2016 Belgian Grand Prix Review

After a summer break that from my personal point of view went incredibly fast, F1 racing is back for the final half of the season with the fierce championship battle resuming at Spa.

Nico Rosberg head into this weekend having used the break to get back at the top of his game, to be able to pose a threat to his teammate Hamilton for this year's title. Having struggled in the last races of the first half and having missed out monumentally on creating momentum by beating Hamilton on the last race of the first half and also Nico's home race in the German GP, Rosberg was desperately looking to secure the 25 points this time out, to kick off the closing stage of his season in the best way possible.

Considering that he had the golden opportunity to win handed to him in a silver tray back in Germany, this time he had it handed in a golden tray, as not only did he dominate in two of the three free practice sessions before going on to secure pole but Lewis Hamilton was hit with a heavy 35-places grid penalty for numerous changes in the Briton's car.

With the dominant performance of the German machinery and Hamilton's misfortunes, Rosberg's odds of not only winning but even of beating Hamilton to the line by quite a few positions to recover the lead of the championship were as high as possible.

In all fairness, Nico did accomplish his part of the duty by winning the race, and he did so in a dominant fashion that he needed to show at this point of the season.

However what Nico probably didn't even notice and definitely did not count on, was the mess that happened behind him in the early laps, that happened to become a pivotal moment in the course of the race.

An incident in the very first corner between both Ferraris and Max Verstappen's Red Bull caused a chaos on the rest of the field, with numerous drivers being forced to go through the outside to the track to avoid Vettel's and Räikkönen's car, a few of which were forced to pit in either due to wing damage (Vettel,Räikkönen and Verstappen) or due to punctures caused by the debris left by the accident.

A couple of other incidents and Sainz's puncture, lifted both Hamilton and Alonso up to the doorsteps of point scoring positions.

On Lap 6, a massive crash for Magnussen on the exit of Raidillon, which he fortunately came out of unharmed, caused the deployment of the safety car. Numerous drivers took the decision to pit as soon as the safety car was out, however neither the front runners nor Hamilton and Alonso were among those who pitted, which further aided the Englishman and the Spaniard to reach fifth and fourth place, respectively.

A few laps later, the red flag was brought out, stopping the race for the marshals to be able to properly repair the barrier damaged by Magnussen's crash, this meant that Hamilton and Alonso would both take the restart inside the top five, when only 10 laps before they were dead last.

Ten laps into the restarted race, one one side, the table was set for Alonso to take the amount of points that his teammate Button was poised to take before his retirement early in the race, on the other side, it was all set for Hamilton to lose the minimum amount of points to Rosberg, when at the beginning he was set to pay the ultimate price.

Hamilton's already paved way to the podium began shortly after the race resumed, as he took a few laps to sweep past Alonso and only a couple laps later he overtook Hulkenberg to put himself inside the top 3, before the middle point of the race.

Then, while Nico found himself safe at the lead, Lewis was set to reach second placed Ricciardo, only four seconds behind him, the expectations being that the Merc would eventually outpace Ricciardo's Red Bull.

A small time loss in Hamilton's next stop coincided with the subsequent stops by the cars ahead of him and thus did not undo the progress he had experienced throughout the race but probably it did end the possibility of Hamilton reaching Ricciardo at the closing stages of the race.

While both Force Indias seized control of P4 and P5 and 6th-10th positions remained very contested towards the end of the race, things at the front were pretty much set in stone, with Hamilton being unable to get close enough to Ricciardo in his last stint despite a quick last stop and with Rosberg staying safe at the front after his last stop.

After the disastrous start, Vettel and Räikkönen set limits in the damages caused by the first lap incident and arrived sixth and seventh in the end. 

An absolute shame after both drivers gave a great impression of the Scuderia's work in the summer, having put solid performances on qualifying. 

With solid starting positions and great starts before the incident, sneaking past Verstappen, and with Hamilton out of the equation, this race was crafted for Ferrari to claim a double podium, or who knows, even a shot at a victory, considering that Rosberg's gap in front was initially created by the mess that happened behind him, and without such mess, perhaps any of the two red cars could've stood a chance at beating the German.

Now, regarding the turning point of the race, the first lap incident.

From my point of view, I think it was in part Vettel that caused the big shunt, as he took the corner a bit too tight, too close to Räikkönen when he still had plenty of space in the outside. The way in which he took the turn forced Kimi to turn further to the right, where he found and made contact with Verstappen, whose role in the incident I will address in a few paragraphs. 

