2025 Belgian Grand Prix - [SPRINT] discussion thread 🏎️

[wes@lemmy.world]

ROUND 13: Belgium

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FORMULA 1 MOËT & CHANDON BELGIAN GRAND PRIX 2025

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Circuit stats

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• First Grand Prix: 1950
• Number of laps: 44
• Circuit Length: 7.004 km
• Race Distance: 308.052 km
• Lap record: 1:44.701 Sergio Perez (2024)
• 2024 winner: George Russel

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Track Map

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[hsr@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

For once a sprint won't spoil the results of a main race, today we're watching motor racing, tomorrow - boats.

I wonder if Leclerc can challenge Verstappen for a podium, Ferraris had great pace on low fuel this season.

[coelacanth@feddit.nu]

Please let us have a race tomorrow and not a runback of the 2021 fiasco

[lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world]

Excellent overtake by Leclerc there on lap 1.

[coelacanth@feddit.nu]

That Red Bull is a rocket on the straights, not much downforce on that set-up I bet.

[lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world]

Looks like Alpine solved Gasly's water leak issue? He joined the race 2 laps down.

[coelacanth@feddit.nu]

Let's hope we get an appropriate amount of rain tomorrow, because this sprint was just an echo of last year's race here. You'd think it should be easy to overtake here but in reality it isn't. Good lord I hope the next regs will be better for longer.

[lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world]

Well that was a dull sprint. Lap 1 was all the action there was.

Great start for the Mekies Red Bull era though.

[alisaket@mander.xyz]

At least in a proper race, strategy can mix up things so that we might see overtakes. Sprints on the other hand are just DRS-trains circling round.

Maybe they need to think of an additional DRS zone out of Stavelot (T15) so they can't save up the battery for only one big deployment per lap.

[microw@piefed.zip]

Antonelli did an overtake after lap 1!

But yeah that was quite the procession. Good for the Haas

[microw@piefed.zip]

At this point, FOM should know at which circuits sprints tend to work and which they don't. Problem is that they use the sprints for commercial purposes at race weekends where FOM income is low, like in Spa.

[bowserbasher@lemmy.world]

There wasn’t. They have gone for the low downforce setup this weekend.

[generalemergency@lemmy.world]

Spa once again proving it's a terrible track for actual racing. Can't wait for this snooze fest of a track to be gone.

[captdust@sh.itjust.works]

Pretty boring, hope for a bit of rain tomorrow.

2021 monkey paw curls

[obamabinladen@lemmy.world]

Everyone is calling it a boring sprint but what I'm seeing is that Verstappen held piastri behind and close for fifteen laps.

[greatram@lemmy.world]

Isn't DRS being removed next year? We'll have to see how overtaking is with the new cars

[captdust@sh.itjust.works]

It was a flawless sprint from Max, no doubt

[alisaket@mander.xyz]

Oh yeah! You are right. Next year all the cars will open both their wings and a car that comes within 1s of another can deploy more electric power (350 kW IIRC) at higher speeds for a boost, but with limited energy per lap and at any point in the lap, so not limited to zones. Will be a totally different kind of overtaking or defending in the new formula.