some interesting comments,
" But when the biggest talking point in a race is one driver’s dominance
and his interactions with his own race engineer, you know you’re in
trouble.----- The two are like an old married couple at the moment,
snapping at each other, lobbing the odd laced barb in the other’s
direction,"

from
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2023/07/30/belgian-grand-prix-f1-live-latest-updates-spa/

Red Bull turn F1 into the Max Verstappen and GP show with eighth
straight win
30 July 2023 • 8:09pm
Max Verstappen - Max Verstappen extends huge lead with eighth
consecutive win at Belgian Grand Prix
Max Verstappen claimed his eight straight win of the season CREDIT:
Getty Images/JOHN THYS
KEY MOMENTS
Chosen by us to get you up to speed at a glance

Next race
Dutch Grand Prix on August 27
Verstappen wins
He roars to a crushing eighth win in a row, one short of the all-time record
Verstappen takes the lead
WATCH: Verstappen takes the lead from his teammate on lap 17
Perez leads
Piastri is out after clashing with Sainz on the first corner
Starting grid
1. LER 2. PER 3. HAM 4. SAI 5. PIA 6. VER
By Tom Cary, at Spa-Francorhamps

There were a lot of film references being thrown around at Spa on Sunday.

Lewis Hamilton suggested Max Verstappen was so chilled out driving
around at the front of the race, en route to his eighth race win in a
row, he was in “shmoke and a pancake” mode, a reference to the Austin
Powers sequel Goldmember, in which the Dutch villain offers the British
spy a spliff and a snack.

Christian Horner, meanwhile, compared Verstappen’s race engineer
Gianpiero ‘GP’ Lambiase to Jason Statham, the British actor known for
playing hardman types, as he battled to keep his fiery driver in check
during the race.

All very jolly. But when the biggest talking point in a race is one
driver’s dominance and his interactions with his own race engineer, you
know you’re in trouble.

The truth is Verstappen is head and shoulders above the rest at the
moment. Despite starting sixth on the grid thanks to a change of gearbox
on Friday, the Dutchman cruised to victory by over 20 seconds from his
Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.

Max Verstappen - Max Verstappen extends huge lead with eighth
consecutive win at Belgian Grand Prix
Despite starting from sixth place, Verstappen finished ahead of teammate
Sergio Perez to give Red Bull an easy 1-2 CREDIT: Getty Images/Joe Portlock
It was, as mentioned, his eighth win in a row. It was also Red Bull’s
22nd in the last 23 races. Verstappen has won 19 of them.

This one was never in doubt. Verstappen’s biggest fight was with GP,
which tells its own story.

The two are like an old married couple at the moment, snapping at each
other, lobbing the odd laced barb in the other’s direction, before
kissing and making up.

They had had one lovers’ tiff already during the weekend, on Friday,
when Verstappen accused the team of “s--- execution” in qualifying and
said he did “not give a f---” about scraping through to Q3 in P10 (he
later qualified on pole).

This time, after Verstappen questioned the team’s pitstop strategy,
Lambiase told him rather tartly: “Max, please follow my instruction and
trust it, thank you.”

tmg.video.placeholder.alt zHx0kdZv1XQ
That triggered a number of sarcastic exchanges between them in the
second half of the race, as Verstappen extended his lead over Perez with
worrying ease.

When Lambiase asked him whether he felt he could make his tyres last
with some rain incoming, Versteppen responded that he “couldn’t see the
weather radar”.

When Lambiase told Verstappen to “use his head” and questioned his
decision to use so much of his rubber on his out lap after a pitstop,
Verstappen banged in a fastest lap.

When Lambiase came on the radio again to tell him to save his tyres,
Verstappen suggested they could always do another pitstop “for the
practice”. “Not this time,” came the response.

He would still have won if he had done it.

In fact, so dominant is Verstappen at the moment, and so often are he
and ‘GP’ sniping at each other over team radio, it is tempting to ask
whether they have been asked to ham it up for the show, just so we have
something to laugh about.

“Absolutely not,” Horner insisted afterwards when that thesis was put to
him. “GP and Max have been together since the first race that Max
stepped into the car. Max is a demanding customer. And you’ve got to be
a strong character to deal with that and GP, you know, he’s our Jason
Statham equivalent, or certainly lookalike [Lambiase has a shaved head
like Statham]. And you know, he deals with him firmly but fairly.

“The problem is that conversation between the two of them, there’s 200
million people listening to it. But there’s mutual trust and respect.
There’s no counselling required.”

Verstappen, too, was adamant the exchanges were genuine, although he
admitted his contributions were probably “50-50” in terms of trying to
be funny and actually being serious.

“I know that the team doesn’t like to do another stop but I like to
mention it so they might get a bit nervous,” he said of the fact that he
was pushing more than his team were comfortable with, to give himself
the opportunity for a late stop and a fastest lap bonus point. “And then
I like the response [from GP]: ‘No, no, we’re not doing that today’.
It’s fine. We know each other very well and we have a very good
relationship.”

