The defending F1 world champion, Max Verstappen, yet again proved why he deserves to be a two-time World champion with a stellar drive in the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix. After taking engine penalties in this race, the Dutch driver had to start from P14, critically a position ahead of his championship rival Charles Leclerc (P15). However, at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter much coz he went on to win the race after having a spectacular start to the race. Sergio Perez came home to take the second place for a quite comfortable one-two for Red Bull as Carlos Sainz finished the race in third place after starting the race on pole position.

The race started off brilliantly for Carlos Sainz as he was quick to react off the start and had a decent lead after the first lap. Meanwhile, behind him Sergio Perez had a horrific start as he was passed by Alonso, Hamilton, & Russell (in that order) in the first corner itself. However, Perez was able to recover his position back as Alonso and Hamilton crashed into each other at turn 5, with Hamilton coming off worse than Alonso as he retired out of the race in the first lap. At the back of the grid, Valtteri Bottas had to retire from the race as well as he crashed into Nicolas Latifi, who spun onto the track after going wide onto the gravel trap. The two incidents forced the F1 race control to call in the Safety Car to clear out the two cars on the track.

After the safety car period ended, Carlos Sainz had a decent re-start as he kept his lead from Perez and Russell behind him. However, the man to look out for after the restart was the Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who was absolutely flying behind the race leaders, making up 6 places in the first lap itself, moving up to P8 before the safety car period. He, then kept the momentum going as he was overtaking at least one car every single lap after the Safety car period ended and was P3 by the start of lap 8.

Ferrari made the call to pit Carlos Sainz early on lap 12 as the two Red Bull drivers stayed out for a few laps longer. Sergio Perez pitted on lap 14 to come back around 8 seconds behind Sainz and further 13 second behind his team-mate Max Verstappen, who pitted on lap 16 (around 4.5 sec behind Sainz). After the first round of pit-stops for the front runners, Carlos Sainz lead the race from Max Verstappen, then came Sergio Perez and George Russell. On lap 18, Max got a great exit out of turn 1, giving him great speed through the back straight as he overtook Sainz for lead of the race and from there on he just didn’t look back and went on to win the race quite comfortably.

Carlos Sainz had an extremely bad stint after his first stop as he lost the second position as well after he was passed quite easily by Sergio Perez on lap 21, who then kept it pretty composed thereafter to ensure that Red Bull take the 1-2 finish quite comfortably. Sainz held on to his position after that to finish the race on the final step of the podium as George Russell finished just behind him in P4. However, behind them, controversy in the Ferrari garage happened yet again as they brought in Leclerc to put on the softs to get that fastest lap point but it proved to be a bad call as Leclerc was found to be guilty for impeding the speed limit in pit lane, that attracted a five-second time penalty which made him lose a place as he finished P6 in the end with Alonso taking P5. The last four points place were taken by Esteban Ocon (P7), Sebastian Vettel (P8), Pierre Gasly (P9) and Alexander Albon (P10).

Max Verstappen (284 points) further extended his championship lead to 93 points from Sergio Perez (191 points) in second place. With just 8 races remaining, Max Verstappen seems to be right on course to win his second F1 world championship in as many years. Meanwhile, on the other hand, Red Bull have taken a massive 118 points lead over Ferrari in the Constructor’s championship battle as they look to end the Mercedes dominance and become the Constructor’s Champions for the first time since 2013.