The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps has received a one-year extension with Formula 1, keeping the Belgian Grand Prix on the calendar through 2025.

Spa-Francorchamps has faced an uncertain future and its place on the 2023 and 2024 calendars was only approved on a short-term basis.

On Friday Formula 1 confirmed that an agreement has been reached to secure Spa-Francorchamps’ spot on the 2025 schedule, ensuring Belgium has at least another two years on the championship’s roster.

“Spa is synonymous with Formula 1 having been one of the circuits in our first ever season and is much-loved by fans and drivers alike, so I am delighted to extend our relationship with them until 2025,” said Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali.

“The promoter has taken big strides in the last few years to improve the fan experience and infrastructure, and work is ongoing between all the stakeholders with a clear focus on delivering safe and exciting racing.

“I would like to thank the promoter and the Government of Wallonia for their continued support.”

Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps was on the calendar of Formula 1’s inaugural season in 1950.

“We are proud and excited to announce that the Formula 1 Grand Prix will take place in Wallonia in 2025,” said Wallonia’s Vice President Willy Borsus.

“Our region will once again rise to the top of the international scene, thanks to its high-quality events and legendary sports infrastructure.

“Beyond the prestige, I would like to emphasize the considerable economic impact that this event brings to Wallonia and Belgium. According to a study carried out in 2021, the Grand Prix generates positive spin-offs of €41.8 million for our region, after deduction of public funding, which is steadily decreasing.

“These figures constitute a solid indication of the financial impact, and the positive outlook means that we can expect even more positive results this year. The Formula 1 Grand Prix thus embodies both an emblematic moment in motor sport and a powerful engine of economic growth for our region.”

There has been much intrigue surrounding Audi’s impending takeover of the Sauber-owned team – but should Alfa Romeo’s 2023 slump serve as a warning of the challenge it faces in reversing a flailing Formula 1 side’s fortunes? 

Alfa Romeo’s uncompetitive display throughout the Belgian Grand Prix weekend ensured it heads into the annual summer shutdown without a single points finish in the previous four rounds – the worst run of any team – to mark a continuation of its struggles from the backend of last year. 

After multiple seasons spent trailing towards the rear of the F1 field, the overhaul to the technical regulations last season enabled Alfa Romeo to enjoy a much-needed renaissance. With the arrival of Valtteri Bottas from the then-defending World Champions Mercedes leading the team’s charge, the Hinwil-based outfit accumulated a total of 55 points inside the opening nine rounds of the year to hold sixth overall.

However, Alfa Romeo has only accrued nine points following the first 12 races of 2023 – a substantial decrease of 46 from this time last year. To further compound its woes, the Italian entity has only racked up a pitiful 13 points across the past 24 grands prix.

But where has Alfa Romeo’s early promise in this rules cycle dissipated to already? 

While the Alfa Romeo C42 was clearly a tidy package with a solid baseline to build from, much of its early success came down to the car being at the optimal weight from the outset. As other teams progressively caught up and whittled away at cutting down their own overweight machines, Alfa Romeo’s competitive advantage at the front of the midfield was reduced at a rapid rate. 

As such, Alfa Romeo went six rounds without scoring a single point from Canada in June until Monza in September, when Zhou Guanyu put an end to the protracted drought with a battling drive to 10th. 

However, that would fail to inspire an upturn in form, with only three further points following courtesy of Bottas recording successive top-10 finishes in Mexico and Brazil. Even accounting for the opportunity of a reset over the winter, Alfa Romeo’s plight has continued into 2023, despite sweeping optimism over the winter that it had made a considerable step forward with its latest car.

The team’s C43 was described by its now-ousted technical director Jan Monchaux as a progressive step forward, with the predominant focus on improving the rear-end instability issues of last year. Regardless of whether its development targets were hit, the stopwatch doesn’t lie, and Alfa Romeo’s technical department ultimately failed to make the same strides as many of its rivals did over the winter, subsequently condemning it to its current occupation of ninth in the teams’ standings.

Alfa Romeo currently only resides above AlphaTauri, who have also struggled hugely to get a grasp on these technical rules over the past 18 months. Meanwhile, Williams appears to have pulled away from those respective sides since introducing a substantial upgrade package that has enabled it to maximise points-scoring opportunities when they’ve arrived.

