Oscar Piastri seemed on track for a dominant round at the Belgian Grand Prix after storming to sprint pole on Friday with a massive half-second margin.

But his weekend at Spa-Francorchamps has gone only downhill from there.

He was beaten in the sprint — as he predicted he might have been — thanks to Max Verstappen’s mega slipstream on the first lap.

And then he was bested by teammate Lando Norris in qualifying for the grand prix, that gargantuan margin from Friday having totally dissipated overnight.

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Having seemed sure to stamp his authority all over this weekend, he’s now set for a duel with his teammate in one motorsport’s most iconic settings.

But there are sure to be external factors at play on Sunday.

The weather forecast is for rain. Some are predicting it to be heavy.

A revitalised Charles Leclerc will start third. Max Verstappen, the grid’s undisputed wet-weather master, starts fourth.

This track is a driver favourite in the dry but treacherous in the wet.

It’s sure to be gripping viewing.

NORRIS GIVES PIASTRI A BAD DAY

Norris appeared to start qualifying on the back foot after his Friday belting, but in the end the Briton needed only one lap to take pole, his first time good enough for top spot even after he failed to improve with his second attempt.

Neither of Piastri’s laps could get him past his teammate, leaving him 0.085 seconds adrift on the front row.

It was vindicating for Norris, who insisted on Friday night that his gap to Piastri was completely explainable, and the Briton was even a touch defensive when asked about his improvement after taking pole.

“It was nothing to worry about,” he said. “People like to make a lot of things up.”

To be fair to Piastri, it was an unusual conclusion to qualifying. Track conditions deteriorated in Q3, with several drivers struggling or failing to improve on their Q2 times. Norris beat Piastri to pole, but he couldn’t match the Australian’s record-setting time from sprint qualifying on Friday.

But it’s also true to say Piastri had the pace but failed to execute.

Telemetry shows Piastri was level with Norris as they entered the rapid double left of Pouhon. Norris lifts to about three-quarter throttle — most drivers do — whereas Piastri stays just about flat. It earns him an advantage of almost 0.1 seconds on exit.

But it’s at Stavelot, after the Fagnes chicane, that the lap falls apart. A snap through the 170-kilometre-per-hour right-hander costs him time in the moment but, worse, costs him time all the way through the flat-out final sector, leaving him with his ultimate deficit.

“The lap until that point was strong,” he said. “But it doesn’t really matter if you could have done it. I didn’t.

“It’s a bit disappointing. I think both laps in Q3 were a little bit like that, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”

But there’s a silver lining for Piastri in qualifying second.

As he experienced first-hand in the sprint, the driver starting second can get a massive slipstream advantage on the first lap that can propel them into the lead. Unlike on subsequent laps, it’s harder for the leader to play games at the first turn at the start knowing all 19 other cars are bunched up behind them.

But the benefit of starting second is strongest when it’s dry. In the wet the game will change completely.

Not that Piastri will fear the rain. Despite Norris being hailed for his wet-weather victory in Silverstone, Piastri would have dominated there were it not for his safety car penalty. Piastri also looked faster in the wet in Australia before both McLaren drivers slid off the road in a sudden downpour.

But dry, wet or mixed, it’ll be fascinating battle between them.

VERSTAPPEN GAMBLE WINS THE SPRINT, BUT CAN HE WIN THE RACE?

Piastri’s worst fear came to pass immediately in the sprint. Verstappen, starting second and with a much skinnier rear wing, blasted past him down the long Kemmel straight on the first lap, easily depriving him of the lead immediately.

The Australian had got a good start and had appeared to have executed a good enough exit from La Source, the first-turn hairpin, to stave off the attack, but the slipstream was simply too powerful.

Despite being slower on the run down to Eau Rouge, the tow propelled the Dutchman to a 16 kilometre-per-hour speed advantage over the McLaren halfway down Kemmel — an unbeatable difference that assured him of the lead.

More, though, was that Verstappen’s top-speed advantage made him an uncatchable leader.

Piastri spent the last 14 laps stuck in his DRS zone, and though the drag reduction system gave him a similar speed advantage every lap, it came much later down the straight — too late for him make up for the Red Bull Racing car’s inherent advantage in a straight line.

The difference between cars was clear when Norris eventually broke past Leclerc. He couldn’t close in on the leaders in the power-sensitive first or third sectors but would make up considerable ground in the twisty middle split, when Piastri was held up by the slower Verstappen.

With no scope for strategy and with no tyre degradation over the 15-lap sprint, there was no opening for Verstappen to be overhauled so long as he continued getting clean exits from La Source.

“I’m just happy that I was able to hang on to it,” Verstappen said. “Very pleased to win here. It’s my favourite track, home crowd, home feeling — just very nice always to be here.”

But repeating the feat will be impossible in the grand prix.

Verstappen’s low wing level was a choice based on key criteria.

The first is that it was the fastest way to get the RB21 around the lap, opening the door to a front-row start.