On the other hand, Räikkönen is not to blame at all in this, as every move he made was just in attempts to avoid hitting Vettel. He was not counting on the way Vettel turned now in Verstappen just throwing the car in the narrow space on the inside. A total shame, given the things he can do at this track.

On to Verstappen, from what I saw it seems as if the Dutchman endured a tough start and desperately tried to recover the positions lost to the Ferraris, arriving too hot at the corner and having no room to go through but a small space between Kimi's car and the barrier.

As Verstappen couldn't exit the corner as tight as he needed to in order to avoid the contact, due to his closeness to the wall in the entrance of the corner, he was forced to go wide, collecting Räikkönen in his way, the move coincided with Räikkönen's move to avoid Vettel and hence disaster happened.

Verstappen not only hampered Ferrari's aspirations in this race, but also his own team's final haul of points as the damage to his car added up to his struggles, which caused him to finish in eleventh place, when he could've easily achieved a top 5 finish.

Ricciardo recovered the day for Red Bull as a  quiet, discrete race took him to the control of the second place for most of the race, showing good pace and losing no time to Lewis Hamilton in the final two stints.

The podium from Ricciardo came in clutch, as it helped the team to remain 22 points clear of Ferrari in the second place of the constructors championship.

(amazing to be graced with Mark's presence on the podium)

Meanwhile, Ferrari's mishaps could've not come at a worse point, having lost the second place in the constructors championship to Red Bull in the last race, having shown good progress from their performances in the past few races, standing a good chance at a double podium,and being a week away from such an important event as the Italian Grand Prix.

Hopefully they will have another opportunity like the one they had today, next week in Monza.

It was a great start to the second part of the season for Force India! They were amazing during the free practices, featuring on the top five in all of them, and they were decent on qualifying, occupying sixth and seventh on the grid.

On the race, Nico Hulkenberg had a great start after the first corner shunt, getting into second place for most of the first part of the race, before the safety car, when he was called into pits, which pushed him back onto the midfield, unable to recover the positions he had been in at the start, due to Alonso's and Hamilton's rising, arriving to the line in fourth.

Just behind his teammate, in fifth, was Checo Perez. The Mexican suffered at the start, as he was one of the drivers who had to go through the outside of the track due to the incident in the first turn, but he was able to recover from this, not dropping out of the top 10 in the early stages of the race and timing his stops excellently to recover, after the relaunching of the race.

Thanks to Williams' poor weekend, collecting only 5 points, Force India's harvest of 22 has helped them to get ahead of their opponents in fourth place in the championship standings, a great achievement for the team, that looks ready to improve their last year final standing position of fifth.

Now, what does this result mean for the course of the championship?

Rosberg not only snipped 10 points off Hamilton's lead to set it back into only 9 points, but has taken an important win at an important point such as the beginning of the second part of the season.

Important to remind that the second half of the season features less races than the first, which is why this win is important for Nico as  it's a start to the second half better than any other, winning dominantly. 

Moreover, Hamilton knows that when he is committed to do so, Rosberg is capable of lacing race wins together, as he did at the beginning of the season.

With the standings favoring Hamilton, I bet Rosberg could come from summer break committed to make one final push to beat Lewis to the title.

With the races being back to back this time, I think it's even more possible for Rosberg to capture another win in a row to create more momentum.

This win and Hamilton's unlucky weekend could've not come at a better point for the German.

For Hamilton, all he has to do is not lose his cool despite weekends like this, because this could not be the last one of its kind for him. This season is looking almost like a copy of 2014, only that this time it is him who is ahead in the standings at the start of the second half, this time he is the one to be reached, this time the title is his to lose.

All he has to do is to drive without risking much, taking it one race at a time, if he tries to desperately stop a charging Rosberg from catching him in the points standings in one of the few races, he might end up risking too much and thus putting the title on the line, when he really shouldn't need to. 

Special mentions of this race have to go to Fernando Alonso because despite the fact that the Spaniard's rise to the top 10 was crafted through the incidents ahead of him, he made a great job running successfully in the midfield only losing out to Vettel to finish P7.

Both Renaults are also worthy of a mention as they had climbed to 7th and 8th positions in the first laps before Magnussen's heavy crash.

Daniil Kvyät may have finished down in 14th but similarly to the Renaults, the Toro Russian found himself fighting for the points in the first few laps. This, after a bad day in qualy.

Last but not least Esteban Gutierrez, as the Mexican once again finished the race just outside the top 10, definitely can see him taking his first points of the season anytime soon.

