Lewis Hamilton kept fourth place at the Belgian Grand Prix after stewards ruled he was not at fault for Ferrari’s unsafe pit release, with the penalty handed only to the team. Hamilton made contact with a Ferrari mechanic as he was told to leave the pit box, but he stopped immediately, checked on the crew member over radio and later said he feared he may have seriously injured him. No injury was reported. Stewards said the incident stemmed from poor communication and a late instruction to adjust the front wing, and they said it created a sporting disadvantage rather than an advantage for Hamilton.

Ferrari was fined €30,000, about £25,500, with one-third suspended for 12 months if there is no repeat offense. The team was ordered to review its pit-stop procedures and submit a full report and remedial plan to the FIA within 14 days. Ferrari said the error came from a late wing-adjustment instruction and unclear communication, and said a mechanic failed to notice the green light before stepping into the car’s path.

The incident came during Hamilton’s lap 20 stop under the virtual safety car, after he had served a five-second penalty for first-lap contact with George Russell. Hamilton left before the front-wing adjustment was finished, which meant he ran with the wrong setup for part of the stint. He later passed Oscar Piastri for fourth and finished less than two seconds ahead of him. Hamilton said the moment briefly reminded him of Kimi Raikkonen’s 2018 Bahrain pit-lane crash.

Kimi Antonelli converted pole position into victory at Spa-Francorchamps, overcoming a virtual safety car setback and a brief loss of the lead to Charles Leclerc before passing him again to seal his sixth win of the 2026 season. The Mercedes driver stretched his championship lead to 45 points over Lewis Hamilton, who finished fourth and moved back into second in the standings. Leclerc finished second and Max Verstappen was third, while George Russell retired on the opening lap after a battery deployment problem left him vulnerable before contact with Hamilton ended his race.

The Belgian Grand Prix weekend was dominated by complaints about Formula 1’s 2026 power units and energy deployment. Russell said he was 30 to 40 percent down on battery out of Turn 1, Toto Wolff said Mercedes could not fully explain the fluctuations, and both Mercedes and McLaren drivers said the systems were leaving performance outside the driver’s control. Antonelli, Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris and Verstappen all criticized the unpredictability, with Piastri saying qualifying grids were being decided by computers behaving or misbehaving and Verstappen saying drivers were using Formula 3 levels of power through parts of Spa.

McLaren also left Spa frustrated after strategy and damage cost both cars stronger results. Norris started 13th because of a grid penalty, briefly led on an alternate strategy, then finished seventh after a poorly timed virtual safety car and a slow pit stop. Piastri finished fifth after floor damage from contact with Leclerc. Hamilton’s weekend was also complicated by a crash in final practice, a five-second penalty for his opening-lap clash with Russell, and a pit-lane unsafe release investigation, though he still recovered to fourth.

Kimi Antonelli won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps from pole position, passing Charles Leclerc in the closing stages to claim his sixth Formula One victory of the season. The Mercedes driver finished 1.952 seconds ahead of Leclerc, with Max Verstappen third for Red Bull, and the result extended Antonelli’s lead in the Drivers’ Championship and strengthened Mercedes’ title position.

Antonelli had taken pole in a disrupted qualifying session with a final Q3 lap of 1:44.361, beating Verstappen by 0.317 seconds. Red Bull used teammate Isack Hadjar to give Verstappen a slipstream, and Verstappen said the tow was worth about three-tenths of a second. He also ran with an older rear wing after recent crashes with an upgraded part, and said the team had extracted the most from a car that lacked straight-line speed.

The race was shaped early by contact between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, which ended Russell’s run on lap one and brought out an early safety car. Hamilton was penalized but recovered to finish fourth, followed by Oscar Piastri in fifth, Hadjar in sixth after climbing from 21st on the grid, and Lando Norris seventh after a penalty and an alternative strategy. Verstappen briefly led but said a Virtual Safety Car came at the wrong time for Red Bull’s strategy, leaving him with what he called a very good podium result.

Lewis Hamilton was handed a five-second penalty at the Belgian Grand Prix after stewards ruled he was predominantly at fault for a first-lap collision with George Russell that sent the Mercedes driver out of the race. The contact at Spa-Francorchamps on the opening lap left Russell spun into the gravel and beached there, bringing out the safety car while marshals cleared the track. Hamilton later said he could not avoid the clash, describing it as a racing incident and saying he had been put in an impossible position.

Russell said the crash was only part of the problem, pointing to Mercedes’ lack of straight-line speed and a power issue that left him vulnerable before the contact. He said he had been “swallowed up down the straight” and suggested the car’s weakness had cost him as he tried to retake fourth place. Russell, who was running second in the standings before the race and trailing teammate Kimi Antonelli by 25 points, told Sky Sports he had “no words” and said the result was a major blow to his title hopes.

The contact was reported as occurring around the end of the Kemmel Straight and into the Les Combes chicane, with Hamilton’s Ferrari striking Russell’s Mercedes and ending Russell’s race. Hamilton initially inherited fourth place under investigation before the penalty was confirmed. Commentator Martin Brundle said he would not have punished Hamilton and viewed the clash as a racing incident, though he noted the stewards likely had more data and camera angles. Russell climbed out unhurt but scored no points and was described as tearful in the media pen.

Max Verstappen is set to work with Tom Hart as his race engineer for some races in 2026 as Red Bull prepares for Gianpiero Lambiase’s move to McLaren. Red Bull has confirmed Hart will replace Lambiase when he departs, with the team planning ahead for an exit that is not due to come before 2028.

