Belgian Grand Prix 2015: Winners and Losers from Spa Race

Lewis Hamilton took his sixth win of the 2015 Formula One season in Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

The reigning world champion dominated from pole position to claim victory and extend his lead in the drivers' standings to 28 points over Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, who struggled and stumbled his way to second place.

One of the most popular circuits on the planet, Spa has a knack of producing exciting racing and surprise results, and the Mercedes drivers were joined on the podium by Romain Grosjean, who secured his first top-three finish in two years.

There are, though, always two sides to a shock result, and while Grosjean provided some much-needed joy to his Lotus team, the likes of Ferrari, Williams and Nico Hulkenberg were left to reflect on a day of disappointment.

Here are the winners and losers from the Belgian GP.

After being outpaced by Nico Rosberg in the first two practice sessions, it seemed as though the Belgian Grand Prix may have been a damage-limitation exercise for Lewis Hamilton.

Yet the manner with which he turned his weekend around, especially following his lacklustre performance in the Hungarian GP, is yet more evidence of how formidable a performer the world champion has become.

His 10th pole position of the season was followed by a win that seemed as simple as his previous pole-to-flag victories in Australia, China, Bahrain, Canada and Britain.

But the beauty of Hamilton's triumph was found in his management of the race.

As reported by Sky Sports' Ted Kravitz, Hamilton—after making poor getaways in each of the last three races—prepared for the start under the expectation that there would, due to the new manual-start procedure, be an additional formation lap.

When Nico Hulkenberg's Force India self-destructed on the grid, therefore, Hamilton was better equipped to prevent his clutch from overheating, which no doubt allowed him to make a much cleaner start than Nico Rosberg.

Rosberg's poor getaway eased the pressure on the world champion on the first lap, yet his defence from Sergio Perez into Les Combes, the scene of the Mercedes drivers' collision in 2014, was smart and gave him the freedom to control the grand prix.

His reaction to Rosberg closing the gap during the virtual safety car, as heard over the FIA television feed, might in years gone seen Hamilton lose that control. Rather than panicking, he simply eased away at the front and sealed the win, strengthening his grip on the 2015 championship.

From the moment it was announced at the beginning of July, the revised race-start procedure was bound to create problems for Nico Rosberg.

It was, after all, at this stage last season when the German was severely harmed by the sudden cut in pit-to-car radio messages. The FIA's decision to introduce manual starts for Spa—as part of their push for drivers to compete with greater independence—risked leaving Rosberg exposed.

And so it proved, with Rosberg—now forced to find his clutch bite point without the guidance of his race engineer—suffering excess wheelspin off the line and dropping from second to fifth by the first corner, continuing Mercedes' run of substandard starts.

In usual circumstances, that would have left Rosberg facing a difficult afternoon, yet just like at Silverstone, the sheer speed of his car rescued him from a potentially disastrous and embarrassing result, allowing him to return to his customary second place after the first round of pit stops.

Despite closing in on his team-mate in the second half of the race, particularly under virtual safety car conditions, Rosberg was no match for the lead Mercedes and crucially is now 28 points adrift of Hamilton, meaning the British driver can afford a "did not finish" result and still retain the championship lead.

As the FIA take away his tools, Rosberg looks increasingly vulnerable in the title battle.

After their financial dispute with Pirelli in Hungary, as reported by Sky Sports' William Esler, Lotus suffered more embarrassment over the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.

According to Autosport's Dieter Rencken and Ian Parkes, a "legal battle" with Charles Pic has left the team running the risk of their cars being impounded at Spa-Francorchamps, raising more doubts over their short-term future.

Clearly Lotus needed a hero, and it was Romain Grosjean who assumed the role of the knight in shining armour, producing his finest performance of the season at a time his colleagues needed it most.

Regarded as a future world champion just two years ago, Grosjean has been a victim of Lotus' sad fall from grace over the last 18 months but offered a glimpse of what might have been at Spa.

The Frenchman was the undisputed star of Saturday, qualifying fourth, just 0.024 seconds behind Valtteri Bottas, according to the official F1 website.

A five-place grid penalty meant Grosjean started from the fringes of the top 10, but he became an ever-growing threat as the race progressed, pressurising Sebastian Vettel for third in the latter stages.

It is likely that Vettel would have held on to the position had his rear right tyre not exploded on the Kemmel Straight with two laps remaining, yet the four-time world champion's woes almost felt like an act of the sporting gods, letting Grosjean claim a very popular result.

It was his and Lotus' first podium since the 2013 United States Grand Prix.

From their wins in Malaysia and Hungary to their fightback through the field in Canada, Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel have performed several magic tricks in their first season together.

But the Belgian GP saw this supposed dream team endure their first truly miserable weekend.

In a qualifying session that was a free-for-all for the Mercedes-powered cars, who claimed seven of the top eight positions on the provisional grid, Vettel could only manage a distant ninth.

Ferrari's decision to adopt a one-stop strategy, after Pirelli's official website predicted a race of two or three pit stops, was a bold move, but it very nearly paid dividends as Vettel worked his way into third place.

It was, however, surprising the four-time world champion was not more assertive in calling for an extra pit stop when it became clear that Romain Grosjean would catch him before the end of the race.

Although an extra stop for soft compound tyres would have conceded his position, his pace on fresh rubber would have given him the freedom to attack, rather than defend, and possibly reclaim third at the end of the race.

And it would have certainly prevented the tyre failure on the Kemmel Straight on Lap 42 of 43, which left him classified 12th when he should have been celebrating an eighth podium finish of 2015.

Having suffered a technical problem in qualifying, meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen was unable to celebrate his contract extension with a strong result at the one race he has won on multiple occasions in Ferrari colours, with the 2007 world champion recovering to seventh.

