F1 Belgian Grand Prix 2018 Preview: Let the battle resume!

Nine races will decide who comes out on top in the 2018 Formula One Championship. As usual, after a four week break, the F1 circus travels to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium which is one of the fastest and most famous circuits in the world.

Lewis Hamilton has a 24 point lead over Sebastian Vettel heading into the weekend and will be looking to extend his points advantage to more than a win (more than 25 points). For Vettel, he needs to start to reel in Hamilton because momentum will play a big part in the final races. We saw this last year after the championship changing collision in Singapore, when Ferrari went to bits in the following races in Malaysia and Japan.

The one thing we’ve been missing this year is a head to head on track battle between Vettel and Hamilton. We got a tiny glimpse in Austria but we haven’t seen a race between them like Spain or Belgium in 2017. Of course, we got a battle of some sort in Australia but it was only for the last chunk of the race and it happened with some luck for Vettel as well. I can’t wait for a pure battle between them and I hope we get a clean fight in the coming races.

I’ve said all season that the championship could unfortunately come down to engine grid penalties. As of writing, I believe Ferrari are going to take their third and final internal combustion engine (ICE), a new turbo and a new MGU-H.

Ferrari know they have the reliability they have improved the efficiency even further and increased the power as well. It means that Kimi Raikkonen will take a 10 place grid penalty (because he’s already on his third turbo so he will go over the limit should he take another one). Hopefully not because Raikkonen has won at Spa four times and it is one of his best tracks.

Some people still call him “The King of Spa”. It’s hard to argue with that statement when he would have won the Belgian Grand Prix five times in a row had he won the 2008 race where he crashed out from the second place with two laps to go after losing the lead at the start of that lap to Hamilton. I would love to see him get one more win at this legendary circuit.

But, Ferrari could delay their new engine until Monza just to do one less race with their engine. But this would mean Raikkonen doing a ninth race with his current engine unit this weekend. This would be right on the limit.

Nico Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas will start at the back this weekend. Hulkenberg will take a completely new power unit and Bottas is set to run with a new engine, turbocharger and MGU-H, pushing his allocation for the season to four. It’s possible that all of the Mercedes teams (Mercedes, Williams and Force India) will take their third engine. If this is the case, none of them will take penalties.

The way I see the season panning out is that the cars will remain very, very close and if someone does have a car advantage, then it’s the Ferrari team but only by a whisker. Any pace advantage they have will be negated by being on the wrong end of track position anyway.

In terms of the on track action, it’s going to come down to consistency, no mistakes from the team or the drivers and the drivers themselves delivering. These factors plus many more will decide the championship. It could be one of those championships where the driver with the best car may not win the title. The points advantage Hamilton has after Vettel’s mistakes in Azerbaijan and more importantly Germany, has given Hamilton and Mercedes confidence to beat Ferrari who have built an extraordinary car.

Vettel should be winning this championship but his own errors means he isn’t.

I think the pressure in on Ferrari and Vettel because if they lose out on the drivers’ and constructors’ championship then they will be bitterly disappointed and more than heartbroken.

Toto Wolff has summed it up nicely:

“If this season has taught us one thing, it’s that there are no clear favourites for specific tracks anymore and that it’s not always the fastest car that wins.”

Ferrari have an excellent battery package and a consistent car. It really is down to the drivers executing and if the Ferrari team can produce a perfect weekend then they should be favourites for every race but we don’t know what development has been going on behind the scenes. There’s no break for the hundreds of people who work for each team as they look to find hundredths of a second.

We hope to see some classic battles in Belgium at the front this year.

In 2009, Force India took an astonishing pole position with Giancarlo Fisichella and nine years on, they are in a very different position. They were in the midfield fight this year, which was a positive, but the news that’s brewing off the track will surely affect their on track performance.

Bob Fernley has left the team and the team name, sponsors and logos were removed from their lorries in the paddock at the start of the week. Everything should be normal from what we see on TV but it’s pretty chaotic off the track.

The new Force India (the consortium) have acquired various assets and these include the cars, parts, factory, employees, car designs, website and motorhome. It was announced last night that Force India will now be called “Racing Point Force India”. An awful name really. With the team also starting from zero points again.

According to rules “Force India” had to be in the new team name. I guess the Force India bit will be dropped for next season. There’s still many questions. Will Ocon and Perez keep their drives in the coming races? Is the funding split up? Does every single contract have to be renewed and rewritten? There’s so many more consequences to this.

There will be just one Belgian natoinal racing at Spa this weekend and that’s Stoffel Vandoorne, who will be looking to for a standout result to give him a confidence boost and a performance that will get him a seat in F1 next year, be it at McLaren or somewhere else.

The challenge of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps has diminished somewhat over the years with tarmac run offs, cars that have lots of downforce and more knowledge, yet it is still a classic. Eau Rouge is easily flat in these modern F1 cars in the dry but if there’s rain around, it will be just as scary as it used to be.

Without lifting the throttle for Eau Rouge, a car would be flat out from La Source, along the Kemmel Straight to Les Combes, a total distance of 2.015 km. Whoever has the best engine will gain time in sector one.

The biggest challenge for the drivers now will be Pouhon (the double left which is technically one big fast corner). Fernando Alonso apparently went flat out through there last year so everyone will be looking to do the same on Saturday in qualifying if it’s dry.

Six-time Le Mans winner, Jacky Ickx, will have a corner named after him from this weekend’s Grand Prix as a tribute to his career. Turn 11 is the corner which previously had no name or was called Speaker’s corner or Liege, but now we can officially call it after Ickx.

The teams and drivers will be looking to find the perfect setup to have good straight line speed and enough downforce for the middle sector. You don’t want to be a sitting duck on the Kemmel Straight in the race. This will be further complicated if there’s rain which at the moment it looks like there will be some on Saturday.

Sunday is set to be dry but with very low temperatures of 13 degrees celcius which will play into Mercedes hands. But, who knows what and where favours who in F1 2018.

Red Bull will be using a new fuel which should give them a tenth or two around 7.004KM circuit but it will still be an outside shot at the race win. There will be thousands of people in orange T-shirts this weekend and they would love it if Max Verstappen could win. With Pierre Gasly now announced as the replacement for Daniel Ricciardo, I wonder if Verstappen will be given priority for the rest of the season? We may get the first inklings in a few days time.

With at least one Finns taking grid penalties, we could finally get a Hamilton vs. Vettel duel to restart the season. So much has gone on over the summer break that the on track action needs to dominate the headlines again. Will we get a heavyweight fight?

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