Speaking of updates, Alfa Romeo introduced its own raft of new parts at the British Grand Prix, with Bottas hopeful that the alterations would provide respite from its wretched run of mid-season form. Although the upgrades proved successful in eliminating part of the C43’s high-speed performance disadvantage, Alfa Romeo’s hopes were hindered by another glaring weakness being exposed.

Unlike fellow Ferrari-powered customer Haas, Alfa Romeo’s attempts to score points have consistently been rebuffed by encountering below-par qualifying displays. The top brass involved within Alfa Romeo’s F1 operation has consistently stressed the need to optimise grid position, with Bottas suspecting points were possible at Silverstone if he’d qualified further up.

One round later, however, and both Bottas and Zhou progressed through to Q3 for the first time in 2023. The twisting, slower-speed nature of the Hungaroring played more favourably into the strengths of Alfa Romeo’s package and a sterling effort from both drivers delivered starting berths of fifth and seventh for Sunday’s race in Budapest.

But within the first lap, Alfa Romeo’s hopes of achieving a vital haul of points were dashed. Zhou, enthused after qualifying a career-best fifth, suffered a clutch problem before a braking misjudgement at Turn 1 caused a collision that compromised Daniel Ricciardo’s race and took both Alpines out.

Unsurprisingly, Zhou was swiftly hit with a five-second time penalty that dropped him out of contention, with Bottas unable to recover from a sluggish start to the race.

During what has transpired to be an arduous and morale-sapping year for the entire Alfa Romeo team, spurning a golden opportunity to collect points on the sole weekend where its car has displayed genuine promise would have been a gut-wrenching pill to swallow. Possibly one that could spell an end to its chances of propelling itself up the standings before the season draws to a close.

The underlying performance of the car underneath Bottas and Zhou has been deemed the attributing factor for their unspectacular run of results, but neither driver has covered themselves in glory by stringing together a consistent run of form.

The farcical unfolding of their respective races in Hungary should warrant question marks over whether both drivers have regularly extracted everything from the machinery at their disposal, even accounting for the evident performance shortcomings.

With McLaren’s introduction of a revised car elevating it into podium-scoring contention, there is now an order of five hugely competitive teams that occupy the points-scoring places. With only the top 10 being eligible for points in a grand prix, it’s even more pivotal that stragglers like Alfa Romeo deliver a faultless weekend in every aspect when circumstances align for a result.  

But while Williams with Alex Albon at the wheel continues to illustrate how that is perfected under the stewardship of ex-Mercedes Strategy Director James Vowles, Alfa Romeo is one team quickly being left behind by the rest’s unrelenting progress.

Although Zhou has certainly done solidly enough to remove the ‘pay driver’ tag that courted his every move upon his arrival into F1, the Chinese driver doesn’t hold a place alongside the other exciting young drivers on the grid that have made the step-up recently like McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.

Meanwhile, Bottas, a 10-time race winner during his stint with Mercedes, was expected to assert a more commanding dominance within the intra-team dynamic, but the Finn appears a shadow of the exciting talent that burst onto the scene with Williams and subsequently earned the right to be Nico Rosberg’s replacement at Mercedes.

Bottas has publicly revealed he wants to stay in time for Audi’s arrival – however, he will undoubtedly need to raise his game beyond his current level to ensure he remains part of the company’s long-term thinking.

It’s hard to imagine that Audi won’t be targeting a top-line driver and such a household name in the automotive industry will demand a queue of drivers wanting to spearhead its F1 project. Among them, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz has been the most notable individual linked due to his ties with Andreas Seidl from their time at McLaren.

The Sauber-ran outfit has shown it is not afraid to ring the changes before the Audi moniker is plastered above the garage doors. Seidl was brought in exclusively over the winter as the Sauber Group’s CEO to oversee the side’s transition into an official works Audi entry under three years from now.

Monchaux has already been handed his marching orders and replaced by James Key, who himself was axed from his Technical Director role at McLaren earlier this year.

Understandably, Audi’s maiden venture into F1 has generated lots of publicity. The German giants have already proceeded to set out the stool for what it aims to achieve upon its arrival into the sport: to be competitive within three seasons.