The team's dominant display in the Hungarian GP inspired belief that Vettel could win the title as early as this season. But with the German now 67 points behind Hamilton, surely Ferrari's championship challenge will be delayed until 2016.

Ever since the end of his debut season in 2010, all Nico Hulkenberg has ever wanted and all he has ever needed is the chance to show what he can do with a truly competitive car.

Having spent his career stuck with midfield teams, that opportunity only comes on average once per season, and it is imperative that the German puts himself in a position to fully capitalise on those rare occasions.

But for whatever reason, Hulkenberg has never been able to do so.

At last year's Bahrain Grand Prix, for instance, Hulkenberg qualified a lowly 12th at an event where Force India had the pace to challenge for a podium.

His poor starting position meant that, on a day he should have finally achieved the result he deserved, it was Sergio Perez who took the team's first top-three finish in five years.

It was a similar situation at Spa, where it seemed as though Perez—despite enjoying a flawless weekend—was claiming the accolades reserved for Hulkenberg, who qualified 11th with a turbo problem, as he told the team's official website, before failing to even start the race due to a loss of power.

As such, it was difficult to observe Perez celebrating fifth on the grid, surging to second place at Turn 1, momentarily nudging into the lead on the first lap and securing Force India's best finish of the season without wondering what Hulkenberg would have done with the same machinery and a slice of good fortune.

Hulkenberg does the donkey work at Force India; Perez takes the glory. 

Saturday's GP2 feature race at Spa was marred by a horrific crash involving Daniel de Jong, whose attempted pass on a rival at Blanchimont left him requiring four hours of surgery on his sixth vertebra, per Sky Sports' William Esler.

To most racing drivers, his fate would have acted as a deterrent and a reminder to think twice before trying to overtake another car around the outside of a high-speed bend.

But Max Verstappen, it is clear by now, is not a conventional racing driver.

Spa's status as the most overtaking-friendly track on the Formula One calendar meant watching Verstappen participate in his first Belgian Grand Prix was always going to be one of the pleasures of the 2015 campaign.

And while a grid-place penalty left him unable to finish higher than eighth—albeit just two seconds behind fifth-placed Sergio Perez, per the official F1 website—the Dutchman's performance en route to his fourth points finish of the season was outstanding.

With De Jong's tyre marks still decorating the run-off area at Blanchimont, the 17-year-old made the corner his favoured overtaking spot, first nudging Fernando Alonso—Fernando Alonso!—aside before sailing around the outside of Felipe Nasr in his latest entry in the Overtake of the Season award.

In finding new passing places on an age-old circuit, Verstappen continues to change the way we thing about motorsport.

Due to the low-downforce characteristics of the FW37 as well as the Mercedes power unit, Williams would have identified the Belgian Grand Prix as a race where they could secure their first victory since May 2012.

But despite Valtteri Bottas securing the team's best qualifying result of the season with third on the grid, the Grove-based outfit were the least convincing of the three Mercedes customers.

The team appeared to adopt a poor setup, with Bottas and team-mate Felipe Massa extremely vulnerable in terms of straight-line speed—it is usually the Williams cars who blast past their rivals on the long straights—and finishing ninth and sixth, respectively.

The defining moment of their race, however, came when Bottas' car was fitted with three yellow-striped soft tyres and one white-striped medium tyre during his first pit stop.

It was the most fundamental, unforgivable of errors and a serious breach of the regulations, and the punishment delivered by the stewards—Bottas was handed a drive-through penalty but allowed to continue with the rogue medium tyre—didn't fit the crime.

It did, however, highlight a major flaw in the revised penalty system first introduced at the beginning of 2014.

While the more lenient penalties have had a generally positive impact on F1, preventing a single decision from ruining a driver's entire race, it seems the authorities no longer have a clear idea how to tackle rare incidents such as Williams' pit-stop howler and Lewis Hamilton crossing the white line at the pit exit in Austria.

Both incidents, in previous years, would have led to far more serious consequences—perhaps even disqualification, in the case of Bottas—and while the Finn told Motorsport.com's Jamie Klein of his disappointment of scoring just two points, he was fortunate to leave Spa with any points at all.

Not since the 2013 British Grand Prix have Pirelli found themselves under this much scrutiny.

On that afternoon, six cars—including those of Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Sergio Perez and Jean-Eric Vergne—suffered tyre failures as Formula One diced with danger.

And while only two tyre failures occurred across the entire Belgian GP weekend, the rear-right explosions suffered by Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel have hurt the Italian manufacturer's credibility once more.

According to the company's official website, Pirelli claimed there were "no signs of structural integrity issue of the tyre" following Rosberg's failure at Blanchimont in FP2, but couldn't offer a definitive reason why the accident had occurred.

That, of course, provided more questions than answers, and it seemed the answer was a little closer to home than first thought when Vettel's tyre went bang at the top—and thankfully not the bottom—of Eau Rouge in the latter stages of the race.

Paul Hembery, the firm's motorsport boss, endured a PR nightmare when he told Motorsport.com's Charles Bradley that Vettel's medium tyres, which had been used for 28 laps, were "at the end of wear-life" before claiming the true wear-life was "indicated at around" the 40-lap mark.

Vettel, for his part, was outraged, telling the BBC (h/t Autosport):

Things like that are not allowed to happen.

If it happened 200 metres earlier, I'm not standing here now, I'd be stuck in Eau Rouge.

I don't know what else needs to happen. ...

I didn't go off the track, just out of the blue the tyre explodes.

If this happened earlier then I'm f--ked.

It's probably not as bad as it was at Silverstone some years ago but it's not acceptable.

Pirelli repaired their reputation after Silverstone '13 and remained out of the spotlight throughout 2014, but these incidents will bring them back into the firing line.

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