Luke’s Weekend Take – Spa GP 2023

With how wet the track was, there were concerns that qualifying might not go ahead and if that was the case then the drivers would have lined up on the grid on Sunday as they currently stand in the Drivers Championships which would have been the fairest way to do this. That said qualifying did go ahead as normal as the track was looking much drier than it was in FP1 as the rain had stopped but the track was still damp, so all drivers come out on the green striped inters. Q1 was straight forward and went as expected as we lose Alex Albon, Zhou Guanyu, Logan Sargeant, Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg. Ricciardo was very unlucky here as he was only eliminated for exceeding track limits as before his lap time was deleted, he had managed a time good enough for 4^th fastest.

In Q2 we see the track drying up quickly and with 7 mins left in Q2 drivers switched over to the soft tyres to get some quicker times with the stickier compound. Most drivers managed to keep it on track apart from Esteban Ocon as he had a moment and goes over into the gravel and hits his front wing on the barriers ending his qualifying as he didn’t have enough time to get back to the pits, change the wing and do an out lap before the timer runs out. In Q2 we see Yuki Tsunoda, Pierre Gasly, Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Ocon eliminated.

For Q3 the start was delayed so the marshals could fix the barriers where Ocon tore off some of the branding. At the start of Q3 the FIA announce that DRS was also activated as the track had dried enough for the FIA to declare the track dry. After the 2 runs in Q3 we see Max Verstappen top the charts followed by Charles Leclerc, Sergio Perez, Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, George Russell, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll form the top 10, however Verstappen will start in 6^th place as he takes a 5 grid penalty for taking on a new gearbox from the allocation. This means that Leclerc, Perez, Hamilton, Sainz and Piastri move up one place giving Leclerc the pole on Sunday.

We now head into Saturday as we head into the Sprint Shootout which is the qualifying for the Sprint Race later today. The Sprint Shootout was delayed 35 minutes due to the track being wet from the heavy rain in the morning. Due to this delay, the Sprint race will also be delayed by 5 mins so it will give the teams enough time to get ready for the Sprint race. In SQ1 we see Haas struggle a bit as their drivers came out of the pits multiple times but seen them go straight back into the pits, due to the drivers not setting any time so far they banked it all on the closing minutes as they sent the drivers out to get to the start finish line as the timer closes off in order to give them the best chance with a highly evolving track. Haas unfortunately didn’t get it right at all as Nico Hulkenberg didn’t manage to make it to the chequered flag in time meaning he was not able to set a time to give himself a chance to get out of SQ1. In SQ1 we see Yuki Tsunoda, Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen, Zhou Guanyu and Nico Hulkenberg get eliminated.

In SQ2 we see teams contemplating putting slicks on as the track was drying out very quick. Most drivers still went out on inters for SQ2 so they can at least set a time on the board, at Aston Martin however they decided not to send the drivers out for the first run and bank it all on the last run. Lance Stroll was the only driver to come out on the mediums for the last run and all eyes were on him to see whether this was too early or not. At the end of his out lap we hear Stroll say that it was too early, but his engineer advised that it was too late and he had to go for it. Stroll unfortunately loses it on the corner with no name and goes into the barriers bringing out the Red Flag. Due to the time it takes to do an out lap here the FIA announced that SQ2 will not go on as there wasn’t enough time to go round the track seeing Daniel Ricciardo, Alex Albon, Logan Sargeant, Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso missing out and eliminated in SQ2.

SQ3 starts after a delay so that Marshalls fix the barriers and all drivers come out on the soft tyres. All eyes were on the rookie Oscar Piastri as the Mclaren car was looking mighty in the Sprint Shootout and for a moment we all thought that the rookie was going to start on pole until Max came around and took pole for the Sprint Shootout by only 0.011 seconds. This however doesn’t take anything from Piastri as he drove brilliantly beating his teammate as well. The grid for the Sprint Race will look like this: Verstappen, Piastri, Sainz, Leclerc, Norris, Gasly, Hamilton, Perez, Ocon and Russell in the top 10.

I think we have got 2 good races ahead of us and I can’t wait to see who comes out on top with Max starting out of position on Sunday and the McLaren looking mighty fast ahead of the Sprint Race. Who do you think will come out on top for the races?