Behind Versteppan, Perez was a convincing runner-up from Ferrari’s
Charles Leclerc, with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton fourth, but taking an
extra bonus point for the fastest lap after he carved out a sufficient
gap over fifth-placed Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) to stop for some
fresh tyres.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, the star of Saturday’s sprint qualifying and
race, was forced to retire on the opening lap with damage after a
collision with the Ferrari Carlos Sainz, who also later retired,
prompting a dispute afterwards between the two of them over who was at
fault. Piastri’s teammate Lando Norris managed to finish seventh, behind
the second Mercedes of George Russell.

The day, though, belonged to Verstappen; the double world champion
heading into the summer break with a massive 125pt lead as closes in,
inexorably, on a third title. The only misstep was Red Bull managing to
smash the winner’s trophy for the second race running during their
victory celebrations. Then again, maybe that was staged too. This is the
problem when one team gets too dominant. You start getting cynical.

LIVE REPORTING
RELATED STORIES
By
Tom Cary,
SENIOR SPORTS CORRESPONDENT, AT SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS and
Harri Thomas,
LIVE UPDATES

4:12PM
Verstappen romps to another victory
Max Verstappen’s grasp over this season tightens. He comfortably won
today, taking the lead on lap 17 after starting in sixth on the grid.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was the race’s first casualty, the Australian
stopping by the side of the track after Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz squeezed
him against the wall on the opening corner.

The summer break now follows, with the next race – the Dutch Grand Prix
– on August 27.

4:06PM
Lewis Hamilton speaks with Sky Sports
I think it was a non-eventful race really. Not much going on. I wasn’t
able to keep up with the cars ahead of me, struggled in the beginnnig.
And we had big bouncing this weekend.

In the end I was keeping the Ferrari within a few seconds.

It was gusty out there, difficult to keep on track.

To me it is a concern [the bouncing]. But we’ll work through the data
this week and try and figure out what we do in the next race.

Lewis Hamilton
CREDIT: Shutterstock/CHRISTIAN BRUNA
3:59PM
Here's how Piastri dropped out on the first corner

3:56PM
Updated constructor standings
Constructor Standings - F1
Pos. Team W Pts
1 Oracle Red Bull Racing 12 503
2 Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team 0 247
3 Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team 0 196
4 Scuderia Ferrari 0 191
5 McLaren F1 Team 0 103
6 BWT Alpine F1 Team 0 57
7 Money Gram Haas F1 Team 0 11
8 Williams Racing 0 11
9 Alfa Romeo F1 Team Orlen 0 9
10 Scuderia AlphaTauri 0 3
3:54PM
Updated driver standings
Driver Standings - F1
Pos. Driver Team W Pts
1 Max Verstappen Oracle Red Bull Racing 10 314
2 Sergio Pérez Oracle Red Bull Racing 2 189
3 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team 0 149
4 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team 0 148
5 Charles Leclerc Scuderia Ferrari 0 99
6 George Russell Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team 0 99
7 Carlos Sainz Scuderia Ferrari 0 92
8 Lando Norris McLaren F1 Team 0 69
9 Lance Stroll Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team 0 47
10 Esteban Ocon BWT Alpine F1 Team 0 35
11 Oscar Piastri McLaren F1 Team 0 34
12 Pierre Gasly BWT Alpine F1 Team 0 22
13 Alexander Albon Williams Racing 0 11
14 Nico Hülkenberg Money Gram Haas F1 Team 0 9
15 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo F1 Team Orlen 0 5
16 Guanyu Zhou Alfa Romeo F1 Team Orlen 0 4
17 Yuki Tsunoda Scuderia AlphaTauri 0 3
18 Kevin Magnussen Money Gram Haas F1 Team 0 2
19 Daniel Ricciardo Scuderia AlphaTauri 0 0
20 Logan Sargeant Williams Racing 0 0
21 Nyck de Vries Scuderia AlphaTauri 0 0
3:50PM
Here's how it finished

3:44PM
Next up: Dutch Grand Prix on August 27

3:37PM
It’s an eighth win in a row for Verstappen, one short of the all-time record
Red Bull’s 13th consecutive victory made the team the first in the
sport’s 73-year history to win the opening 12 races of a season.

Max Verstappen
CREDIT: Reuters/Stephanie Lecocq
3:35PM
Max Verstappen speaks with Sky Sports
I know that we had a great car, it was just about surviving turn one. I
just thought: I’m going to stay out of that. I just got stuck in the
begining in a bit of a DRS stream, once I got out of that it was fine,
enjoyable.

This track is super hard on the tyres.

3:33PM
Perez speaks with Sky Sports
It was a good race for the team. We had a great start. I managed to get
through Charles who was one of the targets for today.

Afterwards it was just making sure we brought it home safely without too
much damage to the car.

3:31PM