Charles Leclerc wins to shine a light on dark Belgian GP weekend
It was a tricky weekend for everyone in Spa. What should have been a exciting and joyous return in the few summer holidays turned into a weekend where the Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert was fatally injured in a accident on Saturday.
For those who did not know him, Anthoine Hubert was a star on the ladder to transplant 1. Anthoine took to the race track rather, winning the French F4 title although his Father Francois had been a rally driver.
Drivers: » We hurried for Hubert
The Frenchman won the GP3 Championship last year and has been rewarded with a contract with the Renault F1 team’s Driver Academy. Anthoine graduated to F2 this season and impressed winning on property in France and at Monaco, and was in line to get a seat with a few of the greatest teams in the string for next year.
I personally didn’t know Anthoine – he was a popular and beautiful young guy, although I had only met him a couple of times in the paddock with a few mutual friends. I had been interviewing Charles Leclerc after Qualifying in the Skypad neither of us knew how awful it was and as soon as the incident happened in fact that it turned out to be a close friend of his who was involved. You were advised by the response from greats such as Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost shaken we are these days when we lose a motorist.
There were a lot of people in the paddock – in our Sky F1 group – and also on societal media who were wondering how motorists can continue driving through the same corners at high speeds and taking the risks. This ability to detach from the outside world and focus when you place your helmet on is exactly what makes racing drivers special.
In which somebody has been killed, I have been lucky that in a race, I have only once been engaged in 18 decades of driving race cars. That was Allan Simonsen at Le Mans in 2013 and I remember hearing about it as I had set my helmet on and my team-mate Brendon Hartley was coming to shift and put in the car. The fact that remain focussed to another 22 hours and I had to drive straight off meant I – and all the other drivers in the race – were able to carry on driving flat out we took.
It is a mechanism which all racing drivers engage in their brain. That feeling of’it won’t happen to us’ but every so often, tragically the game reminds us of the risks lurking just around the corner.
If you speak with Sir Jackie Stewart in regards to the age he raced in, he will tell you that losing friends and competitions almost on a monthly basis wasn’t uncommon and it is thanks to folks like him and the FIA that people have not lost as many motorists in recent times. There’ll be a full investigation of course and there’ll be lessons that all people is able to learn but motor sport is dangerous and each and every driver – Anthoine comprised – accepts every time we get into the cockpit of a racing car to the risks.
In terms of the Grand Prix it was fantastic to watch Charles Leclerc finally get the win he deserved. He has driven all during this year and after the disappointment of losing wins in Bahrain, Baku and Austria, it was great to see him get one online. Charles was catastrophic in Qualifying, beating his World Champion team partner with a of a moment for its sixth successive Qualifying and this time.
At the race he managed to split with far much better tyre management and both better pace. It was a powerful performance when Hamilton began to close the gap down, but it got a little tricky at the conclusion.
Ferrari were not running more downforce than Mercedes and of course made it hard for them to overtake. It also meant that they had great speed from the middle sector of the lap and so we needed a cat and mouse game where a single car was clearly faster than the other at various areas of the track.
There’s not a lot more that Mercedes could have done – maybe a fresh stop one lap before would have reduced the deficit into Leclerc but it is not a race which they can be criticised by you about a lot.
Vettel seemed to endure from tyre degradation over his young team-mate and I wonder if maybe Ferrari might have tried to run somewhat more downforce just to help him at the twistier middle sector of their lap because the advantage they had about the full power run during the first industry was absolutely massive.
As soon as we visit Monza weekend, Ferrari must have more of an edge. There are corners than we have only a couple of corners that’s the point where the Mercedes’ front end grasp is really a step greater than the automobiles. They would have to do something very wrong to not provide a victory before their tifosi week!
Lando Norris was really unlucky to not have a good outcome in 5th while the place was inherited by Alex Albon at the conclusion after a drive from 17th on the grid. The Thai motorist did a fantastic job on his very first outing with the team – he had been less than three tenths slower than Max Verstappen at Qualifying before he aborted his lap in the end on account of this grid penalties which turned out to be a very good attempt for his first semester in the vehicle.
At the race, he then made solid improvement in the second half to record a career best outcome and bided his time early on.
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