After an 80-minute-long red-flag period, five laps behind the Safety Car, and a rolling start, the Belgian Grand Prix finally got underway. But was it the right call?

Today, we’re going to look at the various factors impacting the Belgian GP at Spa in order to determine whether or not the FIA made the correct call in delaying the race.

Why was the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix start delayed?

On Saturday evening, weather forecasts were calling for a wet start to Grand Prix Sunday, but no one expected the formidable downpour that washed out the morning’s Formula 3 event and soaked the Formula 1 grid during pre-race ceremonies.

When the clock ticked over to 15:00 local time — the scheduled start of the Belgian Grand Prix — a formation lap revealed that the spray kicked up by the cars, even at a slow pace, was nearly impenetrable. With more rain on the way, it was clear conditions would get worse before they got better.

Rather than send the field off into the fray or continue behind the Safety Car, the FIA red-flagged the race until the bulk of the rain had passed and the track had begun to dry. Even then, it took five laps behind the Safety Car followed by a rolling start before we saw any proper racing.

It certainly sucked the magic out of the event at Spa, which can produce some truly exceptional racing — but was it the right call?

What makes the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps so treacherous?

The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is one of the most dangerous circuits on the Formula 1 calendar.

One of the sport’s longtime holdouts from a bygone age, the Belgian track conforms to modern safety standards, but it retains many of the challenges of the original track thanks to its utilisation of the natural terrain.

It’s a quick circuit, littered with high-speed straights, low-visibility corners, elevation changes, and a lack of run-off at some of the particularly tricky corners. That makes for fascinating racing. It also makes for a dangerous circuit, particularly in the wet.

In the junior categories, the combination of rain and Spa has been deadly: Anthoine Hubert was killed during a wet Formula 2 race in 2019, while Dilano van ‘t Hoff lost his life in a multi-car FRECA wreck at Spa in 2023.

Modern open-wheel cars are designed to protect drivers in a major crash — but only one crash. In Hubert’s case, the safety cell of his Formula 2 car was compromised by making contact with a barrier; it was the fact that another car then impacted the stricken machine that the fatal damage was done.

At Spa, there’s not much a driver can do if he pops out onto Eau Rouge to find a wrecked car bouncing back onto the racing surface.

Drivers who make it to Formula 1 should, in theory, have the skillset necessary to handle anything Mother Nature throws at them — but that may not always be the case. As we saw in Australia during 2025’s season opener, wet conditions make these ultra-high-downforce machines particularly difficult to manoeuvre. The rookies in the field were largely caught out, but even veterans like Fernando Alonso went for a spin.

As such, the FIA seems to be keen to operate with extreme caution when it comes to dealing with wet Spa races.

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Did the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix have anything to do with this delay?

The 2021 Belgian Grand Prix will likely go down in history as the most absurd Formula 1 event of the 2020s, and potentially of all time.

After three hours of delays and suspended starts, the F1 field ran two laps behind the Safety Car. Race control deemed them “race” laps, but before the third circuit, conditions were deemed too dangerous to continue. The race was called, making it the shortest race in F1 history.

The regulations have been updated and refined in the wake of that farcical event, but the primary way to avoid a repeat is to delay the start; if the event does not technically “start,” then it is not yet subject to the three-hour race time rule, and there’s less of a chance that the Grand Prix will be cut short by weather.

But many have wondered, shouldn’t wet-weather tyres enable the race to start nevertheless?

Why can’t Pirelli race on wet tyres?

Formula 1 and Pirelli find themselves at an impasse with the wet-weather tyres: The conditions that justify using the wet tyres also justify a red flag until conditions become more reasonable.

In contrast to Pirelli’s slick tyres, its intermediate and wet tyres feature grooves that can displace water, with the intermediates displacing less water than the wets. The wets can displace a whopping 85 liters of water per second — but that water has to go somewhere.

That “somewhere” is into the air in the form of spray, which obstructs the view of the drivers behind. If the wet tyres are displacing the aforementioned 85 liters of water per second, then it’s almost guaranteed that the race would need to be red flagged for the amount of water on the track; it would be extremely dangerous and difficult to follow anyone.

In effect, then, the wets are unraceble, and the intermediate tyres have become the most viable option when it comes to actually competing.

It’s worth noting that Pirelli is hard at work rectifying this wet-tyre problem for the incoming 2026 regulatory set; the goal is to bring it closer to the intermediates in terms of performance, which should therefore mean we could again see racing on full wets.

In 2025, though, that isn’t the case, and it often results in an abundance of caution when it comes time to go racing.

Should the Belgian Grand Prix start have been delayed?

No matter what choice the FIA made with the Belgian Grand Prix — to delay the race until conditions were dry, to delay the race briefly and start under wet conditions, or to start on time amidst the rain — they were certain to be “wrong” in the eyes of countless fans, pundits, drivers, and Formula 1 team members.

In the case of the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix, it seems as if the FIA played it safe. Hindsight reveals that it’s possible the event could have been started sooner; however, rather than risk the need to possibly red-flag the event after a few laps, the FIA allowed the weather to clear and the track to dry.

It made for a fairly processional event, one lacking in majorly compelling moves, strategic gambles (with the exception of Lewis Hamilton’s early swap to slicks), or magic. It was, however, a complete event.

Was it the ‘right’ choice? The answer to that question is going to be hugely dependent on each individual’s perspective.

But the facts are obvious: Formula 1 saw the entirety of the 44-lap Belgian Grand Prix take place. It proceeded from start to finish in fairly reasonable fashion, without further interruption. The race result was not dramatically impacted by weather, nor was there a significant time pressure. Whether or not the race was ‘interesting’ is beside the point; the FIA is charged with delivering events in a safe manner, and in that respect it did. The impact of its decisions, be that creating an instant classic or a processional bore, is not part of the the governing body’s thought process.

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