Russell zapped, and Spa made ridiculously easy in F1's energy-deployment GP

Kimi Antonelli’s return to the top step of the podium was in the end just an expression of performance. One made a little more complicated by the timing of a VSC on lap 20 just after he’d pitted but before the chasing Charles Leclerc had. That saved Leclerc 7sec compared to Antonelli’s stop, enough to spring him ahead against the run of play.

The Merc had a small but significant race pace advantage over the Ferrari and so although Antonelli had to push pretty hard for a few laps to close down a gap which had been exaggerated by Leclerc having cleared the out-of-sequence McLaren of Lando Norris immediately, it was a victory which always looked likely. Leclerc hung gamely on in the boost range for a few laps, but the Mercedes–Ferrari–Max Verstappen/Red Bull podium was a pretty accurate reflection of where everyone was at.

Verstappen had thrilled the crowd with an opening lap pass on Antonelli into Eau Rouge for the lead but was defenceless up the Kemmel straight and spent the first stint in close contest with Leclerc. He lost out to the Ferrari in the timing of his pitstop, pitting early to defend against Leclerc’s undercut threat and thereby missing out on the later VSC opportunity.

In low wing form the Mercedes had the best combination of low drag, decent downforce and potent PU. McLaren was a great sector 2 car and the Red Bull was competitive in sector 3 but the Merc had the best compromise. On race day the Ferrari had a decent balance on the relatively cool track, so not exposing its rear tyre weakness, but it didn’t have the grunt of the Mercedes.

Antonelli played that hand of cards perfectly while team-mate George Russell – compromised all weekend, just as at Silverstone, by deployment issues, didn’t complete a lap, his race ending in the Les Combes gravel trap after interlocking wheels with Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari. So massively boosting Antonelli’s title chances. Difficult days for George. Mercedes believes it has got to the root of the deployment issues, Toto Wolff describing it as 50/50 technical and driving but Russell was blameless in how his battery had lost 30-40% of its charge as he exited Turn 1 in the opening seconds. It left him defenceless up the Kemmel straight as he was zapped by all and sundry. Had it not been for that he wouldn’t have been scrapping with Hamilton into Les Combes. Even Antonelli’s deployment didn’t work as it should have on the opening lap and it was an issue affecting every Mercedes-engined car, just not to the extent that Russell suffered it.

Deployment in fact was the overriding theme of the weekend as this generation of energy-starved cars faced their sternest challenge to date. With its long lap and schizophrenic layout, energy management at Spa was always going to overwhelm the driving challenge. There’s only so much F1 could do to mitigate, balancing how much energy to be allowed (it was reduced from the originally planned 8MJ in qualifying to 7MJ), thereby reducing lift and coast, with how slow the cars would be. At the chosen level there was less lift and coasting than there would have been at 8MJ, but the power through the curves of Sector 2 was essentially internal combustion engine only (so around 530bhp, or 90bhp down on an F2 car). In combination with F1 levels of downforce what was once perhaps the most challenging sector on the calendar became ridiculously easy. Go on board and you see that not only was Pouhon easily flat, it was almost ‘one-hand on the steering wheel flat’.

The drivers made only token efforts to hide their disdain for how the cars had completely de-fanged their favourite playground, making it nothing more than a challenging puzzle of who can manage the energy the most efficiently, which car and which driver.

“Whoever saw these simulations in 2022, 2023, and didn’t look at it and say, ‘How can we even accept that?’ needs to review what happened there, because it should have never happened,” said Carlos Sainz after qualifying.

Deployment at such an energy-starved layout, even more extreme than Silverstone, meant what the driver was doing in keeping momentum while being economical with the battery was going to be worth more lap time than ever before. This was where Antonelli was masterful and Russell again struggled, although that was not the full story. There was something there which the team was struggling to understand – and McLaren’s Andrea Stella pointed out the Antonelli-Russell overlay was remarkably similar to that of Norris-Piastri on his team for reasons that were unclear. What can be said with certainty is that the more energy starvation a circuit’s layout imposes on the cars, the more hyper-sensitive the deployment is to what the driver does with brakes and throttle.

The energy efficiency of the low-drag Merc – with a small package here to minimise its drag further, surrendering more downforce than the others – allowed it extra deployment between Turns 7-8. It was the fastest of the top four cars down the straights (but not as fast as the Racing Bulls).

The McLaren, running a little more downforce, was fastest through the turns and their respective gearing (Mercedes long, McLaren short) helped dictate those choices. Norris would have been in the podium fight, having qualified third, behind the tow-assisted Verstappen, but was taking a 10-place penalty for a new battery. Piastri challenged Leclerc in the early laps but was on the receiving end of a ferocious defence up to Les Combes which damaged the McLaren’s floor.

Norris’s offset hard/medium race (with those in front going medium/hard) saw him lead for a while but the VSC timing worked against him, coming too early. It all restricted him to seventh, only a couple of places and a few seconds behind team-mate Piastri. In between was an impressive Isack Hadjar who started his Red Bull from the back and made great progress through the field.

The crucial VSC was to clear gravel from Stavelot. The sharpness of the stones was deemed a puncture hazard – which around here was worrisome. The driving challenge of the place had been removed but the danger remained and no-one was taking any chances.

Ferrari pitted both its cars at that VSC, which came two laps after Antonelli had pitted and three after Verstappen’s stop. Hamilton was taking a 5sec penalty for his lap 1 Russell clash and this spoiled his planned early stop strategy; the rushed stop, stacked behind Leclerc, meant he didn’t get the extra front wing angle he’d requested. He had decent pace in his recovery and got to within sniffing distance of Verstappen at the flag for P4. That penalty ruined what might have been, for he was right with Leclerc in the early stages and asking to be allowed past. The request was ignored because the penalty meant that Leclerc was now Ferrari’s best chance.

Gabriel Bortoleto drove a great race to eighth for Audi, maintaining a narrow advantage over the equally impressive Arvid Lindblad in the updated Racing Bulls, with a feisty Franco Colapinto a long way behind to take the final point by fending off Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly.

The ebbs and flows of performance among the teams and drivers remain interesting this season but their significance is dwarfed by how this greatest of tracks exposed just how badly ill-conceived these cars really are.

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