2023 Belgian Grand Prix - [SPRINT] discussion thread

5sec definitely seems excessive.

Fully deserved imo

Perez was already nursing a problem, if anyone was driving dangerously it was him.

Hmm, I dunno… I can see it being ruled a racing incident because the action wasn’t that bad. But he did understeer into an opponent, damaging his car, and ruining his race.

It seems like they judged the outcome more so than the action itself.

Agreed - WTF was that about - nothing happened to any of the cars, it was racing.

He's had a lot of bad luck this season, but i feel his drives have gone under the radar a bit. He's in a new team and has been more or less on the same racepace as Ocon from the get-go. Very interested to see how the fight between the two develops.

Shouldn't he get a penalty for unsafe release? He almost crashed into Stroll. Why was there no mention of this from race control?

Still not too bad of a drive! He definitely had more pace than Yuki.

Checo floundering and Danny Ric in the points in an Alpha Tauri. I think we all know what thoughts are going through Helmut's head right now.

Finished way ahead of Tsunoda and (by luck) ahead of Perez, that looks good for him

World focking champion

That’s awesome - he would fook smash his way through 😁

And now the tables have turned between Oscar and Max thanks to the safety car!

Why was that great strategy? It was the only thing they could do?

There's possibly not enough time to run the session. There's only an hour without rain forecast and based on Sprint Qualifying it'll take half an hour once the rain stops to get started.

The radar they showed don't give me much hope they will start anytime soon...

I just watched the race and I didn't notice the hole until I saw a post on Reddit, I don't think it was obvious during the race that there was that much damage.

Same. I woke up a bit late and thought I missed the start. Anyone knows the reason for it?

4 laps behind safety car, then rolling start.

That would just lead to a red flag which takes until it starts raining again and we wouldn't have gotten a race

I thought the test they did with them didn't work? Didn't Williams do a test at Silverstone with them?

I hope they just wait it out instead of cancelling it

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Daniel is pretty pleased right now.

Issue doesn't seem to have been caused by him this time? They retired the car.

Edit: he said collision with Hamilton caused retirement. He was losing pace before that though, so that's on him.

Nope thats gone this year

He lost almost 7 seconds over such a short period of time. I don't think he could stay ahead in this race.

probably not: Spa is always great for the overtaker due to the long straight into and after eau rouge. McLaren is also running very strong wings which hurts their performance on the straights (but helps during e.g. rainy qualifyings....).
Realistically, if there is any chance of overtaking at all, Verstappen can overtake just due to less drag on the straights.