In the end, it turned out to be quite a benign Belgian Grand Prix, 70% of it run on dry tyres, with Oscar Piastri on his medium C3s delicately holding off his hard C1-shod McLaren team-mate Lando Norris. But a couple of hours earlier, with Spa’s valleys assaulted by heavy rain, the visibility up the Kemmel straight virtually zero as the cars circulated behind the safety car on the formation lap, it looked potentially terrifying.
We’ve been here many times before, of course. This is just the natural consequence of holding a grand prix around this beautiful historic circuit with its dramatic contour changes amid the forests, creating its own mini-climate. But this is also 2025, and memories of terrible accidents at the crest of the hill up to that straight are too raw and recent for that not to play a part in the race director’s judgement. So first of all, there was a delay of over an hour while the worst of the rain passed – and when the cars were finally let loose on their intermediate tyres it was from behind the safety car which had headed the pack for four exploratory laps.
Piastri, who had been disappointed not to have repeated his sprint pole, had been hoping for a standing start. To give him a better chance of compromising pole-sitting team-mate Norris into La Source and thereby get himself a better run through Eau Rouge so as to slipstream into the lead, standard Spa-style. But a rolling start made things potentially easier for Norris. Instead, Piastri resolved to lift less than Norris through Eau Rouge and at the top of the hill through Raidillon. He did so, he held onto it and emerged from the spray on the Kemmel Straight to pass long before they’d even reached the braking zone for Les Combes. It was the race-winning move.
