One Last Race Before the Summer Break!
After 13 Rounds, we’re just one Race away from the F1 Summer Break! It’s been a wild first half of the year, with Red Bull dominating in the early phases only for the field to close up and we’ve ultimately seen 7 different winners as a result which has been great to see! Given the fact that the likelihood of seats being sorted out during the break is high, it’s important for the team’s and driver’s to end the first half of the year on as strong a note as possible!
Alpine’s Special Livery
For the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix, Alpine have decided to go with a special livery to celebrate the release of Marvel’s brand new movie “Deadpool and Wolverine”! This makes sense given Ryan Reynolds (who plays Deadpool) is an investor in the team, and it’s actually quite a good bit of marketability for both the movie and the team as a whole! The livery itself is pretty cool, especially the yellow claw marks, and it will be interesting to see if the special look fires up Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon because whilst this track in theory shouldn’t suit their car, their record around Spa is pretty damn good!
Oscar Piastri is a Grand Prix Winner!
It took Oscar Piastri just 35 Races to become a Formula 1 Grand Prix Winner! Oscar’s Junior Formula record speaks for itself, winning the Formula Renault Eurocup, FIA Formula 3, and FIA Formula 2 back-to-back-to-back before he made the smart decision in 2022 to sign for McLaren instead of Alpine! After winning in Hungary last time out, Piastri will be hungry for more, but he’ll also be very interested in securing his first-ever Pole Position in a full Qualifying format! Can he do it this weekend, absolutely!
Max Verstappen to Take a Grid Penalty?
Like most years at Spa, it looks very likely that Max Verstappen will take a 10-place Grid Penalty for taking new engine components! This makes a lot of sense given the nature of the circuit, but unlike previous years where Max has still stormed through the field and won relatively easily (he won from P14 in 2022), this year is a completely different story. Red Bull don’t have the fastest car anymore, that title clearly belongs to McLaren, and if it wasn’t for Verstappen, the likelihood of them being off the Podium is very high. In fact, Max’s difficult weekend in Hungary saw him only come home in P5, and most amazingly of all, the last time Verstappen hadn’t won any of the last 3 Races, he wasn’t even a World Champion!
McLaren Need to Sort Themselves Out (Part 2)!
So since I started writing about Formula 1 on this website (ironically it was the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix), I try not to talk about the same teams/drivers in back-to-back Previews in order to make it feel different (and also so I talk about everyone at least once or twice). However, after what happened in Hungary, I once again have to talk about how McLaren need to sort themselves out! In fairness, the car is great, they feel like the favourites to win the Constructors’ Championship (despite being 51 points behind Red Bull) and they have two super fast and ultra-talented drivers! However, they keep making dumb strategy calls and small errors (I’m talking about both team and driver errors) that are costing them. I mean, on Hungary, whilst I could talk about how Lando Norris should’ve handled last week a lot better, he’s ultimately not the issue here as the issue is the fact that McLaren thought it would be a good idea to undercut Oscar Piastri with Lando. In terms of the people that read these articles, the large majority of them are McLaren fans, but not a single one of them were happy despite finishing with a 1-2 which says a lot about the organisation of the Woking-based team!
My Predictions for Spa Qualifying
Oscar Piastri
Lando Norris
Max Verstappen
George Russell
Lewis Hamilton
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