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Belgian Grand Prix: When Kimi broke the bleep machine
If you’re seeking key ingredients for a great story, you could do worse than start with a hero, a good guy and a bad guy.
Spa had it all this weekend – there was a hero, there was a good guy, there was a bad guy.
The thing is, it was difficult to tell who the good guy was and who the bad guy was though, judging by the high standard of his cursing, Kimi Raikkonen (pictured) was in no doubt as to the identity of the bad guy.
More on that later – let’s start with the easy one.
Heroic Hamilton? Well, happy Hamilton at least
Seldom can third place have tasted so sweet to Lewis Hamilton. Starting on the back row of the grid thanks to a huge list of penalties for various power unit changes, with a car that wasn’t performing up to its usual standards all weekend, Hamilton (pictured) knew his championship lead over team-mate Nico Rosberg could be wiped out this weekend.
Instead, he drove a careful, controlled race and took home 15 invaluable points … and he now has more power unit elements to choose from than anyone else on the grid.
After the race, Hamilton was beaming. He even removed his sunglasses for an interview – normally, a third place behind Rosberg and Ricciardo would leave our Lewis scowling and muttering about the need for everyone to improve, but not at Spa.
Having fought back from a long list of mechanical problems in the first part of the season, and taken a big penalty to replace some of the broken parts, Hamilton still leads the Drivers’ Championship by nine points, and he’s sitting pretty in mechanical terms.
A special mention goes to the other guy on the back row – Fernando Alonso, in 22nd position. After the chaos of the first lap, Alonso had already leapt up to 11th, two places ahead of Hamilton.
Between them, these two back-row boys have been World Champions five times, so perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised at their progress.
Alonso’s miserable situation is certainly improving. He was able to keep up with the Force Indias on the mighty Kemmel Straight, albeit with a bit of help from the tow, and he has scored more points as an individual this season than McLaren managed as a team all last season.
He’ll have been as happy as is reasonable with six points for his seventh place.
Good guys and bad guys: Part 1
Nico Rosberg (pictured) started on pole, led all the way and finished on the top of the podium.
He started well, and so avoided getting snarled up in any first-corner shenanigans.
He didn’t make any mistakes, controlled his tyre wear, did his job and took maximum points…
…And was booed on the podium.
No matter what Nico does, he’ll always be the bad guy to some sections of the F1 crowd.
But he’s going to have to work hard if he wants to be the sport’s premier pantomime villain…
Good guys and bad guys: Part 2
An estimated 20,000 fans (including one orange Elvis, pictured) popped over from the Netherlands to watch their young Red Bull hero Max Verstappen elbow, kick and bully his way through the weekend.
They came to see him race hard and they were not disappointed.
After a slow getaway, Verstappen dived down the inside of both Ferraris at Turn 1.
He came out ahead but, in the process, his own car was damaged and the Ferraris collided – Sebastian Vettel failing to leave enough room for Kimi Raikkonen to avoid the late-charging Red Bull. Everyone had to pit for repairs.
On lap 12, Verstappen and Raikkonen came together again and the Fin was squeezed off the track as he made a pass. He gave the place back.
On the very next lap, Raikkonen tried another pass, at Eau Rouge. Verstappen pulled one of his infamous late moves and forced Raikkonen to brake on the straight.
Kimi was straight on the radio with a colourful outburst that contained so many expletives, the F1 bleep machine had to go and lie down in a dark room, and TV viewers were treated to a real, live F-bomb. Whoop!
Both Kimi and Max found themselves in the wars later in the race, but it was Max’s aggressive driving that got F1 fans debating whether he was being fair or not.
Fair is a matter of perspective. When Red Bull analyse Verstappen’s performance at Spa, they won’t be looking at ‘fair’.
They’ll be looking at his 11th-place finish which garnered exactly no points for the team. And the reason he finished 11th isn’t because of his tussles with Raikkonen or anyone else, for that matter.
Verstappen had a very poor start, bogging his engine down then spinning his wheels as he tried to find traction. That poor start is the reason he then went for a gap on the inside of the Ferraris.
To make that pass stick, he had to cut the corner, and wrecked the underside of his car in the process.
His boss, Christian Horner, said damage to the undertray may have cost Verstappen up to 1.5seconds a lap.
From that first corner onwards, Verstappen’s race was doomed, no matter how aggressively he shoved his way around Spa.
Of course, Verstappen’s style is fascinating to watch and, in time, it will result in a big accident, particularly as other drivers play him at his own game.
Young Max must remember that if he says, as he did post-Spa: ‘If someone doesn’t like how I defend, it’s his own problem…’ and then points the finger at how other drivers defend, as he did post-Spa, he’s going to look stupid.
Mostly, though, he should practice his starts.
Meritorious performances
Elsewhere in the field, Force India had two cars in the top five for the first time since Bahrain 2014 and are now ahead of Williams in the all-important Constructors’ Championship.
Nico Hulkenberg (fourth) and Sergio Perez behind him outclassed the Williams cars, and grabbed the opportunity presented by Ferrari’s first-corner misfortune. This result could be worth a lot to the team when prize money is handed out at the end of the season.
And Kevin Magnussen’s Renault (pictured – RIP) deserves applause for the way it handled his Eau Rouge crash, which led to the race being red-flagged for a period while barriers were repaired.
The Dane lost the car’s rear end and span into the tyre wall at 180-190mph. The impact destroyed his car, even ripping a protective liner from around Magnussen’s cockpit.
It left him limping but, after treatment for a cut ankle, he vowed to race at Monza next weekend.
Yet again, the incredible strength of F1’s carbon-fibre survival cells, coupled with crumple zones and safety devices, has seen a driver walk away from a crash that would once have been unsurvivable.
Heroes, good guys, bad guys and death-defying feats – what more do you want from a Sunday afternoon race?
