20 felt faster and ‘fun’ than the last year’s car. Ricciardo also added that his team was very nervous and had their expectations high on the Saturday’s qualifier but it all paid up to see him in the second row also saying that the car had a little lower downforce than other cars on the grid which gave the best for the first and third qualifying rounds though the second run was compromised. Ocon was also happy ranking 6th in the run saying, “It’s been strong all weekend, we put the car down and compared to Barcelona, it’s handling so much better, so with all the changes we did coming into this race” “It gave us confidence, we have seen it is working on track, so we can work with a lot more calm and easy spirits. It feels good, I’m happy.”