Hart has been Verstappen’s performance engineer since 2020 and was originally expected to leave Red Bull for Williams to become Alex Albon’s race engineer. Red Bull and Williams bosses Laurent Mekies and James Vowles reached an agreement that kept Hart at Red Bull in Milton Keynes. The team has also enlisted Yuki Tsunoda to help prepare Verstappen’s next race engineer.

Lambiase has worked with Verstappen for the past decade and is set to join McLaren as chief racing officer, or a similar head of racing role, from 2028. He is expected to spend an extended period on gardening leave because of Formula 1’s secrecy rules, although his exact departure date has not been announced. The change has raised questions about Verstappen’s future, with speculation linking him to McLaren, while his manager has said he intends to see out his Red Bull contract and Verstappen has said Red Bull is already looking for the best replacement.

McLaren’s Belgian Grand Prix weekend was shaped by an unresolved inconsistency in electrical energy deployment from its latest Mercedes power unit. On Friday, Oscar Piastri lost track time after a hydraulic leak forced a gearbox change, while technical director Neil Houldey said the team’s new low-downforce rear wing was working as expected and McLaren would keep refining energy deployment and reliability ahead of the next sessions. Piastri ended FP2 sixth after his delay, and Lando Norris was second in the same session before taking third in qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps.

Andrea Stella said qualifying was a step forward, but small differences in power unit operation were still enough to affect pace at the power-sensitive circuit. He said Piastri’s deficit to Norris was mainly caused by straight-line energy use on the run from Stavelot to the Bus Stop Chicane during the derating phase, likely because the battery was not harvested optimally in the previous sector. Stella added that McLaren’s access to Mercedes simulation tools had improved preparation and performance, which he viewed as a positive sign heading into future races, with upgrades due from Hungary onward. Norris will start 13th after a 10-place penalty for a fourth power electronics unit, while Piastri’s Q3 was also disrupted when he ran wide and picked up gravel. Stella said Spa’s overtaking chances could still give both drivers opportunities to recover in Sunday’s race.

Mercedes was still searching for an explanation for George Russell’s straight-line speed deficit after qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, where teammate Kimi Antonelli took pole and Russell qualified fourth before being promoted to third on the grid by Lando Norris’ penalty. Russell said he was losing about four tenths of a second on the straights in qualifying, after losing as much as eight tenths on Friday, and the gap left him more than half a second behind Antonelli on the timing sheets.

Russell said the issue had been present since Silverstone and remained unresolved despite attempts to change his driving style. He said Mercedes had ruled out his driving style and the brakes as the cause, and the team said both drivers were running the same specification of car and power unit. Mercedes described it as a serious problem and said it was urgently investigating, with Russell saying the repeated loss of speed on Spa’s long straights made the car feel “super frustrating.”

Telemetry analysis pointed to Antonelli’s advantage coming mostly in the final sector, with the biggest speed difference on the straight between Turns 16 and 17, where deployment strategy and battery charging appeared to create a large gap. Mercedes focused on poor deployment into the final chicane, and Andrea Stella suggested the difference may be tied to how the drivers were operating the power unit. Mercedes has not found a definitive answer, while Russell said he hoped the team could find a fix before the Budapest race week.

Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz sharply criticized F1’s 2026 regulations after qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, saying the new cars are strong in the corners but too slow on the straights. Both drivers pointed to an about 50 km/h loss in the final sector when the battery ran out, with the problem particularly evident at Spa.

Sainz said the rules should never have been accepted and were “not good enough,” arguing that no one is enjoying qualifying as much as they did last year and that the Spa performance drop showed the regulations should not have passed on the basis of 2022 and 2023 simulations. Hamilton echoed that view and questioned how the current rule set was approved if simulations had already been run in 2022.

Sainz also said the energy-management limits were costing too much speed at Blanchimont and Pouhon, and warned that the first lap would be “tricky and sketchy” with active aerodynamics and close running up Eau Rouge and the Kemmel Straight. Battery deployment is capped at seven megajoules in qualifying, and poor energy retention could put cars at risk of falling under the 107 percent rule on high-speed circuits. Hamilton qualified poorly at Spa and was set to start from the third row, and said he would lean on his long-run pace in the SF-26 as he looked to earn a sixth podium of the season.

Max Verstappen renewed his criticism of Formula 1’s 2026 regulations after qualifying second at Spa-Francorchamps, saying the changes have made the Belgian Grand Prix circuit feel like “a different Spa.” He said the high-speed middle sector now feels more like driving a Formula 3 car with F1 downforce, and added that the lap was “not very exciting to drive.” Verstappen joked that he did not want to complain too much because “someone will shoot me outside the door” if he kept talking about the cars, and said he was trying to adapt before Sunday’s race.

Verstappen said Spa’s Sector 2 was effectively run on the engine alone, with little or no deployment under the new rules, and estimated the cars were producing about 450 to 500 horsepower in that section. He said the altered balance between combustion power and electric power was making the cars behave very differently at the track. Other drivers echoed the concerns, with Fernando Alonso having previously pointed to the same issue, while Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz all said corners such as Pouhon felt less like a corner and that the new rules had taken away some of the enjoyment of qualifying at Spa.

Drivers are hoping the situation improves in the coming years as the engine power split is adjusted in two steps. The target is for the balance to move toward 60-40 by 2028, but for now Spa remains the clearest example of how the 2026 regulations have changed the feel of Formula 1 driving.