Antonelli wins Belgian GP to extend F1 title lead to 45 points
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- Kimi Antonelli won the Belgian Grand Prix from pole, extending his drivers' championship lead to 45 points over Lewis Hamilton (now second), while Mercedes teammate George Russell dropped to third after retiring from an opening-lap collision with Hamilton.
- Stewards gave Lewis Hamilton a five-second penalty — reduced from the standard 10 — for the Russell collision, ruling Russell was "entitled to racing room" and Hamilton "wholly at fault," but crediting Hamilton for acknowledging Russell and attempting to avoid contact on lap one.
- Charles Leclerc escaped penalty for contact with Oscar Piastri because stewards found Piastri's front axle was not ahead of Leclerc's, so he was not entitled to racing room — though TV footage caught Verstappen telling a sheepish Leclerc in the green room that the move "was calculated."
- The Belgian Grand Prix drew a record 400,000 attendees over the weekend, but Spa-Francorchamps will host only four of six years under its current contract, with F1 unable to match the fees paid by state-funded races like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
- Mercedes suffered unexplained power unit behaviour across all their cars at Spa, costing Russell an estimated 0.2–0.25 seconds per lap in qualifying, with team principal Toto Wolff confirming "all Mercedes engines had a lack of energy out of Turn One" and calling the race issue "a new" one.
- McLaren team principal Andrea Stella detailed the complexity of modern hybrid engines, explaining they rely on "live calculations" that "forward-think" deployment — a quirk that has frustrated McLaren all season because engine supplier Mercedes only recently began sharing the diagnostic tools they need.
Why it matters: Antonelli's 45-point championship lead heading into the second half of the season gives Mercedes a commanding position with a driver who has now won from pole at Spa. The stewards' split verdicts on near-identical incidents — Hamilton penalised, Leclerc cleared — expose how F1's guideline about being "alongside enough" hinges on front-axle position in ways fans and drivers alike find inconsistently applied.
