'Max Verstappen's Belgian GP win was the work of genius': Mark Hughes

Max Verstappen wasn't happy about starting towards the back of the 2022 Belgian GP grid, but made victory look easy in the race. Mark Hughes explains why he had such an advantage

Max Verstappen at La Source in the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix

Remko de Waal/ANP via Getty Images

In looking at the why for Max Verstappen’s stunning Spa victory from a penalised 14th on the grid, the overwhelming answer is sheer, pulverising pace. From the moment he drove his first laps of practice, Verstappen was loving the Red Bull around here. It was, as he later said, ‘on rails’. It felt like this immediately and his advantage only seemed to grow through the weekend.

He’d lapped 0.65sec clear of the field in qualifying without really trying, just a solitary Q3 run to ensure he began ahead of the also-penalised Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. His advantage on race day was way bigger than that. From that 14th place slot, he was leading the race and going away by lap 18. He led team-mate Sergio Perez across the line by 17.8sec. He set the race’s fastest lap on a set of medium tyres 12 laps before the end of the race and when Ferrari later brought Leclerc in near the end for a set of softs with which to take the fastest lap point, he fell 0.6sec short in a car that would by then have been around 28kg lighter.

Although Verstappen felt the RB18 was ‘on rails’, Perez would not have agreed. He couldn’t live with the sort of edgy balance Verstappen made look easy through the super-high speed bends of the middle sector. This was the work of genius – from both driver and car.

Max Verstappen leads Carlos Sainz in the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix

Verstappen pressed home his advantage in the high-speed corners of sector 2

Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images

By dint of a tow from Leclerc and big commitment through Pouhon, Carlos Sainz had got to within 0.65sec of Verstappen’s almost casual single Q3 lap and that was good enough to out-qualify Perez and thereby start first.

Although Sainz on his soft tyres won the start and the safety car restart (for a lap 2 Latifi/Bottas collision) and stayed in front through that first stint and into the second, Verstappen was always coming to get him, even from seven rows back.

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The hotter track of race day made thermal deg of the rear tyres the limiting factor for everyone and ensured it was a two-stop race. But the effect on the Red Bulls, Verstappen’s in particular, was nowhere near as severe as on the Ferraris.

With a great balance and good downforce, the Red Bull was keeping its tyres in shape better than any other. Its slow corner performance was getting it onto the straights faster, making it quick through sectors 1 and 3 despite a relatively big wing. That wing then helped it to its devastating speed through the fast corners of sector 2. It was all about aero efficiency at this low end of the downforce scale which Spa demands. It exposed a Ferrari weakness not otherwise seen this year. The hot track and tyre demands just amplified Red Bull’s advantage. Perez was able to pick off Sainz late in the second stint, just as Verstappen had done a few laps earlier.

This left Sainz to fend off George Russell whose Mercedes was, as usual, relatively good on the tyres in the race but too slow to warm them up in qualifying. His was the only Mercedes in the race after Lewis Hamilton turned in on Fernando Alonso at Les Combes on the first lap, trying to take second place. The overlapping wheels sent the Merc airborne, breaking its suspension and forcing Hamilton to pull off. Alonso lost a couple of places but his Alpine was undamaged.

Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix

Leclerc was running a distant fifth before the decision to pit…

Ferrari

Leclerc – forced to pit under the safety car to have Verstappen’s visor rip-off removed from a front brake duct – rejoined near the back and eventually got up to a distant fifth, well behind Russell and suffering just the same tyre deg problems as Sainz. Near the end, the stop for the soft tyres with which to try for the fastest lap lost him a place to Alonso, which he clawed back on the next lap. But a 5sec penalty for pitlane speeding put him behind the Alpine in the official results.

Alonso didn’t have Russell’s pace in the race despite having out-qualified him (with the help of a tow from team mate Esteban Ocon, who started a penalised 16th). Ocon drove a great race to be up with Alonso by the end. He passed Sebastian Vettel and Pierre Gasly in one move into Les Combes – the Aston and AlphaTauri finishing behind him in eighth and ninth, with Alex Albon taking the final point for Williams after getting it into Q3 for the first time. He was tenacious in using the car’s prodigious straightline speed to keep quicker cars behind him for as long as possible. McLaren’s lack of straightline speed ruined its race, putting both Daniel Ricciardo and the grid-penalised Lando Norris into DRS trains from which there was no escape.

“It’s been a weekend I couldn’t imagine before,” said Verstappen who came into the weekend somewhat gloomily, knowing of his impending grid penalty. “But I think we want more of them.”