{"id":74935,"date":"2024-07-28T12:04:03","date_gmt":"2024-07-28T16:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=74935"},"modified":"2024-07-28T12:04:03","modified_gmt":"2024-07-28T16:04:03","slug":"george-russell-holds-off-lewis-hamilton-for-mercedes-1-2-at-f1-belgian-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=74935","title":{"rendered":"George Russell holds off Lewis Hamilton for Mercedes 1-2 at F1 Belgian Grand Prix – Autoblog"},"content":{"rendered":"

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium \u2014 George Russell led a Mercedes<\/a> one-two with Lewis Hamilton<\/a> at the Belgian Grand Prix<\/a> after pulling off an audacious one-stop strategy and keeping his teammate at bay to add to a thrilling Formula 1 season on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Russell claimed his second win of the season and the third of the British driver\u2019s career after nursing his tires in expert fashion over the 44-lap race while all the rest of the top cars stopped twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazing result, definitely didn\u2019t predict that this morning,\u201d Russell said. \u201cBut the race was awesome and the tires just felt great. I just kept saying \u2018I think we can do the one stop\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton finished ahead of McLaren<\/a>\u2019s Oscar Piastri in third.<\/p>\n

Points leader Max Verstappen<\/a> crossed fifth behind Ferrari’s<\/a> Charles Leclerc after the three-time defending champion started from 11th following a 10-place grid penalty for using one too many engines in his Red Bull<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lando Norris endured another poor start and finished sixth, allowing Verstappen to extend his championship lead to 78 points.<\/p>\n

Russell was not expected to be in the mix for the win after he started from sixth. But he told his team that he felt confident that he could milk his tires for all they were worth and forego a second, time-consuming, pit stop.<\/p>\n

That proved to be a brilliant decision.<\/p>\n

Russell looked like he would be caught by Hamilton and other drivers on fresher tires. Instead, he defended his position over the nail-biting final laps with Piastri lurking in case the teammates clashed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely didn\u2019t (expect this), so first of all, congratulations to George and to the team,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cI was trying to get closer, but George did a great job on going long on the tires. Every stint I had tires left but the team brought me in, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Russell shouted for joy after the checkered flag, his team radio praised him as \u201cthe tire whisperer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old driver shared any credit with his team for making that strategy call.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a team effort, the strategists did a wonderful job. The car felt great and the pace was there. It\u2019s so well deserved for everybody,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell done to Lewis, he did a great job controlling the race and if circumstances were different he could have won the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

After struggling early on this season, Mercedes has now won three of the last four races. Russell triumphed in Austria and Hamilton in Britain.<\/p>\n

With McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari all producing similar pace \u2013 and avoiding race-ending crashes \u2014 the victory was a question of small margins and getting the pit-stop and tire strategy right.<\/p>\n

Piastri was under two seconds behind Russell and the top six all crossed within 10 seconds.<\/p>\n

The seven winners in 13 races after the Hungarian GP had already made this season the most competitive since 2012.<\/p>\n

Verstappen has now gone four races without a win after he won four of the first five grands prix this year.<\/p>\n

Ferrari\u2019s Carlos Sainz was seventh, ahead of Red Bull\u2019s Sergio P\u00e9rez, who had started second in another poor showing for the under-pressure Mexican driver. Fernando Alonso<\/a> was ninth for Aston Martin<\/a>, and Esteban Ocon 10th in his Alpine.<\/p>\n

The Spa track, set in the rolling forests of the Ardennes, is the longest in F1<\/a> at seven kilometers (4.3 miles). It stayed dry on Sunday in contrast to the constant drizzle the day before that led to a F2 race being postponed.<\/p>\n

With 14 of 24 races down, the season now enters a summer break until the Dutch GP on Aug. 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium \u2014 George Russell led a Mercedes one-two with Lewis Hamilton at the Belgian Grand Prix after pulling off an audacious one-stop strategy and keeping his teammate at bay to add to a thrilling Formula 1 season on Sunday. Russell claimed his second win of the season and the third of the British driver\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74936,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}