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That's it for this weekend's race review! I'll see you in a week, when F1 is ready to race in another historical venue like Monza, for the Italian Grand Prix!

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2016 German Grand Prix Race Review

For the second successive weekend, Nico Rosberg found himself in a situation which he could get maximum advantages from. Being in his home race, having dominated all of the free practices and having claimed pole position ahead of his teammate, added to that having the possibility of a great sent off into the summer break, ending the first part of the championship with a valuable win over Lewis Hamilton that would put him back into the championship lead.

Last week after the Hungarian Grand Prix I wrote that Nico stood a great chance at getting back on the championship fight psychologically wise by beating his teammate and championship rival in front of his home crowd, at such an important point of the season, the last race of the first half.

Having won with authority back in 2014, when the race was last held in Germany, this didn't seem as too much of a hard task this time around. Still, it was worthy to remember that in that race, Hamilton was forced to start dead last, which could've played a factor in how easily Nico took the win back then.

Regardless of the last fact, Nico's dominance throughout the weekend set the table for a very likely win from the German on Sunday.

The importance of the win has already been stated, with this taken in consideration, it's now time to try to imagine the size of Rosberg's defeat yesterday, in a race which was believed by many to have his name already engraved on it, and its importance on the championship later on, its negative impact on him and positive one on Hamilton.

Adding even more to the already high prices at stake today, it's necessary to remember that while this race might've marked the end of the first half of the season, it is not quite that way, as this was the 12th race of the calendar, after which we will now have only 9 races remaining, meaning Rosberg's chances at a comeback are slightly slimmer.

Similarly to what happened in Hungaroring last week, Rosberg was destined to throw the towel on the win from the very start.

Some say that it was a wheel spin that was to blame, some other say that it was a flaw on a stopwatch, whatever it was, the result was the same. Nico had a start that was even worse to the one he had in Hungary, stalling at grid for maybe less than half a second, not only enough for Hamilton to easily get past him before the first turn but also enough for both Red Bulls to get on the inside of Mercedes' number 6 car, leaving him all the way back in fourth place.

Three places and a valuable pole position lost in a matter of seconds.

Last time, it was Hamilton's staggering pace that took away Rosberg's chance at winning the race (despite the bad start), this time it was his terrible start that not only meant that he would have to wave goodbye to a shot at the top spot of the podium, but also temporarily meant that he saw his chances at standing in the podium at all reduced drastically.

While Lewis endured an easy Sunday drive at the front, with enough gap from second placed Ricciardo, Rosberg struggled a lot with his tires, unable to find the pace enough to at least pose a threat to Max Verstappen.

Fortunately for him, neither Sebastian Vettel nor Kimi Räikkönen had enough speed on them to challenge Nico, thus he was free of pressure from behind to try and give Verstappen a run for his money.

Despite small efforts and slight advances that Nico made on the Dutchman on the first and second stints, his only true chances of snatching that final podium spot were attempting an undercut.

Luckily for him, the move on the second stop was quite successful. Not enough to take over the position but good enough to put some pressure on Verstappen.

While the start probably wasn't actually a cause of a mistake from Nico, his next and final mishap, and the eventual final blow to whatever aspirations he still had in this race, was. 

As he quickly approached Max midways through the third stint, he found himself right on the Red Bull youngster's tail. Nico decided to make good use of his Mercedes' speed in the long curve/straight, getting to the hairpin side by side with Max.

Initially, Nico finished the job by taking the inside of the hairpin, however he probably went too far in trying to make the move stick, as he took all the time in the world to actually take the turn, doing so almost until the end of the track.

Obviously, Verstappen was forced into the outside of the track due to the aggressive move by the German which was immediately investigated by the stewards who left no room for surprises and punished the maneuver with a five second penalty for Rosberg.

While many fans saw it as a harsh decision from the stewards that punished the most exciting move on the whole race, I personally think that while the move was aggressive and certainly not a racing incident at all, the move was not worthy of any penalty.

Though Rosberg tried to lie and say that he had turned into the corner before but had suffered understeering, the penalty was not overturned and not even him nor his pit crew could do anything to make up for the time that would be lost.

When I use the term 'lie' as I did in the last paragraph, it is because Nico actually did lie to put himself off the blame, despite footage showing him turning into the corner extremely late.

There was no need for a move like the one Nico did, he already had gotten on the inside of the corner, all he had to do was to turn into it the right way.

At that point of the race he certainly would've had the pace to get close enough to Ricciardo to at least attempt to undercut in the last stop, I do not understand why Nico would've tried such a maneuver right there.

