What a difference a year can make. When Kimi Antonelli packed up from Spa a year ago, there were those questioning whether his ascent onto the Formula One grid had come too soon.
His dreams of scything through the iconic Eau Rouge at breakneck speed never quite materialised as he ended P16 in the race classification having also retired from four of the preceding six races.
Fast forward 12 months and the only questions at Mercedes are about how and why he has catapulted so rapidly past his team-mate George Russell.
Qualifying for Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix was another case in point of the pair’s pace disparity as Antonelli romped to his sixth pole position of the season with Russell a lowly fourth.
At one stage, the Briton’s race engineer Marcus Dudley came over the team radio to explain how his charge was losing half a second a lap in the same machinery, most of it coming in sector two.
All sensibilities suggest that Antonelli will convert this latest pole into a sixth race victory this season. His win rate from pole is 80%, although his rivals can take some consolation from the fact that the last winner from pole at Spa was Max Verstappen back in 2021.
Verstappen will be alongside Antonelli on the front row of the grid for this edition, but rather than bullishly suggesting this was a major step towards a first victory of the season, he instead effectively swatted it away as a false dawn and attributed the placing to a tow from team-mate Isack Hadjar.
The Frenchman’s own qualifying was effectively null and void for the Grand Prix; he was consigned to the back of the grid after exceeding his quota of power units this season.
Twice, he gave the four-time world champion a tow, and at one point, the Red Bull team-mates looked dangerously close to colliding. But Verstappen hit back at any suggestion that the close call might have cost him.
“It was definitely helping me,” he said shortly after the session, “otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here – I would have been P6. Isack… did a really good job.”
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Rather than take the fight to the championship leader on Sunday, he suggested that staying on the podium might be a hard ask. “I think tomorrow I will be looking in my mirrors to the people around me,” he conceded. “I will just do my best and see if we can hang in there.”
For a time, qualifying threatened to be a close fight among four teams, but the Ferrari challenge of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who were fifth and sixth, was the first to falter, while last year’s race winner Oscar Piastri could only manage seventh.
But an honourable mention must go to Hamilton’s mechanics for even getting him on track, having bolted on a new floor, suspension and gearbox to get the car ready in time for qualifying after a costly crash in FP3.
Both Verstappen, cheered by swathes of the Orange Army who crossed the border from the Netherlands as they do each year, and Lando Norris held pole at points to give the home crowd something to cheer about as the sons of Belgian mothers.
But come the end of Q3, which had to be briefly red-flagged because of gravel on the circuit, Antonelli, on what is his father Marco’s birthday, was three-tenths of a second quicker than Verstappen.
Norris ended up in third, but has been hit with a 10-place penalty for exceeding his allocated number of engine parts. He talked of “still having some fun” in the race as he tries to claw his way back up to the business end.
“It’s great to be on pole,” said teenage polesitter Antonelli, who with each race weekend seems to take being champion-elect in his stride. “Of course, tomorrow is another day. I have Max starting next to me, so it’s going to be important to get a good start.”
As with Antonelli, much has changed for Verstappen too in the intervening 12 months. Last year’s Belgian Grand Prix was Laurent Mekies’s first as team principal following the sudden exit of Christian Horner.
And yet familiar problems remain. As with last year, the rumour mill is still in overdrive about Verstappen’s future. Last season, it was the links to Mercedes that wouldn’t go away. This time, it is talks with McLaren that have gained the greatest traction.
All the while, Red Bull co-owner Mark Mateschitz has been unhappy with Verstappen and his management for not publicly committing his future to the team. But then why should they when he has a clause allowing him to leave his contract early should he be outside the top two by this year’s summer break (which has now been mathematically confirmed)?
The message is the same under a different boss that he wants to stay put at Red Bull, but only if the car is quicker. Verstappen did at least concede that the car had been decent so far at Spa this time round. It has been safer too, with the removal of the failing Macarena rear wing which caused him to crash at back-to-back Grand Prix weekends.
This time, he looks on firmer ground. So too Antonelli. A year ago, the Italian, along with the driver he had replaced at Mercedes, Hamilton, failed to make it out of Q1. This time, he dominated qualifying, and the smart money is on him to do the same come the race for a fourth different winner at Spa in as many years – and increase his 25-point lead in the drivers’ championship.
Photograph by Sarah Meyssonnier/AFP via Getty Images