Nico Rosberg wins the race, Lewis Hamilton wins the day while Max Verstappen loses friends and fans
Wednesday 31 August 2016 15:40, UK
Lewis Hamilton
Even if Nico Rosberg won the race, Hamilton was the real winner of the Belgian GP.
The loss of ten points to Rosberg in the world championship was a small price to pay for the introduction of three new upgraded Mercedes engine and third place at the chequered flag represented an outstanding result from the back of the grid.
"I was very surprised!" admitted Rosberg. "After the chequered flag I looked at the results, I knew Daniel [Ricciardo] was behind me and then I saw 'HAM' in P3 and I was like, 'What? Seriously?!"
When Rosberg reviews the race, he'll find his team-mate's progress was easily explained by the carnage which had occurred off the line, a spate of early retirements and that Hamilton reached 12th without making an overtake of note. Hamilton's start was so cautious that he was actually passed by Fernando Alonso off the line. But in a curious way the move was to both drivers' credit: Alonso for the opportunism, Hamilton for the good sense in deliberately holding back to take on a watching brief.
"At the start, I didn't go too hard in terms of attacking into Turn One," Hamilton later explained. "Then I saw Kimi so I avoided that, had a big lift and was like 'let those guys go'. So I came out of Eau Rouge with a decent gap between me and those cars ahead because they all looked like they were going a bit crazy." Hamilton is a racer to the core but his racing intelligence has matured into a regular feature in recent years.
But Lewis is still Lewis and, even after Nico had sportingly congratulated him on his result, the racer in him reared up to throw a couple psychological jabs in Rosberg's direction, belittling his team-mate's victory as a freebie before reminding all and sundry about his engine boost. "I'd have had an even better summer if I went into the summer knowing I'd come out nine points ahead still after three new engines," Hamilton pointedly highlighted in the post-race press conference. Even when the race is over, Hamilton won't accept he's beaten.
Fleet Street: Hamilton the real winner at Spa
Two clouds do remain on the Englishman's otherwise-upbeat horizon, however. Another reprimand would automatically trigger a ten-place grid penalty while Lewis faces a potential quandary if, as expected, Mercedes introduce a brand-new engine at Spa. Will the upgrade be worth another grid drop? Perhaps, perhaps not.
But that's a problem for another weekend. This weekend could have been a disaster for the world champion. He could very easily have left Spa with his title lead wiped out. He could have easily been wiped out by the mayhem at the start. Instead, he left Belgium with another podium to his name, three new power units in his pool, a moral victory of sorts, and, most importantly of all, a nine-point lead still buffering him from Rosberg.
Bullet dodged.
Mercedes
The Belgian GP had it all: bedlam, chaos, controversy, a monster crash, great overtakes and storylines galore. The record books don't do colour, however, and will simply soberly write down another double-podium finish for Mercedes and note their championship lead being extended to 181 points.
As the bottom half of the Constructors' Championship only accounts for 128, the world champions have already effectively lapped half the field with half the season still to go.
Nico Rosberg
He could have done no more. The German drove perfectly all weekend and it shouldn't have been so readily overlooked that his pole position was his third in succession or that he made a faultless getaway from the front row to ensure he was out of the danger zone that did for Verstappen, Vettel and Raikkonen.
But even if Rosberg could have done no more, he surely must have hoped for more than a ten-point gain on Hamilton. The race victor was even asked afterwards whether he was 'disappointed' with the result - a question not usually directed to a driver holding the champagne but one which betrayed the feeling in the paddock that even if Rosberg won the grand prix it was Hamilton who won the day.
Daniel Ricciardo
The new Spa specialist? Ricciardo has finished on the podium at Spa for three successive years and showed enough pace behind Rosberg - when his Red Bull ran on both the soft and medium tyres - to suggest he would have reached the top three even if Verstappen, Raikkonen and Vettel didn't leave the road wide open for him at the start.
"I was qualified fifth but I knew we would have a good race car today," the Aussie remarked in the post-race press conference. After relentlessly beating Verstappen in qualifying only to generally then lose out on race day earlier this year, has Ricciardo now found the right balance over a race weekend to beat his team-mate? All of a sudden there are 36 points and three places between them in the Drivers' Championship.
Force India
There's something special about the Belgian GP for Force India. In 2009, Giancarlo Fisichella claimed the team's first-ever pole position at Spa before finishing in second for what remains their best result in F1, and this weekend Nico Hulkenberg's fourth place allied to Sergio Perez's fifth saw the Silverstone outfit leapfrog Williams into fourth in the Constructors' Championship.
A team which as recently as a year ago was unable to deliver a new car until halfway through the season has become a serious player at the pinnacle of motor racing.
Nico Hulkenberg
That precious and already long overdue first podium still eludes him but fourth at the chequered flag still represented Hulkenberg's joint-best result in F1 after another near-miss in Korea three years ago.
