I review the action from the 2020 Belgian Grand Prix with Luke Smith from Autosport.

The Belgian Grand Prix might’ve fizzles over a poorly timed safety car, but there was no disputing another spotless performance by Lewis Hamilton, who extended his championship lead to almost two clear race wins.

The lap 10 intervention to collects the crashed cars of Antonio Giovinazzi and George Russell came just late enough to prompt almost every driver to make their sole pit stop, but it meant the race devolved into a long single stint of unappealing tyre management largely devoid of action.

But a Mercedes one-two was always on the cards at a circuit that heavily favours engine performance. The Mercedes power unit has comfortably regained its status as the formula’s best, allowing the works team to pile downforce onto the car to protect its tyres through the middle sector without sacrificing straight-line speed to Red Bull Racing, effectively securing the result once the front row of the grid was locked out.

Lewis Hamilton is almost two clear wins atop the F1 championship standiings after breezing to a comfortable victory at the Belgian Grand Prix.

Hamilton was peerless at Spa-Francorchamps, leading every lap of the race from pole to beat teammate Valtteri Bottas by almost nine seconds.

The win was Hamilton’s 89th, just two shy of Michael Schumacher’s record 91 victories.

Lewis Hamilton won his 89th Formula 1 race with a comfortably margin over Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas at the Belgian Grand Prix.

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Mercedes locked out the front row for the Belgian Grand Prix, but the form guide for the super-fast Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is precariously set.

The Iconic Spa-Francorchamps presents teams with a compromise quandary. The first and last sectors are all about straight-line speed, comprising only three genuine corners, but the middle sector is slower and twisty, putting a premium on downforce.

More downforce can yield decent gains and better tyre life through that middle sector alone, but the sheer length of the straights here — particularly Kemmel, which in effect runs from La Source, through Eau Rouge and all the way to the braking zone at Les Combes — risks leaving you a sitting duck to the powerful slipstream even to an overall slower car.

Lewis Hamilton has broken the track record at Spa-Francorchamps to beat Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas to pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix.

The world championship leader was untouchable in the top-10 shootout, setting two laps quick enough for pole to keep Bottas at bay by a whopping half-second.

“Very, very clean session,” he said. “Every lap was just getting better and better.”

Lewis Hamilton dominated qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix with pole position and a new track record.

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Lewis Hamilton wrested back control of the practice times for Mercedes while Ferrari slumped to last leading into qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

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Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen set the fastest time of Friday practice at the Belgian Grand Prix while Ferrari-powered cars continued to struggle at the back of the field.

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Valtteri Bottas topped the first practice time sheet for Mercedes at a chilly Spa-Francorchamps at the Belgian Grand Prix.

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Three-time Australian Grand Prix winner and 2009 Formula 1® World Champion Jenson Button joins us to discuss the 2020 season, what makes Lewis Hamilton a great, Fernando Alonso’s dramatic return to Formula 1® and Daniel Ricciardo’s move to McLaren for next season.

The Williams Formula One team has been up for sale since May, but its acquisition in full by American investment firm Dorilton Capital still came as a shock.

Williams, the sport’s third-oldest team and second-most successful by constructors championships, had been the only continuously family-owned team on the grid since its 1978 debut.

But that rare tangible link to the sport’s past has been lost through this sale, and though Frank Williams and daughter Claire will retain their principal and deputy positions respectively, it marks the end of a long transition away from the independent constructors that were the bedrock of the sport for most of its 70-year history.

It’s been no secret that Williams has been struggling on and off track for years. Poor results begot a decline in financial returns, which in turn resulted in worsening car performance.

The vicious cycle is laid bare in championship results: from third in the standings with 320 points in 2014 to a lucky solitary point to finish comfortably last in 2019.

The sale of its research and development arm to refinance debts last year was a final roll of the dice to see the team through to 2021, but the plan lasted only until COVID-19 postponed the season for four months. By May it was on the market for fresh investment, and last week it was snapped up in full for €152 million.

But sale of the family’s shares at least ensures the iconic team’s survival, and Dorilton says it intends to maintain the team’s historic name and honour its heritage. The firm also says this is a long-term investment, which bodes well for the team’s growth prospects.

Williams’s white knight has arrived with impeccable timing. Not only has it galloped in during the same week all 10 teams agreed to a new, fairer and egalitarian financial deal with the sport, but it still has 18 months to prepare for a regulatory overhaul.

The sport was originally due to switch to a new set of technical regulations designed to promote better, closer racing and introduce a budget cap of US$175 million for 2021, but the pandemic forced a delay in their implementation to reduce new spending during these financially precarious times.

However, crucially the budget cap has not only remained in place but has been negotiated down to US$145 million, far closer to Williams’s annual expenditure.

For its entire history Formula One has been vulnerable to cashed-up teams spending their way to victory — Ferrari and Mercedes, for example, reportedly spend more than US$400 million apiece — but from 2021 will be restrained in how much can be spent developing a car.

The doling out of prize money is also set to change dramatically. Unfair financial terms struck by F1’s previous owners allowed the largest teams to cream money off the top of the total pool before championship standings were used to divvy up the rest, but from next year the differences in payment from first to last on the title table will be smaller and bonus payments for championship success will be correspondingly reduced. … Continue reading

I preview the upcoming Belgian, Italian and Tuscan grands prix with last year’s podcast guests Jack Nicholls from BBC F1 and Luca Manacorda from Motorbox.com.

Heikki Kovalainen is faster than you. Williams is more cashed up than you. Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps has more rain than you.

Domination tends to look easy in Formula One, but Lewis Hamilton’s peerless Spanish Grand Prix victory wasn’t the effortless parade the TV cameras made it out to be.

Formula One arrived in Barcelona with electricity in the air. Only last month the paddock had been wondering aloud whether anyone could beat Mercedes in 2020, but after Max Verstappen’s breakthrough win at tyre-destroying Silverstone one week earlier, optimism had taken hold that the championship was about to break open.

Two weeks in a row Mercedes had struggled with tyre wear through a combination of Silverstone’s high-downforce demands and stiflingly hot weather.

Five-time 500cc Motorcycle World Champion Mick Doohan joins us to discuss crashes, contract controversy and Jack Miller’s first podium of 2020 at the Austrian Grand Prix, while we review all of the talking points on and off track from a dramatic weekend at the Red Bull Ring.

We shamelessly steal some IP with our homemade and very accurate sound effects and spend a surprising amount of time talking about MotoGP for an F1 podcast.