Something that could've easily ended as a dreamy weekend for Nico, was turned into a nightmare on Sunday. He let go of his win opportunities on the start and ruined his podium and potential second place chances with an unnecessary move. All of this, while title rival Hamilton cruised to a more than easy win, which puts the championship situation upside down for Rosberg, losing out 13 points on Hamilton on the standings, the difference between the two rising to 19 points, coming into Sunday with the possibility of experimenting no losses on the standings and actually recovering the lead.

Hamilton could've not wished for a better plot twist, as he heads into summer break up in the standings with a very healthy lead, affording to finish second a few times in the second part of the season, with the driver's title needing only a few more wins to be sealed.

For Rosberg, summer break will have to be the time to dig deeper and try to clear his mind from what the last 8 races have been (7 of them won by Lewis) in order to be able to focus on putting on a fresh start to the second half, in hopes of recovering the world championship that he had been close from at the opening stages of the season.

Though Hamilton is clearly the biggest winner coming out of Hockenheim, Red Bull are the second biggest winner. 

They arrived here being only one point adrift from Ferrari in the constructors standings, with a huge chance of taking over second place, given the Scuderia's recent form.

Aided by Rosberg's in race mishaps, Ricciardo and Verstappen drove a calm (except for the incident with Nico) race towards the team's first double podium of the season and a fantastic result to close the first half of the season.

While the team and many around the paddock expected the team to pose a bigger threat to the Silver Arrows, their pace was only better in a few parts of the race, not enough for Ricciardo to put pressure on Hamilton for the lead, and not enough for Verstappen to hold off Nico Rosberg, had it been necessary.

Despite failing to fulfill their expectations, the team goes into the summer break with a great job of being second to Mercedes when the projections on pre season were a lot lower.

For Ferrari things are the complete opposite, as things for them have gotten worse and worse race after race. 

Whilst their results at the end of the race were identical to those in Hungary (5th and 6th), the team had hoped for an improvement of such outcome, which did not come, as both Vettel and Räikkönen drove discrete races safe from drivers behind them but being far away from the Red Bulls.

The team will head into summer break with a bunch of work to be done and fortunately, enough time for developing and improvement, that they desperately need as they have seen their best-of-the-rest spot being taken over by Red Bull, who only seem to be going up as of now.

While there is a possibility that they have decided to change their focus over to 2017, packed with new technical regulations, the gap between them and Red Bull is still short enough to give it a try in the remaining races.

Their problems may not be that hard to sort out, it seems lately that they have been faltering in qualifying, which consequently puts them in a worse position for the race.

In seventh, Nico Hulkenberg has completed yet another solid performance for Force India, taking home six of the seven total points earned by the team today, after Sergio Perez made a late charge in the final laps, with which he was able to get past his countryman Gutierrez and McLaren's Fernando Alonso.

Important points for the Indian team heading into the middle point of the season, cutting the gap in the standings to Williams by five points to bring it down to 20 with plenty of racing to this year.

Speaking of Sir Frank's squad, Valtteri Bottas once again discretely made his way towards P9.

A bigger harvest of points to end the first half of the season on a good note would've been possible, as Felipe Massa qualified on tenth place, however the Brazilian became the first of two retirements on the race early on.

On a similar situation to Ferrari's, Williams will have to make good use of the time on this summer break to try and make some enhancements, in order not to lose ground to Force India, who is expected to keep on improving in the rest of the year as they did in 2015.

It was another positive weekend for a resurgent McLaren, as they managed to recover from poor qualifying performances which saw them miss out on Q3.

While both Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso spent most of the race battling for point positions, unfortunately it was only Button who would collect points form the effort (P8), as Fernando lost out on a potential eighth place to his own teammate, later ninth to Bottas, then tenth to a charging Perez and on the last lap eleventh to Gutierrez.

Special mention for Haas F1's Esteban Gutierrez, who not only made a pretty good job in qualifying eleventh but also made great efforts on the race to get himself into the points for the first time this season, fighting for every position until the very last lap, missing out by only one position, which he lost due to being in older tires.

That is it for this race's review! Hope you have enjoyed it!

I'm not too sure about doing a mid season review, so please make sure to leave a comment if you would like to see that during the summer break!

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Thanks for all the visits, reads and support!

See you all in a month, when F1 is back from a long but deserved summer break for the Belgian GP in the legendary circuit of Spa-Francorchamps!

...or perhaps earlier, depending on whether I do or not a mid season write up...