The door to victory is ajar but not wide open for Verstappen after penalty · RaceFans

In 2024, the only thing harder than beating Red Bull and Max Verstappen is to do it twice.

Although there have been seven race winners over the first 13 rounds of the season so far, only Verstappen has managed to successfully win more than one race.

But on Sunday in Spa, that may well change.

While the world champion may have been the quickest in Saturday’s qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps for the fourth successive season, he will not be starting from pole once again. Instead, he will be sat in the lower half of the grid when the race starts, thanks to a ten-place grid penalty earned from Red Bull taking a fifth internal combustion engine for him at the start of the weekend.

Instead, that leaves the door wide open for his many rivals to take advantage. Monaco Grand Prix winner Charles Leclerc will start from pole position with the only win-less driver from the top four teams – Sergio Perez – alongside him. Behind them, the season’s five other winners line up neatly – Lewis Hamilton (Britain), Lando Norris (Miami), Oscar Piastri (Hungary), George Russell (Austria) and Carlos Sainz Jnr (Australia).

Although Verstappen has looked the fastest driver at Spa once again, he is facing a harder drive through the field than he ever has in the ground effect era. So the door is very much open for one of those starting in the top seven places to take advantage.

Can Ferrari be the ones to do it? After several frustrating rounds in the doldrums following Leclerc’s win in Monaco, Leclerc surprised himself and likely his opposition by going second fastest and, thus, securing pole. But despite it being easy to dismiss Ferrari’s chances given their recent performance, team principal Frederic Vasseur is not playing down his team’s prospects.

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“I think it was quite difficult to read on Friday on the long stints,” Vasseur told the official F1 channel. “We had decent pace, good pace.

“For sure tomorrow it be a long stint, the track will be green with the rain of today and it will be probably a different story. But we can be quite confident because, so far, we are always a bit faster on the race than in quali.”

With Verstappen down the field, can Perez finally find a way to end his more than year-long win drought? After making major changes to his car over Friday night, Perez…