Jenson Button dominates Belgian GP

McLaren’s Jenson Button rekindled his world championship hopes with a flag-to-flag win in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Button, who started the race from pole position, took full advantage of a first corner crash. The incident — triggered by the Lotus of Romain Grosjean — took out McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, the Ferrari of world championship leader Fernando Alonso, and Sauber’s Sergio Perez, as well as the Frenchman.

That left Button free to deliver an imperious drive and he controlled the gap to the chasing pack.

But despite moving to sixth in the championship, 63 points adrift of Alonso, Button — whose win was his first at Spa and the 14th of his career — played down his title hopes.

“This is a great weekend for the team, and for me as well,” Button said. “It is a good 25 points, and if we can keep fighting for victories like this there is still a small chance I can fight for that championship.

“But going to Monza, I don’t think about the championship. We go there to do best job we can and bring back home most points we can.

“As I said before the race, it is a massive long shot to win the title, but today proves you can claw back 25 points very, very quickly.”

Double world champ Sebastian Vettel eventually finished second, though his Red Bull was almost 14s adrift of the Englishman.

Kimi Raikkonen took the final step on the podium for Lotus, ahead of Sahara Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg in fourth. Felipe Massa rounded off the top five in his Ferrari.

After the race, while Hamilton preferred not to comment on the first-corner crash — though he made his views perfectly clear when, confronting Grosjean immediately after climbing out of his wrecked car, he tapped his forehead in the time-honoured way of indicating ‘nutter’ — the Lotus driver played it vague.

“I had a very good start and then boom, it was the end of the race,” Grosjean said “I haven’t seen the images and I need to see them to have any point of view.

“But the main thing is that everybody is OK. That is the most important for me.”

When Grosjean did see the frightening TV images of the crash, he saw that he moved quickly across the track at the start into the path of Hamilton.

The rear right wheel of the Lotus then rubbed the front left wheel of Hamilton’s McLaren and the impact sent Grosjean ploughing over the top of Alonso’s Ferrari.

Race stewards saw exactly the same footage and subsequently handed Grosjean a one-race ban and €50,000 fine for causing the first-lap pile-up.

“The stewards regard this incident as an extremely serious breach of the regulations which had the potential to cause injury to others,” a statement from the officials said.

“It eliminated leading championship contenders from the race.

“The stewards note the team conceded the action of the driver was an extremely serious mistake and an error of judgement.

“Neither the team nor the driver made any submission in mitigation of penalty.”

F1 Belgian Grand Prix — Results:

1. Button        McLaren-Mercedes           1h29:08.530;
2. Vettel        Red Bull-Renault           + 13.624;
3. Raikkonen     Lotus-Renault              +25.334;
4. Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes       +27.843;
5. Massa         Ferrari                    +29.845;
6. Webber        Red Bull-Renault           +31.244;
7. Schumacher    Mercedes                   +53.374;
8. Vergne        Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +58.865;
9. Ricciardo     Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +1:02.982;
10. Di Resta      Force India-Mercedes       +1:03.783;
11. Rosberg       Mercedes                   +1:05.111;
12. Senna         Williams-Renault           +1:11.529;
13. Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari             +1:56.119;
14. Petrov        Caterham-Renault           +1 lap;
15. Glock         Marussia-Cosworth          +1 lap;
16. Pic           Marussia-Cosworth          +1 lap;
17. Kovalainen    Caterham-Renault           +1 lap;
18. De la Rosa    HRT-Cosworth               +1 lap.

Fastest lap: Senna, 1:52.822

Not classified/retirements:

1. Karthikeyan   HRT-Cosworth 30
2. Maldonado     Williams-Renault 5
3. Perez         Sauber-Ferrari 1
4. Alonso        Ferrari  1
5. Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes  1
6. Grosjean      Lotus-Renault  1

F1 World Championship standings (After 12 of 20 rounds):

Drivers:

1. Alonso       164;
2. Vettel       140;
3. Webber       132;
4. Raikkonen    131;
5. Hamilton     117;
6. Button       101;
7. Rosberg       77;
8. Grosjean      76;
9. Perez         47;
10. Schumacher    35;
11. Massa         35;
12. Kobayashi     33;
13. Hulkenberg    31;
14. Maldonado     29;
15. Di Resta      28;
16. Senna         24;
17. Vergne         8;
18. Ricciardo      4.

Constructors

1. Red Bull-Renault          272;
2. McLaren-Mercedes          218;
3. Lotus-Renault             207;
4. Ferrari                   199;
5. Mercedes                  112;
6. Sauber-Ferrari             80;
7. Force India-Mercedes       59;
8. Williams-Renault           53;
9. Toro Rosso-Ferrari         12.

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About Jim McGill

Jim McGill is an award-winning motoring and motorsport journalist with more than 25 years' industry experience. He contributes to a number of newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Scotsman, Sunday Herald and AA Magazine.