F1, Belgian Gp – The Point

We watched a fascinating Belgian Gp in its 60th edition, 48 of which raced at Spa. At the same time we celebrated the 900th Ferrari’s Gp, a really important goal for the family from Maranello who has deeply contaminated the racing world and particularly F1’s world with its Dna.

After an amazing Qualifying, Hamilton gained the pole position and outstripped his mate-driver by 0”458 with a perfect lap. The Mercedes World Champion did not miss anything starting ahead and managing the race to his liking without being troubled by Rosberg who instead failed the start and was committed to regain the second place which has been occupied by an excellent Perez.
After a good start from the eight place, Vettel achieved a difficult third place thanks to a brave strategy based on just a pit-stop at the 15th lap. Unluckily this strategy has been frustrated by the bursting of the right rear tire that put him KO two laps from the end.
So an excellent Grosjean reached the third place of the podium with his Lotus making his box smile in a difficult W.E. distressed by the financial complications his Team is facing.

Surely Ferrari’s strategy has been a bit risky. I think, anyway, that Pirelli should better investigate what happened also as a result of a comparable problem spotted by Rosberg (however Pirelli underlines that Mercedes case was caused by debrises). Yet, in both events it happens to a tire not resting and surely the excellent Pirelli Technicians could tell us if it was about a technical construction problem or it was a problem of structure tiredness considering that in Vettel’s case any drop of performance ascribable to a tire compound wear wasn’t displayed. Indeed Ferrari Champion’s lap times has been stable till the moment of the burst.

Once again we have some problems at Williams’ with mistakes at the box that frustrated Bottas’s great performance in qualifying with the third time. We have to observe, anyway, that during the race both Bottas and Massa had a car which had erroneously stressed the tires. An optimistic note about this Gp comes from the two young Kvyat (4th) and Verstappen (8th) who juiced up the race with their grit and overtakings demonstrating in this way that bet on young sometimes is good.
There is not much to say about the unlucky Kimi in practice, capable for a 7th final place in spite of a start from the 15th place, but the ’55 seconds gap from the first and the lack of competitiviness of his car compared with Pérez and Massa who preceded him, didn’t permit the Finnish to celebrate in the best possible way the contract renewal for 2016.

As usual, the next fifteen days are going to be caracterized by a strong work in view of the next Gp at Monza, that is one of the historical F1’s showcase.