The grid for the Belgian Grand Prix is far from a two-by-two format for some of the big players. A fascinating Formula 1 qualifying session at Spa saw four teams battling at the front, and the destination of pole seemingly in doubt until Kimi Antonelli secured it by over 0.3 seconds with his final run Saturday morning.
It was also a day of curiously mixed fortunes amongst the teammates in the top cars, with some drivers happy and others rather less so – with Mercedes a case in point. Antonelli was fastest on Friday and again in Saturday’s FP3 session before landing pole, continuing his strong run of form. In contrast, it’s been a weekend of playing catch-up for his teammate and title rival George Russell.
Only eighth fastest and over a second off Antonelli on Friday, in the end he took P4 in qualifying, and he’ll actually start a place ahead thanks to a penalty for Lando Norris. However, there was still a significant and painful time gap to his teammate, one that he was at a loss to explain.
"Could be worse, could be much better," he said when asked by Road & Track about his qualifying session. “Yesterday I was losing eight-tenths in the straights. Today I'm losing four-tenths. It's a step in the right direction! We saw this from Silverstone. We thought we found the problem. We thought it was something with the brakes. It wasn't the brakes. Then we thought it was my driving style, with the throttle, and I convinced myself that it was something in me with the driving style.
View Price on Amazon"Now we're very confident it's not the driving style, and that there's a serious issue at play here, and the team is working so hard to resolve it. Every lap I do when I see I'm down, anywhere from two-tenths to six-tenths in the straights, it's pretty infuriating."
While the issue may have been less costly in qualifying than in practice, it remained something of a mystery to the team and the driver. "My whole focus for the last 36 hours has been on straight-line speed," said Russell. "I haven't been focused on the setup, the tires, or anything, because we're all trying to solve what is going on. Even on my last lap, for some reason, I lost another tenth and a half to myself, just on the straight.
He added: "You're watching your steering wheel, just losing speed when you're full gas on the straight. You feel powerless. So we don't know what's going on. I don't think it's the power unit, to be honest. But there's something slowing us down on the straights, and as I said, the team are really, really on it now to try and solve it."
There was something similar going on at McLaren, where Oscar Piastri could not match Norris as the weekend progressed. The World Champion was in an odd situation, having come into the weekend knowing that he had a 10-place grid penalty for taking new power unit components.
Spa is always a good place to do such things, because passing is possible and races often turn into epics with safety cars and so on playing a role. Against expectations from the start of practice, Norris was at or near the top of the order, with his car proving very competitive, although his shot at P1 in qualifying was lost with a mistake on his last lap. He still earned third, but he now tumbles down to P13 on the final grid.
That’s obviously frustrating, but at least Norris knows that there’s performance in the car, with more to come pending upgrades for Hungary – and he has a chance to make up ground on Sunday. Piastri, in contrast, has been slower all weekend, although he did get closer in qualifying, helped by Norris not getting that final lap in. The Australian will start P6 after Norris takes his penalty.
"The whole day just trying to get the car to work how I wanted to, and to put it on the edge has been tough," he explained. "So not the easiest weekend so far. It's just been a very difficult car to drive. If you can balance it on the edge, then the lap time seems to be there. But balancing it on the edge is pretty tough."
Source: roadandtrack.com
