Vettel defeats Hamilton at Spa

Vettel unbeatable at Spa

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel passed the pole sitting Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton on lap 1 and was never headed the rest of the way as the British ace had nothing for the German who stretched his lead to over 11 seconds at the end.

With his 52nd F1 win Vettel closed the point gap to Hamilton to just 17.

Max Verstappen drove a lonely race to round out the podium over 32 seconds behind.

Valtteri Bottas capped a perfect drive from 17th to finish 4th and Sergio Perez rounded out the top-5.

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]It was the first Ferrari win at Spa since 2009.

After grabbing the lead of the race on the opening lap as chaos unfolded behind in a dramatic first-corner crash, Vettel managed to control proceedings to score his fifth win of the season, drawing himself to within 17 points of Hamilton at the top of the standings.

Hamilton was left to minimize the damage, driving a strong race to finish second – although he ultimately didn’t seem to have the pace to match the Ferrari around the power-sensitive 7.004km Spa track.

On the short run to Turn 1, Hulkenberg slammed into the rear of Alonso, whose helpless car was thrown into the air and over Leclerc’s Sauber, making contact with his bulkhead and glancing the Halo protecting the cockpit.

All three drivers were unharmed but eliminated from the race on the spot, while Daniel Riccardo, Kimi Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas also sustained damage in the melee, forcing them to pit for repairs and dropping down the field as a result. Raikkonen retired after eight laps due to an issue on his car.

Sebastian Vettel led all the way

Four laps went by before the restart, when Vettel fought off the advances of his pursuers and was able to build a slight lead. However, his team-mate was struggling to drive his damaged car and returned to the pits to check the damage while work was done on the front wing. But it was all in vain and he was soon back to park up in the garage and retire.

The two leaders were lapping at almost identical pace and the two teams watched one another, waiting for the pit stops to begin. Hamilton was the first to come in at half distance, fitting the Softs. Seb stepped up the pace, prior to pitting. He also went for the yellow tires and the driver congratulated the team on its perfect work, as he emerged still leading the race by 1"9. On lap 25, Seb a fastest lap.

With 15 laps to the flag, the Ferrari led by over 4 seconds and the key would be tire management, but the battle was far from over. On lap 35, it was time to lap the backmarkers. There were five laps to go, the gap was 7" and growing. David Sanchez, the head of the aerodynamic engineers was sent up to the podium. “Great job everyone," said Maurizio by way of words of thanks.

The stats that matter

• The run down to Les Combs was 4-wide action on lap 1

  Sebastian Vettel moves past Alain Prost to claim third on both the all-time podium finishes list and the all-time winners’ list, with 107 rostrums and 52 wins.

• Vettel also started the race tied with Prost for laps led around Spa – 85 – so has now pilfered that one off the Frenchman too.
• It was Ferrari’s first win at Spa this decade, with Kimi Raikkonen having last won for the Scuderia in 2009.
• It was Lewis Hamilton’s seventh podium in Spa – but only his first time finishing in P2 here.
• Hamilton has now started more races for Mercedes than he did for McLaren – 111 vs 110.
• With Racing Point Force India F1 Team starting the Grand Prix with zero points, they’ve already moved ahead of Williams in the constructors’ standings, and are just one point off Sauber after coming away from the weekend with 18 points.
• Kevin Magnussen scores his first ever points at Spa with eighth place.
• It was the first time in Pierre Gasly’s career that he’s scored points in consecutive races.
• Charles Leclerc has now retired on lap one for two races in a row.

Quotes

Lewis Hamilton
We gave it everything today but Ferrari just outperformed us and it was hard to match their times. I think we lost the race in the first lap and at the Safety Car restart. After that, it was done. They were just faster on the straights and there was nothing we could do. We came here with an upgrade, but unfortunately Ferrari were able to match us and even go faster. We've got to find more performance and improve on the areas where they're currently stronger than us. But the battle continues and for the sport this is really exciting. We will keep pushing.

Valtteri Bottas
Our goal for today was damage limitation and we've had a good recovery drive. I was hoping to maybe get the chance to be on podium, but I had a collision going into Turn 1 which damaged my front wing. After that P4 was the maximum we could get and it's not a bad result given the fact that we started from P17. I actually quite enjoyed the drive today, as I got to overtake a lot of cars. My favorite moment was probably the pass in Eau Rouge – that was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we couldn't win the race today, but we scored more points than Ferrari, so that's one positive. They looked really strong this weekend, both in qualifying and in the race. We made a step forward with our engine for this weekend, but the Ferraris are still quicker so we need to keep pushing.

Hamilton had nothing for Vettel

Toto Wolff
Today was a little bit deflating after the drama of qualifying. Lewis was pretty powerless on lap one – he got swallowed up by Vettel on the straight, but then couldn't return the favour when Sebastian managed to break the tow on the restart after the Safety Car period. From then on, we were chasing a quicker car and didn't quite have enough pace to challenge for the lead. On the strategy, we did the only thing we could – which was to try the undercut – and try to put some pressure on Ferrari, but they didn't buckle. They were deserved winners today. Valtteri put in a great drive from the back to claim P4, so the points total brings us a small advantage on the constructors' side, while Lewis lost some ground in the drivers' standings. But most of all, we need to stay humble and keep working hard to improve our performance at every race.

James Allison
There's no way of dressing it up today: we were well beaten by a quicker team, who were able to stretch away from us on both tires throughout the stint. It was very disappointing after yesterday's qualifying performance and what we believed our performance would be in the dry, to find today that we did not have the pace that we thought. Both drivers delivered good performances but neither of them had the car under them to do more today; we have some work on our hands in order to take the fight to Ferrari in Monza and the remaining races this year.

Paddy Lowe, Williams Chief Technical Officer: A fine day in Spa without rain so at least the race was not complicated by the weather, but there was a big set of incidents at turn one. There was an impact between Bottas and Sergey, so we were very lucky to emerge from that unscathed and we were able to continue. We came through with both cars in reasonably good positions. We ran a late one-stop strategy, soft to supersoft tire, which worked well for us. We were able to beat Hartley and Vandoorne and very nearly held Sainz behind us. But none the less, considering recent results this is a good result today for the team and a good solid performance from both drivers. We will build on this in the races to come.

Sergey Sirotkin: It was a reasonable race to be honest. Our race pace was closer to our competitors and I was fighting a Sauber for points at the beginning of my stint which showed we were having a proper fight, which wasn’t down to just luck. The prospect of getting points was a nice feeling but we just missed it. I enjoyed the couple of laps at the start, I was manging the pace and my stint. I think we had good pace compared to where we are usually. After the pitstop, everything looked even better. I wasn’t lucky catching the Toro Rosso at that part of the track, I struggled for a lap and a half with the tires and that’s how Carlos (Sainz) got through, otherwise I think had enough pace to keep him behind. That would have made for a very special race for where we are and what we have but I think we can take a lot of positives from today.

Lance Stroll: I felt we were better compared to the rest of the field today than we have been recently, and that is a positive sign. Renault was a bit quicker than us, but not too much quicker. I think they had that bit better extra pace and undercut us. Carlos was on the mediums at the beginning and we were on the softs, and he was kind of maintaining the pace, but on the supersoft he undercut us quite easily.

More to follow…..

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