While simply being competitive is a vague use of terminology and it’s very on-brand for an F1 entry to set out a timeline that doesn’t bare much substance – take Alpine’s ever-evolving 100-race barometer as a prime example – Audi’s declaration should be taken somewhat seriously. 

The German manufacturer has always succeeded in whatever series it has set its sights on. Failure is not an option for Audi, and it will persist with its F1 programme until it develops into an established front-runner capable of challenging the might of Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull on a regular basis.

However, as Bottas expressed recently, the Sauber-ran side can’t simply afford to bide its time until Audi invests the resources required to overturn its latest demise. For the time being, Alfa Romeo’s immediate focus should be on arresting the slide that has taken it from a regular points-scoring team in this rules set to one that is reluctantly propping up at the rear of the pack within a year.

Lewis Hamilton claims that Mercedes is surprised to currently be sat second in the Constructors’ Championship after the sluggish start it made to the 2023 season.

After only picking up a solitary win and slumping to third in the standings upon the overhaul to the technical regulations last season, Mercedes were aiming to bounce back into title contention this year.

However, the German marque endured an arduous start to the campaign, prompting Team Principal Toto Wolff to declare it would be abandoning its revolutionary zero sidepod concept following the opening race.

Since introducing a revised car in Monaco, Hamilton has recorded five top-four finishes across the previous seven races to help Mercedes hold a comfortable 51-point buffer over third-placed Aston Martin.

When asked what his expectations were coming into this year, Hamilton said ahead of last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix: “To be fighting for a World Championship. That’s always the expectation… No, it was just to be in a much better position than we were last year and I think that wasn’t the case.

“With all the amazing work that goes on through winter, we kind of started further behind and so it’s been a big, steep, uphill climb.

“But really proud of the team,” he continued. “We’re fighting for second in the Constructors’ Championship which is definitely something we didn’t expect after what we felt at the first test and that’s really down to the great teamwork that’s happening in the background.”

With new team-mate George Russell being responsible for picking up Mercedes’ only pole position and race victory of 2022, last season marked the first occasion in his F1 career that Hamilton had failed to land top spot in either qualifying or a race.

But in Hungary the Brit landed his first pole position since December 2021, edging out Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by just 0.003s.

Although he lost out at the start to Verstappen and eventually trailed home fourth, Hamilton says Mercedes took positives away from the Hungaroring.

“I think it leaves us optimistic, he said regarding Mercedes’ showing in Hungary. “I think it was amazing to have that experience on Saturday.

“It shows that there’s potential in the car and everyone’s working incredibly hard to bring performance.

“And I think our race pace was very good, we just have to work on what was… we’ve understood what the issue was at the beginning and we’ve got some upgrades here this weekend. The weather’s going to be interesting.”

Aside from Mercedes’ W14 upholding a clear performance deficit at the beginning of the year, Hamilton was also troubled by the balance of the car underneath him.

While the seven-time World Champion has been more comfortable since the addition of upgrades, he admits that Mercedes still has ground to make up.

“Well, as a driver you’re constantly battling the inconsistencies with balance but we are flat-out trying to improve,” he said.

“Just as Kevin [Magnussen] says, we’re working a lot to analyse where we are and what we can do to try and make those big steps that some of the others potentially have, like McLaren and Red Bull often make so hopeful and I have all the faith in the world that we will eventually get there too.”

Valtteri Bottas has revealed that Alfa Romeo will introduce upgrades after the summer break that he hopes will return the team to points-scoring contention.

Alfa Romeo has struggled considerably throughout the 2023 Formula 1 season, having only scored nine points across the first 12 races to languish ninth in the Constructors’ Championship.

The Italian marque proved uncompetitive around the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, with Bottas and team-mate Zhou Guanyu qualifying 14th and 17th respectively.

While both drivers made strong progress to climb the order in the race, Bottas, who took the chequered flag in 12th, asserts that he extracted the maximum result possible.

“It was quite straightforward, the only thing was the start, I had to go off the track before Turn 1, I was next to Yuki and he was just drifting to the right, so that was pretty much and the only thing is that I lost quite a lot of momentum, otherwise it was quite straightforward, and we fought back.

“That was the pace we had today, around 12th quickest.”

Despite introducing updates at Silverstone designed to improve the performance of its C43 car in high-speed corners, Alfa Romeo arrived in Spa expecting to struggle.

