The rain did not stop the 2025 Belgian GP (this time)

It’s the first race after a long break, and the weather conditions at Spa Francorchamps for the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix proved that we were yet going to see another wet race. Unfortunately, it seems that the rain prevailed, and there was a wait (almost one and a half hours) before the race had a wet, delayed start.

Oscar Piastri seizes first place on Lap 1

With the championship title showdown coming ever closer between the two McLarens, the two drivers, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, are usually fighting against each other at the front. 

With Lando Norris getting pole position from qualifying, all eyes were on the Brit… until his teammate seized the lead from him at the Kemmel Straight with ease. 

Shortly after that, it was clear as day that we’d see Piastri run off with the win. Lando pitted for hard slicks in hopes of getting a tire advantage over his teammate, but there were times when Lando locked up and ran off, thus easily handing the win to his Australian teammate.

The two are now tied for podiums this year, but more crucially, Oscar is still leading the Driver’s Championship with 266 points, just 16 over his teammate.

Red Bull seems to be doing fine post-Horner

With so much drama happening to the team recently, such as Christian Horner being fired all of a sudden, being replaced by Laurent Mekies as CEO and Team Principal, and rumors of Max Verstappen jumping ship to Mercedes, morale at Red Bull must’ve been really low. 

That was until Max Verstappen went on to win the Sprint Race of the race weekend by a huge margin, and then also took P4 during the actual race. As for his teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, he finished a slightly disappointing P13 thanks to bad strategy, but you have to remember, he was struggling in previous races where he would constantly finish above P15.

Ferrari’s outing went better than expected

Despite Lewis Hamilton calling this to “A weekend to forget”, thanks to poor results in both Sprint Qualifying and the Sprint Race, and him having to start in the back of the grid for the actual race, we saw the old dog’s experience shine in the mixed conditions, as Lewis clawed through the field with excellent overtakes here and there. 

He wasn’t able to break past P7, as Alex Albon (Williams) held him up for the latter half of the race, but this proved to be an excellent result for the Brit, who refused to not win a World Driver’s Title with Ferrari.

But one thing that didn’t get enough attention was how Charles Leclerc managed to hold off Max Verstappen the entire race, even in both wet and dry conditions, and with an inferior car to begin with, which isn’t a very easy task to accomplish. He was rightfully awarded a podium finish in P3.

Apart from these highlights, some things could’ve been done to make the rest of the weekend better. Aside from the obvious spray and visibility issues caused by the aerodynamics, the FIA waited a little too long, preventing what could’ve been a more exciting race from happening, and the rest of the race ended up as some sort of procession.

Hopefully, the next race weekend will have better weather. Catch the Hungarian Grand Prix this coming August 3, 2025, at 9:00 PM (Philippine Standard Time).

^{Photos from Formula 1}