The preview wondered whether Spa would punish a team whose Sundays had started coming apart. It did, but not the team anyone expected. Mercedes lost a car on the first lap and still left the Ardennes with a bigger championship lead than they arrived with, because Andrea Kimi Antonelli took pole by 0.317s, lost the lead to a virtual safety car, and then went and took it back on the road.
Lap one
Lewis Hamilton arrived at the first part of Les Combes with his left-front alongside George Russell ‘s right-rear and could not hold the gap. The contact spun the Mercedes into the gravel and ended Russell’s race before he had completed a lap. The stewards judged Hamilton wholly responsible for failing to maintain sufficient separation and gave him a five-second penalty. Russell later revealed the car had been carrying an electrical fault that left his battery roughly 35 per cent below its expected state of charge, so he had no deployment down the Kemmel Straight to defend with in the first place.
The safety car came out on lap 2. Elsewhere on that opening lap Esteban Ocon made contact with both Carlos Sainz and Oliver Bearman and picked up a front-left puncture.
The race
It stayed dry. Rain was reported approaching during the formation lap and never arrived, leaving a cool, overcast afternoon and a straight fight.
Two virtual safety cars around laps 19 and 20 reshaped it. Ferrari double-stacked both cars during the second, and Charles Leclerc emerged in the lead with the cheapest pit stop of the afternoon. Andrea Kimi Antonelli spent the next dozen laps hunting him down, arrived on his gearbox on lap 33, and used the Mercedes’ straight-line speed and overtake deployment to go past on the Kemmel Straight before Les Combes on lap 34.
Leclerc did not go away. He sat within a second for several laps and was still there at the flag, 1.952s back, the third-closest finish of the season. He simply never got another look. Max Verstappen completed the podium from second on the grid, 11.586s down. On lap 8 Leclerc and Oscar Piastri touched at Les Combes; the stewards took no action, ruling Piastri’s front axle had not drawn ahead.
The two grid penalties, and what they were worth
Two of the best drives of the afternoon started from the back half of the grid, and neither was the driver’s fault.
Isack Hadjar qualified tenth and started twenty-first, carrying a thirty-place penalty after Red Bull fitted a fifth internal combustion engine, turbocharger and exhaust. He ran a three-stop, took the tactical route through the early safety car, and finished sixth. That is a gain of fifteen places, the largest grid-to-finish improvement anyone has managed in 2026.
Lando Norris qualified third and started thirteenth after a ten-place penalty for a fourth control electronics unit. He recovered to seventh despite a problem with the left-rear wheel at his second stop that dropped him to eighth, and then took the fastest lap of the race on the final lap with a 1:48.890.
Gabriel Bortoleto took eighth for Audi, rookie Arvid Lindblad ninth, and Franco Colapinto tenth. Ferrari were summoned after the race over an alleged unsafe release, the right-front of Hamilton’s car having made low-speed contact with a mechanic during his stop.
Antonelli’s pole was Mercedes’ tenth from ten in 2026, and the 0.317s margin was the largest of the season.
The DNFs
- George Russell - lap 1, collision with Hamilton at Les Combes, Mercedes
- Sergio Pérez - lap 13, suspension failure, Cadillac
- Lance Stroll - lap 25, suspected gearbox, Aston Martin
The championship
Twenty-five points for the winner and none for the man who was second in the table takes the lead from 25 back out to 45. Lewis Hamilton is second again on 159, five ahead of George Russell , who has now been passed in the standings by the driver who put him out of the race. Charles Leclerc is fourth on 126 and closer to the podium places than to the McLarens. Fifth is a three-way knot: Norris 103, Piastri 92, Verstappen 91.
Six wins, six poles, and a lead restored in one afternoon. Hungary closes the first half next weekend before the summer break, on a circuit where Saturday matters more than almost anywhere - which, on this evidence, is not what the chasers wanted to hear.