RACE REPORT

Can anybody stop Max Verstappen right now? He wins from pole, or 14th, and is surely on his way to the title, says Mark Hughes

The Belgian Grand Prix may not have been a classic, but it did show exactly how good Max Verstappen is at the moment, winning comfortably despite starting from 14th

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After the summer break, the title campaigns of Max Verstappen and Red Bull really kicked on, to the extent that the driver said at Monza, “We don’t need wins any more, but we still want them.” That was just before he scored his fifth straight victory. You may recall that he won the last race before the break, in Hungary, from 10th. Well, he won at Spa from 14th, at Zandvoort from pole and at Monza from seventh. It didn’t seem to matter much where he started from, he would dominate regardless. At Spa and Monza he was taking power unit penalties, the latter a voluntary one just so that he had more engines in the pool for the remainder of the season. Around the tighter confines of Zandvoort and a home crowd to please, such penalties might have been more debilitating, but who knows? He left Monza 136 points clear of his mathematical rival Charles Leclerc with still six rounds to go.

At Spa right from the moment practice began he was in breathtaking form, a great driver at the height of his powers expressing himself on one of the world’s greatest tracks in a car which has been steadily honed to his preferences. Through the high-speed valley of the middle section, Pouhon in particular, the car’s neutral balance seemed incompatible with the speed of the corners. There was no stabilising understeer to lean upon, just straight up to the limit – jumping onto the high-wire as Mark Donohue would have described it – and not one single further input, lest it throw him off the road. He made it look child’s play. It was like this from the first lap of practice and stayed that way through the weekend. Yes, it was a super-fast car around Spa, but it required a very great driver to exploit it fully.

Ferrari has been well and truly left behind, mostly due to its own errors

DPPI, GETTY IMAGES

Max is walking to a second title this season Left: Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso trip over each other at Spa

Given the multiple PU penalties he was taking, and the similar penalties for his closest title rival Charles Leclerc, all he set out to do in Q3 was be faster than the Ferrari, so he did only one run, and probably not even a flat-out one. That was still the fastest time in qualifying by the margin of 0.65sec over the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, who used a tow from Leclerc and huge commitment to be flat through Pouhon just to be within that margin of Verstappen’s almost casual Q3 lap. After everyone’s penalties were applied, Verstappen would start from 14th, Sainz from pole and Leclerc from 16th.