However, Bottas concedes he was pleasantly surprised by Alfa Romeo’s pace compared to its immediate rivals within the midfield.

“It definitively felt better than, for example, in Silverstone, at the end of the race all the cars around us seemed to have similar pace, so it will be the small things that will make the difference from now on,” he added.

The Belgian GP marked the fourth consecutive weekend Alfa Romeo has failed to achieve a point, marking the longest barren run by any side on the current grid.

Bottas discloses that Alfa Romeo will have another raft of upgrades to arrive after the summer break, but the ex-Mercedes driver admits any improvement will also depend on what new parts other teams bring.

“There is something in the pipeline for after the break, but it also will depend on what the others will bring,” the Finn explained.

“If they can also make steps, then it’s going to be the same-same; if not many teams will bring anything significant, maybe we can be inside the top ten a bit more regularly, hopefully. It’s not only down to us.”

Alfa Romeo’s failure to accumulate more points has often stemmed from a failure to qualify strongly, with Bottas claiming the Hinwil-based squad must strive to execute weekends better to improve its chances.

“This weekend both qualifyings were a bit messy, we didn’t get the timings quite right,” he said.

“For sure the car pace is important but also the execution of the whole weekend needs to be perfect if you want points, nowadays. It’s also the aim to try to smooth things off.”

Following a bruising opening half to the campaign, Bottas states the entire Alfa Romeo camp must understand the reasons for its slump this season in order to come back stronger in the second half of the year.

“I think we need to analyse and reset for after the break, so we come back quite fresh for the second half,” he contended.

“Also, with the upgrade we have for after the break, we’re hoping it’s going to give us a step, so now we just need to reset a little bit.

Daniel Ricciardo admits he felt there was “a little missing” during Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix as he trailed home a disappointing 16th.

After stringing together an impressive weekend upon his return to the grid in Hungary, Ricciardo’s prospects for the race at Spa-Francorchamps were immediately hampered by failing to progress beyond Q1 in qualifying on Friday evening.

The Australian was set to accompany team-mate Yuki Tsunoda into the second stage before his final run was deleted for a track limits infringement, leaving him 19th.

While Tsunoda, who eventually qualified 11th, utilised an exceptional opening lap to return AlphaTauri to the points, Ricciardo was unable to make the same headway.

Although Ricciardo reckons a stronger result was possible with a better starting position, he concedes that the pace was lacking on his side of the garage in Belgium.

“Honestly, it was tough in traffic,” he rued. “Maybe a race with more clear air could’ve been better, but in general I’m not convinced we had great pace today.

“It felt like we never got the peak out of the tyres, and we couldn’t generate enough grip in the second sector. When we were in clear air later in the race, I felt we were more competitive, but in traffic, it was definitely hard.”

With the early stages of qualifying and the Sprint events on Saturday hampered by rain, Sunday’s race marked the first proper dry-running Ricciardo got in the AT04 at Spa.

The eight-time F1 race winner, therefore, believes that encountering uncharted territory contributed to his failure to make sufficient progress throughout the race.

Ricciardo also underlines that he will be taking the opportunity provided by the summer break to improve his fitness ahead of the second half of the season.

“The reality is, these were my first dry laps in this car on this track, and I don’t know this car that well yet, so I still felt there was a little missing, but we’ll figure it out.

“Many are now looking forward to a well-deserved holiday, but the situation is slightly different for me as the break is a good chance for me to keep working behind the scenes. After a few days off, I’ll spend time in the gym and use my days training, to be able to further improve on my race fitness.”

AlphaTauri Technical Director Jody Egginton supported Ricciardo’s claims but suggests his strong run in Saturday’s Sprint Race demonstrated progress was still made.

Ricciardo was clinging onto eighth place in the truncated 11-lap race until both George Russell and Esteban Ocon denied him notching the first point of his comeback.

“It was more difficult for Daniel, as he spent a good part of the race in traffic,” Egginton acknowledged.

“We weren’t able to get him into free air to put together a strong sequence of laps, as he was able to do in Hungary to good effect.

“It was unfortunate, however, his strong performance in the Sprint race yesterday highlights we are making progress.”

Alex Albon believes the tyre degradation problems that Williams encountered in the Belgian Grand Prix provided a “bit of a wakeup call” for the team.