Once again, the luck of the draw didn't work out for Nico, with the Safety Car coming out just at the wrong time for his race strategy, but Nico was justifiably content with his lot. "Maybe if things had worked out slightly differently, we could have been on the podium, but I'm satisfied with the fourth position."
The Hulk isn't one for complaining: asked whether Alonso had been released into his path, Nico simply shrugged off the incident as no big deal. Little wonder he's so highly respected by his peers.
Fernando Alonso
The drive of a champion. He's still got it - and still got everything a champion needs to have.
Honda
If the battle between McLaren and Toro Rosso is any indication, the Honda power unit is now more powerful in the second year of their return to F1 than the Ferrari engine was during the second year of the current turbo era. Faith restored?
Esteban Ocon
Beaten in qualifying by Pascal Wehrlein but 16th at the chequered while his fellow Mercedes protégé offered an unconvincing explanation for his crash into the rear of Jenson Button's McLaren. 1-0 to the debutant.
Losers
Ferrari
The decision of team boss Maurizio Arrivabene not to address the media after the race was perhaps the only thing Ferrari got right all weekend.
While it's arguable that Max Verstappen should take some of the blame for the first-corner triple whammy which did for him as well as the two Ferraris, it was Sebastian Vettel who was primarily culpable, cutting across team-mate Raikkonen to break the cardinal rule of F1.
A year which promised so much - not least according to their ever-demanding president - has now settled into a familiar pattern of near misses, mini-disasters and awkward post-race debriefs.
If, as is likely, Mercedes end the final season of F1's current turbo era with twice as many points as the only other team in F1 able to build their own car and engine under the same roof, the end-of-year reckoning could be brutal at Maranello.
Sebastian Vettel
The 2016 Vettel is beginning to look a lot like the 2014 Vettel.
Max Verstappen
'Max's defensive technique is too junior-formula for my liking. When he's defending, he tends to loiter in the middle of the track and then at the last moment move to the side of the track where his opponent attacks, and cut them off. It all looks a little too late - and it's asking for trouble.
'There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that he will end up with some punctures and race-ending damage with this technique. He was very lucky on Sunday that the contact with Raikkonen's Ferrari wasn't more grievous but this style will hurt him soon and it's clear the other drivers are becoming frustrated with it to the point that one of them will have him off to teach him a lesson' - Martin Brundle, post-Hungary column, Sky Sports.
When he's attacking he's brilliant, when he's defending he's somewhere murky between defiant and dangerous. On Sunday, however, he went beyond the pale along the Kemmel Straight.
"I had to brake from full speed and I haven't had that from any other driver," raged Raikkonen. "As much as we like his impetuosity, it's refreshing, but it's dangerous," added Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. Even Christian Horner, Verstappen's Red Bull boss, had to concede his driver was "on the edge".
Albeit only metaphorically, these are dangerous times for Verstappen off the track as well. Fast losing friends and fans, public opinion appears to have shifted significantly against him in the wake of the Kemmel block and Thursday's drivers' meeting at Monza could prove a chastening experience for the teenager.
'Raikkonen: Verstappen will cause a big crash'
"It's a big lie," Verstappen responded with customary defiance on Sunday when asked about the criticism. That sort of bloody-mindedness has driven him to the top of F1 but it also has a limit. At Spa, the Red Bull youngster went over the line to look like a big accident waiting to happen.
Williams
Fourth place in the Constructors' is still retrievable through the rest of the season but for the timebeing the big-picture perspective is what it means for their manoeuvres in the driver market. The team might well regard Jenson Button as an attractive proposition for 2017 but how likely is it now that he will think the same of them?
Kevin Magnussen's ankle
But at least it was only Magnussen's ankle which suffered in his 180mph crash at the summit of Eau Rouge.
The accident itself, meanwhile, seems to be a result of driver error. Was it a coincidence that it occurred when Magnussen, whose future in the Renault team is far from secure, was trailing team-mate Jolyon Palmer on the track?
Felipe Massa
It's all over bar the official notification from Williams that his contract won't be renewed.
Romain Grosjean
Beaten by team-mate Esteban Gutierrez in each of the last three races despite being as high as fifth on the first lap this weekend. And are those radio messages really serving any useful purpose?
Toro Rosso
Pre-season predictions that, powered by year-old Ferrari engines, the team would struggle in the second half of the season have become a reality. Power-hungry Monza will be another difficult weekend for the team who fell behind McLaren in the Constructors' Championship this weekend.
The points accrued in the opening rounds when their inability to develop their Ferrari engines wasn't so keenly felt should keep them above Haas and Renault all the way through to the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi, but it would be no surprise the pecking order over the final eight races only puts them ahead of Manor and Sauber.
Don't miss the F1 Report: Belgian GP review on Sky Sports F1 at 8.30pm on Wednesday as Marc Priestley and Jordan King join Natalie Pinkham in the studio to discuss events in Spa
