Max Verstappen condemned as unne\u00adces\u00adsary the FIA decision to delay the start of the Belgian Grand Prix because of adverse weather conditions, but his view was countered by George \u00adRussell, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers\u2019 Association, who insisted any other call from the \u00adgoverning body would have been \u201cstupidity\u201d given the conditions and the dan\u00adgerous nature of the Spa\u2011Francorchamps circuit.<\/p>\n
The start was delayed by an hour and 20 minutes after rain swept into Spa just before the race. The FIA opted not to proceed after one formation lap because the visibility given the spray from the cars was so poor. The circuit is enormously fast and challenging and can be dangerous even in good conditions. There have been two fatalities in recent years, Anthoine Hubert in 2019 and Dilano van \u2019t Hoff in 2023.<\/p>\n
Verstappen, whose Red Bull car had been readied to make the most of a wet race, was insistent that the drivers could have coped and that as they began racing they would have been able to clear the standing water.<\/p>\n
When asked when he believed the race should have begun, he said: \u201cThree o\u2019clock, straight away. It was not even raining. Between turn one and five there was quite a bit of water but if you do two or three laps behind the safety car, then it would have been a lot more clear, and the rest of the track was ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutchman, who finished fourth in the race won by McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri, concluded with a swipe at the FIA. \u201cOf course at the end of the day they do what they want, right? I mean, they decide. I just find it is a bit of a shame for everyone, you will never see these classic kind of wet races any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell, however, was among other drivers \u2013 including Piastri and Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc \u2013 who felt the decision had been correct. \u201cAs a racer, you always want to get going, you love driving in the rain,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the fact is, when you\u2019re doing over 200 miles an hour out of Eau Rouge, you literally cannot see anything, you may as well have a blindfold on. [That] isn\u2019t \u00adracing; it\u2019s just stupidity. Considering it was clearly going to be dry from 4pm onwards, they made the right call.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Verstappen\u2019s view, though, was echoed by Lewis Hamilton, who started 18th but finished seventh after he called the moment to change over to slick tyres perfectly, given the track had dried very quickly. \u201cI would agree [with Verstappen],\u201d he said. \u201cMy car was set up for that [wet conditions], and they waited for it to dry. Especially at the end, it was a dry line with hardly any spray.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen condemned as unne\u00adces\u00adsary the FIA decision to delay the start of the Belgian Grand Prix because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-27301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}