Following an arduous qualifying session on Friday evening that saw both Williams drivers eliminated in Q1, Albon made a storming start to rise into points contention.

The Thai driver was maintaining a place inside the top 10 before severe degradation on the Medium compound during his second stint forced a third pit stop that dropped him out of the running for a points finish.

Albon, who eventually trailed home 14th, believes the choice to go for a low downforce set-up left him exposed the longer his stints progressed.

“I had a good start today; however, I was almost surprised I fell out of the points in the mid-stint, but I was just struggling so much with degradation,” he said.

“The whole weekend was tricky, and the race was just the same. We’re running low downforce, which is fun but going through sector two, it degs the tyres so much.

“The amount of deg was a bit of a wakeup call, particularly on that Medium tyre. I was having to over-push the tyre to stay in front in sector two and as soon as I tried to manage the tyre, I was immediately under fire from cars behind, so it’s a vicious cycle.”

The slippery nature of Williams’ FW45 car has meant points have only usually been achievable for the British squad on low downforce circuit configurations.

Therefore, Albon asserts Williams must address the issues that arose on Sunday in order to avoid a repeat at the Italian Grand Prix after the summer break.

“I think we need to go away and work out why we struggled so much this weekend, as at the end of the day, this downforce is going to be similar to Monza and that’s our next occasion to likely score points,” he conveyed.

“We’ll need to make sure we learn from this weekend, so when we come back to tracks that suit us, we don’t have this problem again.”

Williams’ Head of Vehicle Performance Dave Robson echoes Albon’s comments, citing that the Grove outfit’s Sunday plight exposed weaknesses with its current package.  

“Another tricky day, which started very well with Alex executing some very good overtakes and making strong progress,” he reflected.

“He was able to back this up during the second stint and seemed to have things under control.

“The third stint was much more difficult with higher tyre degradation than expected, in part due to racing hard with the quicker Alpines. We opted to make a third stop, which led to some more overtaking but a frustrating result.

“There were some good aspects to today, but the race also highlighted some weaknesses of the car, which we are working on.”

Meanwhile, Logan Sargeant was unable to make the same progress as his team-mate in the early stages and finished 17th to extend his wait for a first point in Formula 1.

Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur has revealed that it was holding out for a red flag before electing to retire Carlos Sainz from Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix.

Sainz, who started fourth, was aiming to get ahead of Lewis Hamilton at Turn 1 on the opening lap when Oscar Piastri’s McLaren positioned his car to the inside of the Ferrari.

Piastri ended up clipping the inside wall at the La Source hairpin, culminating in race-ending contact for the Australian and severe damage to the bodywork of Sainz’s car.

While Sainz was able to continue beyond the first lap, the Spaniard struggled for pace and was rapidly shuffled down the order until Ferrari eventually retired him on Lap 23.

Vasseur claims the damage cost Sainz “a lot”, but the Frenchman says Ferrari was reluctant to retire him earlier because of the potential for a red flag to appear when a mid-race rain shower arrived.

“In lap time no because it’s quite difficult because you’re losing downforce,” he said regarding the estimated time loss from the damage. “But it’s not just the downforce, it is the balance of the car.

“We never did the calculation of a potential lap time with x points and x points of balance, but it was a lot. We were just expecting a red flag at one stage to be able to fix it with the first shower, but when the show came without the red flag, we decided to stop it.”

After struggling at the previous two rounds, Ferrari returned to form at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit as Charles Leclerc secured the side’s third podium of the year.

That succeeded an encouraging two days prior to race day that had seen the Italian marque’s SF-23 car perform fairly competitively in a range of conditions.

Although Vasseur accepts that the field is separated by fine margins behind Red Bull, the Ferrari chief has challenged the team to minimise such wayward swings in performance during the second half of 2023.

“For sure, I’m happy that we did a strong weekend in every single conditions that are wet, slicks, long stints, short stints, that we are always there is good for us,” he explained. “Now we have to understand why we are more comfortable on some tracks than some others.

“But I think everybody is in the same situation that we are all a bit inconsistent. Because you have one or two-tenths between P2 and P11 it means that for characteristic of tyre management or level of downforce that you choose at the beginning of the weekend, you can do a very strong one and we don’t have to draw any definitive conclusion.

