After a summer break dominated by driver movement, a retirement and many remarkable story lines, it’s easy to get distracted from what has been an epic battle for both the drivers and constructors’ world championships. With the summer break over and racing set to resume, the focus should rightly return to the two championship fights; Mercedes vs. Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton vs. Sebastian Vettel. After all, it’s the first year in the V6 turbo era that both championships have been neck-and-neck this deep into the season.
There may still be nine races left in 2018 but Sebastian Vettel, with a Ferrari that is arguably the quickest car on the grid, needs to make his move now. For the German driver, the Belgian Grand Prix objective is simple; finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton: “I spent my break relaxing with the family, swimming, running and biking” – Sebastian explains, as reported by the Maranello team’s official website – “Now we’re back to work on a circuit that we like so much because it’s a drivers’ track, where you can make a difference. As is customary after the break, we will have some developments on our car. The key from now on will be to keep the speed everywhere. I think we did a god job so far in progressing as a team, and that’s why I’m confident for the rest of the season. There have been races in which we had the upper hand in terms of performance and we didn’t get as many points as we could have, but the same applies to our competitors”.
The likelihood of a wet Belgian Grand Prix sits at around 70 percent with rain set to fall in the Spa-Francorchamps from Friday through to late Sunday. This means that, if accurate, a wet weekend is quite possible with very limited dry running set to take place. Although western Europe has been experiencing a heatwave for the past two months, the Eiffel mountains where Spa is located can often have its own weather system that changes by the hour.
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