Once it stopped raining and the track at Spa-Francorchamps dried, there was little change in the top ten points scoring positions for the 2025 Belgium F1 Grand Prix. Kiwi driver Liam Lawson continued his reliable and solid form finishing in eighth position and scoring valuable points.
“Liam had a near-perfect race, he managed his tyres exceptionally well, both on the intermediates and on the dry tyre,” commented Racing Bulls Team Principal Alan Permane. “He was strong and able to comfortably pull away from Bortoleto behind and was very happy with the car overall.”
After a long rain delay, the Grand Prix start got underway behind the safety car until Race Control was confident of racing in the rain. The race result, like many this season, was determined on the opening lap with Oscar Piastri passing McLaren teammate Lando Norris to lead for the remainder of the race. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc held third in front of Oracle Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
“I really enjoyed today,” said Lawson. “Often in those conditions you just want to survive, so I’m very happy for the team and how everything came together.
“It’s always tricky when you cross over to a dry tyre when it’s damp, but the car was fast and in clean air we had great pace. A lot of work goes into little details each weekend when the Championship is this tight, so now we need to keep the momentum rolling forward and make sure we enter the summer break on a high.”
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton’s decisive pit strategy throughout the race saw him move from 18th to finish seventh in front of Lawson.
Arguably the hard work had been done at the end of qualifying for Lawson, having moved through to Q3 and ninth grid position behind teammate Isack Hadjar. Unfortunately, Hadjar had an issue with his car during the race and finished 20th and last.
“Unfortunately, we had an issue with the car for almost the whole race and that made me lose quite a lot of lap time,” said Hadjar.
“There are only a few days to reflect on this race as we’re quickly onto Budapest (Hungarian Grand Prix) with a very different track and a very different downforce level,” said Permane. “It’ll be much hotter, and we’ve got different tyres, but we expect our car to perform well there, and we will have our usual target of getting both our cars into Q3 and in the points.”
Lawson’s Racing Bulls team are in a close fight for sixth overall with Sauber with just two-points the difference.
Overall Team Standings
1/ McLaren 516
2/ Ferrari 248
3/ Mercedes 220
4/ Red Bull Racing 192
5/ Williams 70
6/ Sauber 43
7/ RB 41
8/ Aston Martin Racing 36
9/ Haas F1 Team 35
10/ Alpine 20
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