“But I think it will be like this until the end of the season and we have to be more consistent, to understand where we are weak, why we are weak and to try to minimise this kind of weekend.”

A fine effort from Leclerc to qualify second on Friday evening on a drying track marked a stark contrast to the struggles he had endured in similar conditions at the Spanish and Canadian Grands Prix earlier in the year.

The Monegasque driver had vowed to work on improving his showings in mixed conditions, but Vasseur says he was never concerned about Leclerc’s troubles.

“Yeah he had difficult races in a row, you are right, he had the Barcelona quali and then Spielberg or Canada in mixed condition,” he acknowledged.

“But he wanted to do some laps with slicks in Silverstone on the wet to have a good feeling without pressure, without lap time and I think he did it and he did it perfectly.

“I was not worried at all because I know him for ages and he was always performant in these kind of conditions but I think he had a poor session in Barcelona that didn’t go pretty well but I think the conditions were more than tricky and I was a bit surprised with this but it’s behind us.

“He showed that the in these tricky conditions he was able to be consistently on the front of the pack and he did a good job.”

Esteban Ocon says he was happy to “save” Alpine’s weekend with a run to eighth place at the Belgian Grand Prix, a week that proved to be tumultuous for the Enstone-based squad.

On Friday, it was announced that both Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and long-serving Sporting Director Alan Permane would no longer be a part of Alpine following the Belgian Grand Prix.

Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry was also announced as another departure, taking up a role at Williams.

The shake-up was the latest in a revolving door saga at Alpine that has seen F1 engine chief Bruno Famin promoted to vice president of Alpine Motorsports and Laurent Rossi replaced as Alpine CEO by Philippe Krief.

Putting the off-track distractions to one side however, was Ocon, who had plenty of positive takes from his performance at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday, despite losing out in an enjoyable battle with McLaren’s Lando Norris for seventh place.

“One more lap, one more lap. That’s what Lando could have said for many occasions when we raced together,” said the Frenchman, acknowledging prior battles with the McLaren ace.

“I enjoy the last lap battles with him all the time, it always seems to happen together. But not this time, unfortunately.”

Despite his battle with Norris not having the best outcome, Ocon was happy with how he and the team performed.

“[I’m] glad we saved our weekend in a way,” he said. “Friday, Saturday didn’t go to plan, we didn’t put everything together.

“But clearly that race, we could show the real pace of the car, and how it was working, and yeah, had some really good battles out there.”

A mistake in a weather-affected qualifying session on Friday meant Ocon started Sunday’s Grand Prix in 14th place.

But following battles with the likes of Norris, Yuki Tsunoda, Alex Albon, as well as his Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly, Ocon was left confident Alpine had unlocked good pace thanks to recent upgrades and thanked those working back at base in Enstone and Viry for the result.

“What if it was a dry weekend on the rest? “Because I think we had clearly that pace in the race,” he said.

 “It’s very encouraging that each time we bring an update, the car seems to take a step forward. Clearly, I dedicate that one to Viry and Enstone, because it’s really encouraging what we bring to the track really makes a step forward.”

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says it must analyse whether the new floor it brought to the Belgian Grand Prix was responsible for its car suffering from bouncing.

Following a troublesome Sprint Saturday, Mercedes rebounded on Sunday with Lewis Hamilton classified fourth and George Russell recovering to sixth after being compromised on the first lap.

Hamilton was engaged in a race-long duel with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for the final podium place but the Brit was unable to get close enough to mount an attack.

The only occasions Hamilton threatened Leclerc’s stranglehold on third place was when Mercedes initiated an undercut at both rounds of pit stops, and Wolff asserts the German outfit lacked the pace on Sunday.

“Well that was the only chance to give it a go, they had always a tenth, one and a half tenths advantage per lap,” he said concerning Hamilton’s strategy.

“Coming out ahead I think we could have held it but overall, it’s just – P4 is like a no-place.”

While Red Bull’s unbeaten streak has remained intact, the closest challenger to the reigning World Champions has continuously changed over recent rounds.

Aston Martin, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes have all taken turns to take the chequered flag behind the race-winning Red Bull.

Mercedes introduced an extensive upgrade package at Spa-Francorchamps with the aim of consolidating its position as the second-fastest team in the field.

