Belgian Grand Prix: Rosberg wins and Hamilton secures impressive THIRD

Hamilton battled his way through from 21st on the grid after serving a series of penalties for three power unit changes, his progress assisted by numerous incidents.

Sunday’s win was the 20th of the Rosberg’s career and sixth of the season.

First, a slow-starting Verstappen – in front of an army of Dutch supporters – was gobbled up by the Ferrari duo of Vettel and Raikkonen before Vettel turned into his team-mate, with Raikkonen then bumping into Verstappen.

Further behind Jenson Button in his McLaren MP4-31 and Pascal Wehrlein in the Manor F1 collided, resulting in both cars being eliminated on the first lap. We did great selecting the right tires.

With debris scattered across the track, the virtual safety vehicle was deployed to slow the field down with Hamilton in 13th.

The race was briefly halted with nine of the 44 laps completed after a massive crash for Kevin Magnussen, who lost control of his Renault as he crested the fearsome Eau Rouge.

The Briton’s rise through the order was helped by the first-corner chaos that forced both Ferraris and Verstappen into the pits and by the safety vehicle and red flag deployed after Magnussen’s crash.

“First of all I’m incredibly proud of my guys in the garage and back at the factory for building these engines and changing these engines this week”, said third place Hamilton.

With the tyre barrier destroyed, the race was then suspended with further repairs carried out. Hamilton is not expected to take part in qualifying beyond Q1 in order to save fresh sets of tyres for the race.

“The stints on the medium tyres were really good and I felt really comfortable at the start on the softs too”.

Verstappen’s Red Bull team mate Ricciardo was delighted with his second-place finish having also made the podium in the previous two races in Germany and Hungary.

After the restart, he fought past Alonso and Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg to take the final place on the podium behind Rosberg and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo.

“In general, I had everything under control because I just had an awesome vehicle out there, and Lewis wasn’t there to battle it out, which made it a less-difficult weekend”.

“Congratulation to Lewis. From last to third must have been pretty impressive”.

“It wasn’t the toughest race of course because Lewis wasn’t there, that’s for sure”.

“That’s not what I was focusing on”, said Rosberg.

The teams now head to Monza for next weekend’s Italian Grand Prix. It was just a remarkable day.