As is usually the case, Hamilton got pole and led out of the first corner. By the time they got to Les Combes, Vettel was ahead and that was effectively race over, as Hamilton not for the first time at Spa, or indeed this season, gradually packed it up. He often does once the race isn't going his way. Last year there, Vettel was behind Hamilton but stayed with him most of the race, with an inferior car.
The safety first cowards had a great day hailing the Halo crap on the cars because of the first corner incident, the first such incident in 6 years. While nobody wants to see a driver suffer serious injury, Formula 1 comes with a certain amount of risk, that every driver accepts when they step into the car. La Source saw one of the most spectacular incidents in 98 in the rain. They didn't need Halos that day to be able to walk away and restart the race. And they probably wouldn't have had to this time either. We can have a start where it's everyone for themselves into Turn 1, or we can have a rolling start with zero risk. But that's not F1. It's standing start open cockpit racing at 300kph. Accidents and incidents are inevitable.
The most dangerous incident of the weekend came in the F2 race, with a driver struggling to get out of the unsafe car in time from a bad mechanical failure at Blanchimont, partly because of the Halo. While it took considerably longer for the marshalls to get there and deal with it. That wasn't tweeted by all the risk averse drivers and authorities gushing about the Halo, but it could have been far more serious. Despite having the same risks as other formulas, GP3 drivers managed to get round the circuit at the weekend safely, without needing it on their cars, as everyone else has for the previous 35 years the current Spa layout has been in use.
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