However, Wolff concedes that Mercedes were stymied by a reoccurrence of the porpoising phenomenon that hampered its progress early in this regulation cycle last year.

“The main limiting factor yesterday and today was the bouncing, the car is bouncing literally on every straight, even Blanchimont is a corner Lewis had to lift that is an easy flat normally and if you are bouncing on the straight, you over-heat the tyres under braking and that is a vicious cycle and was the main limiting factor this weekend,” he revealed.

“It’s frustrating to check out for holidays like this but tomorrow and after tomorrow we’ll understand more based on the data.”

Wolff believes that the new floor it bolted onto the W14 could have potentially been a reason for the extreme bouncing both drivers complained about after the race.

However, despite the issues it encountered in Belgium, the Austrian chief insists that the Brackley-based operation’s development direction remains the correct one.

“Yeah we’ve got to analyse it, there’s so much hard work with the aero guys and the operations team to deliver that upgrade, you’ve got to take your hat off,” he acknowledged.

“The floor could have been a reason for the bouncing but we are going to see in the data and maybe there’s a reason we could find soon, because I still believe the direction we are going now is the right one.”

After being hit with a five-place grid drop for a gearbox change, Verstappen still charged from sixth on the grid to win by 22s over Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez.

It marked the Dutchman’s eighth consecutive victory and his third in a row at Spa, having also stormed to the win from 14th last year.

But Wolff reckons that removing Verstappen from the equation and comparing Hamilton’s ability to remain in close proximity to the second Red Bull and Leclerc’s Ferrari demonstrates the progress it has made.

However, he admits the former eight-time World Champions still have a lot of work to do to provide competition to Red Bull and Verstappen for race wins again.

“I think when you compare to the rest of the world, Spa was an awful race and today before that last stop, Perez, Leclerc, us were within six seconds, eight seconds and that is a step for us as I said before because Spa was a disaster in 2022 for us,” he argued.

“We feel we’ve made that step but then you have that top guy who’s made another step in 12 months and we’ve just got to turn that around.”

Max Verstappen asserts he could see Carlos Sainz’s and Oscar Piastri’s collision at the Belgian Grand Prix was going to happen on the run to the first corner.

Sainz and Piastri collided on the opening lap of the race, with both suffering race-ending damage.

Sainz suggested after the race that Piastri was more to blame for the clash, while Piastri labelled it a racing incident.

Verstappen, who started sixth on the grid, has history with Turn 1 at Spa-Francorchamps, as in 2016, he retired after coming together with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

 “Yeah, lap one, Turn 1 – my start was OK, but then I could see Carlos lock up, so you had to go to the inside,” Verstappen said. 

“But then of course, Oscar was kind of there as well and then they both went deep into the corner. 

“So I knew exactly what was going to happen, because I have had the same thing happen to me in 2016, I think it was or something. 

“So it’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to stay out of it, I go wide’. But then, of course, they had damage. 

“And you have to wait and see what they’re going to do on the exit, because I could see Oscar couldn’t really steer anymore. 

“So we lost a little bit of momentum there, but luckily, it was all OK. And of course, I also got Carlos into Les Combes.”

Verstappen went on to win the grand prix ahead of team-mate Sergio Perez, extending his lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 125 points.

Explaining the rest of his race after escaping unscathed from the Turn 1 incident, Verstappen said: “From there onwards, basically, my race started. 

“But I was a bit unlucky, because I got stuck behind Lewis, because he was in the DRS of Charles, and with them having the highest top speed, Lewis, this weekend, it was just impossible to pass. 

“So I had to wait for him to drop out of the DRS and as soon as he didn’t have DRS anymore, I could pass. 

“And then I think two or three laps later, I could pass Charles. But with that, I think I hurt my tyres a bit too much. 

“So basically, as soon as I had my stop on to the Medium, I could feel that the car was in a much better window and I could go a lot faster.

“So yeah, from there onwards that was really where it started to come alive. And really enjoyable to drive and once I got into the lead, also, I could really look after the tyres as well. 

“But then, of course, the rain started to come down. So you had to slow down quite a bit in some places. And once that cleared, we went back to a Soft tyre set and, again, the car was well balanced. 

“It shows that, you know, once you’re not in traffic, how much better you can be on tyres. So yeah, it was, again, a great race.”