Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen makes history by winning without racing.
This weekend’s Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix was quite a strange one. The rain had fallen throughout the weekend and was especially heavy during the race itself. This limited the race to just 2 parade-style laps behind the Safety Car. As a result, most of the results of yesterday’s race were based on the results of the qualifying race.
So, Max Verstappen took his first-place result from qualifying on Saturday and turned it into the win of Formula 1’s shortest race in history. The victory brings Verstappen closer to overtaking Lewis Hamilton, with just a 3 point difference between the two drivers and ten races to go. But there’s another significance to yesterday’s Grand Prix.
Besides being the shortest race in F1, it was also the 50th race that Honda and Red Bull Racing have run together as partners. Next year, Honda will pull out of Formula 1 as an engine manufacturer, but Red Bull Racing will continue to utilize Honda engine technology until 2025 by taking over production and engine supplier duties.
Here are the race results with more details.
PRESS RELEASE
Honda and Red Bull Racing celebrated their 50th race of partnership with a win at the Belgian Grand Prix, however, it was a victory earned more through Max Verstappen’s efforts on Saturday than anything that was accomplished on race day.
A rain-marred weekend at Spa-Francorchamps was punctuated by heavy rain on Sunday that limited action to just two parade-style laps behind the Safety Car, leaving the majority of the results to be determined on the basis of Saturday’s qualifying results.
Those results rewarded Red Bull’s Max Verstappen pole-winning run from Saturday, turning that effort into his sixth victory of the season after the race was stopped due to the heavy rain.
The two pedestrian laps allowed the race to be classified as official, although the reduced distance meant that only 50 percent of the championship points were awarded for the effort.
Pierre Gasly tallied his ninth top-10 result of the season in the Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda with a sixth-place finish, made possible by a Saturday effort that saw the Frenchman qualify in the first three rows for the ninth time in 2021.
Unfortunately, the rain claimed one victim as the cars made their way around the 4.34-mile circuit to line up on the starting grid. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez aquaplaned off the track and had contact that caused suspension damage prior to the start of the event. Had the race begun at its scheduled time, he would not have been able to compete, but the long rain delay allowed the Red Bull squad to prepare the car and have it ready for the race start.
The contact allowed AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda to gain a spot and finish 15th after qualifying 16th, while Perez was officially classified as placing 20th in what was the shortest race in Formula 1 history.
The win enabled Verstappen to close on championship leader Lewis Hamilton, narrowing the gap to just three points after 12 of the year’s planned 22 races. The victory is the Honda’s 12th in its 50 races with Red Bull Racing and its 13th since returning to F1 racing in 2015. The victory is also the 85th in Honda’s storied Formula 1 history. The series will get just one week to dry out as it journeys to Zandvoort for next weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.
