Winners and losers from the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix qualifying

Oliver Harden
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A two-way split image of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris with a PlanetF1.com 'qualifying winners and losers' banner positioned centre-bottom

Have McLaren handed the initiative to a penalised Max Verstappen after missing out on pole at Spa?

Max Verstappen went fastest in F1 2024 Belgian Grand Prix qualifying, but Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc will start from pole position after starring on Saturday at Spa.

Here are the main winners and losers from qualifying…

Winners

Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen overcame a grid penalty at Spa in both 2022 (14th on the grid) and 2023 (sixth). Don’t rule out the possibility of him making it a hat-trick on Sunday.

Having been frustrated with the balance of his RB20 over recent races, this was much more like it – in the wet anyway – as he eased to only his second pole position since Imola.

With a 10-place grid penalty hanging over him, Verstappen committed to a higher-downforce rear wing.

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It not only served him well in qualifying (with a 0.595s advantage over Charles Leclerc in P2) but promises to benefit him with tyre management in what is expected to be warmer conditions on race day.

McLaren will probably – just about, on balance – start as favourites on Sunday.

But if Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri waste time making their way to the front of the field – or, heaven forbid, start fighting among themselves – Verstappen will be right there to pounce.

Sergio Perez

Credit where it’s due: this was a much-improved performance by Sergio Perez, albeit with that all-too-familiar six-tenth gap to Verstappen inviting others to slot in between them.

Yet is it too little, too late?

PlanetF1.com revealed ahead of qualifying at Spa that Red Bull will hold a shootout test between Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson at Imola next Wednesday as thoughts turn to who may replace Perez for the second half of the F1 2024 season.

With Verstappen down the order, the Belgian GP is a scenario almost specifically designed to test Perez’s suitability as Red Bull’s number two and whether he can step up when his team-mate encounters trouble.

Starting second, and with the RB20’s famous straight-line advantage in his favour, Perez has the perfect opportunity to tow Leclerc up the hill and take a first-lap lead.

It is essential that he does so if he is to avoid this being Sergio’s last stand.

Charles Leclerc

Has Charles Leclerc ‘done a Sergio Perez’ himself over the last few months?

Since winning in Monaco at the end of the May, in what will likely remain the peak of his F1 2024 season, he has been conspicuous by his absence over recent races, allowing his standards to slip.

He has been frustrating at times, getting involved in certain incidents he really shouldn’t be anymore in this, his seventh full season in F1.

Yet Leclerc has always retained the capacity to do this, detonating a lap right at the end of Q3 to flatter his machinery.

A mid-season change to his tyre prep was key to this result, Charles pacing his Pirellis better on the outlap to ensure they were in the right window at the start of his flier.

He admitted later that, before the session, he would have considered fifth on the grid a good result.

With Verstappen’s penalty, he will start from pole. Stunning.

Losers

McLaren

McLaren thought they had Verstappen right where they wanted him here, starting down in the midfield, only for the rain to come along and ruin their best-laid plans after a one-two in a dry FP2 on Friday.

They would still have fancied their chances if they only had the Perez car starting ahead of them on the grid, but three?

That complicates things. Now there is doubt.

Just enough doubt, you might say, for Red Bull to use to their advantage on Sunday.

Carlos Sainz

Have Ferrari dropped the wrong driver for 2025? That’s the question a lot of people have been asking this year.

And the answer is no, they haven’t. Why?

Because, at his best, Leclerc is capable of touching heights Carlos Sainz just cannot reach.

There is no shame in that and, indeed, Sainz was the faster of the Ferrari drivers in both Q1 and Q2.

Sainz was left to complain about a lack of tyre temperature for his final run, suggesting he had perhaps not followed Leclerc’s template on the outlap.

But when all was said and done, the 0.723s gap between them was a reminder that there are levels in sport.

Sainz is at one level; Leclerc, when all is right in his world, is at a different level entirely.

Haas

These are usually the Nico Hulkenberg conditions, his evergreen touch and feel in the wet winning him some eye-catching results over the years, most recently sixth on the grid at Silverstone just a few short weeks ago.

He wasn’t even a factor in this session, qualifying a couple of tenths quicker than team-mate Kevin Magnussen with Haas the only team to lose both cars in Q1.

Opportunity often knocks for teams of Haas’s stature in these conditions, but Hulkenberg was left to bemoan a lack of intermediate running for his unusual lack of pace in the wet.

Read next: Daniel Ricciardo v Liam Lawson: Red Bull shoot-out planned at Imola

Red Bull Charles Leclerc Max Verstappen Sergio Perez

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