But the second is that the forecast suggested Saturday would most likely be dry, and so it proved.

The same is not true for Sunday, when it’s most likely to be wet, at least at some point during the day.

With cars back out of parc fermé between the sprint and qualifying, Red Bull Racing has loaded up on downforce to ensure the car is drivable in the wet. The disaster of rainy Silverstone is still fresh in the team’s collective memory.

It left Verstappen fourth and 0.393 seconds off pole. While that deficit is now more evenly spread across the lap, there’s now no place where the RB21 has an advantage over the title-leading car.

But then again, if it does rain, you’d be brave to discount Verstappen just because his car isn’t the quickest one, especially in Belgium.

HAMILTON’S NIGHTMARE CONTINUES

“Incredibly painful” is how Lewis Hamilton described his shock Q1 elimination at the Belgian Grand Prix, a race he’s won five times.

The Briton was eliminated in 16th in the grid-setting session after having his fastest lap deleted for cutting the corner at Raidillon, the same place that almost cost Piastri an SQ2 exit in sprint qualifying a day earlier.

The result was compounded for Hamilton, having qualified 18th for the sprint. He finished the short race 15th, making Saturday an exclusively miserable affair.

“It’s turning out to be a pretty bad weekend so far,” he said, per the BBC.

“I made a mistake, so I’ve got to look internally, and I’ve got to apologise to my team because that is just unacceptable to be out in both Q1s.

“It’s a very poor performance for myself.”

It’s the first time this season Hamilton has been knocked out in Q1, and starting 13 places behind Leclerc is the biggest gap between the two drivers all year.

It’s a much worse result than his season-average deficit of 2.2 places and 0.163 seconds behind the sister car.

But it’s not just the result. It’s also the context.

Ferrari brought an important suspension upgrade this weekend targeted at curing some of the worst ills that have prevented both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc from being consistently competitive, especially over one lap.

Leclerc excelled, qualifying an unexpectedly strong third in one of the team’s best demonstrations of pure pace all season.

“All the hard work on the filming day we did and all the preparation and we come here and don’t go through Q1,” Hamilton said. “It’s not acceptable.”

That said, arguably it’s not quite as bad as it looks.

Hamilton’s disallowed lap was only 0.009 seconds slower than Leclerc’s in Q1. While he clearly isn’t as comfortable in the car as his teammate, the pace is there when he executes.

But that’s cold comfort for the Briton, who now faces a long afternoon starting at the back.

As for Leclerc, the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix winner was pleased to note that the upgrades are taking the car “in the right direction” but was cautious about his race prospects.

“Wet weather … I don’t think is a strength for our car at the moment,” he said, perhaps thinking back to his failure to score in wet Silverstone last time out. “But having said that, every weekend is different.

“I will only be able to tell after the first few laps to see where we are, but I’ll try to look forward before looking in mirrors.”

TSUNODA MAKES QUALIFYING STATEMENT IN NEW-MANAGER BOOST

Laurent Mekies’s first weekend as Red Bull Racing principal started with victory for Verstappen and continued with Yuki Tsunoda’s best qualifying result for the team.

Tsunoda has been tipped as a potential beneficiary from the leadership change. It’s not that Christian Horner wasn’t supportive but rather that Mekies knows what the Japanese ace is capable of.

With a more technically minded boss at the helm, it was thought Tsunoda might get a second wind in his battle to close the gap.

The improvement seems to have come immediately.

Tsunoda qualified seventh, his highest grid spot for Red Bull Racing — though still not as good as his fifth place in Australia for Racing Bulls.

It was his first Q3 appearance for the team since May’s Miami Grand Prix.

His deficit to Verstappen was 0.342 seconds — a season-low 100.34 per cent, his smallest deficit since Austria.

It would be disingenuous to say it was simply improved vibes that got him there.

The team made the call after the sprint to give Tsunoda its latest iteration of floor, given to Verstappen at the previous race in Silverstone.

Through a combination of RBR’s rushed upgrade pipeline and Tsunoda’s big crash in Imola, the team has often not had enough spares to equip both cars with the same parts. Verstappen has understandably been prioritised.

Tsunoda still doesn’t have an identical car to Verstappen but at least now has the same floor, the most powerful aerodynamic part of the car.

The Race has reported it’s worth between 0.3 seconds and 0.4 seconds per lap — which puts Tsunoda’s half-second deficit in Silverstone into context.

This, combined with the set-up experiments and other preparatory work he and the team have been conducting in recent months, is the real explanation for the bump.

But that doesn’t negate the positive effect of having Mekies back in his corner.

“It’s funny because when I was at Racing Bulls, when I was always getting into Q3 from Q2, he always smiled at me from the pit wall,” Tsunoda told Sky Sports. “He was happy; he was showing me that happy emotion.

“Exactly the same thing happened today as well. He smiled at me and showed that I did a good job. That was definitely a nice flashback to the old times.”

Don’t underestimate the effect of that happy emotion on Tsunoda’s outlook for the rest of the season.