There was no doubt about Mercedes’ position as the dominant force at Spa in 2020.
Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were able to throw their W11s with breathtaking ease into the famous and terrifying corners of the Belgian Grand Prix circuit and simply ran away from Red Bulls Max Verstappen in the race – the Dutchman went from regular challenger to barely holding Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo in check from third place in the closing stages.
Not so in 2021.
During the two hour-long training sessions in Spa on Friday, the general trends of 2021 reappeared, but with a few key differences. The two leading teams in F1 seem to be very close to pace again and little things resulted in different results in FP1, led by Bottas, and FP2, where Verstappen ran the fastest before crashing late.
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