2024 Belgian GP Qualifying Preview & Tips – JP
2024 Belgian GP Qualifying Preview
Now, it is time for James Punt’s 2024 Belgian GP Qualifying preview. You can check out his outright preview here.
2024 Belgian GP Qualifying
The lap of Spa presents the driver with a choice. How to set the car up? The track has three distinct sectors. Sectors 1 and 3 reward straight line speed while sector 2, a sector where corners dominate, rewards good grip. You need a low downforce set up to be fast in 1 and 3, higher downforce to be fast in the middle sector.
A higher downforce set up tends to give the better lap time, good for qualifying. A lower downforce set up will give a slower overall lap time, but it will make the car a better racer.
Overtaking here is done on the straights, or into the corners at the end of them. A slow car on the straights will find it hard to overtake, and hard to defend. Being fast in the middle sector is great for qualifying, but not good for racing.
However, before the drivers just go for low, there are two more things to consider. The tyres, and the weather.
Tyre Wear
A higher downforce set up will stop the tyres sliding in the high speed corners and that reduces tyre wear. Keeping the tyres in good shape pays dividends, so a bit more downforce pays off in that department. Then there is the weather. In the wet, you need more grip, that means more downforce. If you face a wet race, then higher downforce it is.
The double dilemma the drivers face today is that qualifying may well be wet, but tomorrow’s race is set to be dry (1% chance of rain). The points are handed out on Sunday, so everyone should go for the lower downforce set up, and just try to live with a slower car in qualifying, and not crashing.
Certainly, that make sense for the cars that are in the hunt for big points. However, the midfielders, and backmarkers could go for more downforce and try to gain an advantage in terms of grid positions, and then hope that the forecast is wrong.
Red Bull Fastest In Sector 2
Yesterday, in FP1 we saw Red Bull massively faster in sector two, clearly running with more downforce. The Red Bull is very aerodynamically efficient. It produces a lot of downforce, without creating the same kind of drag as the other cars. They can have their cake and eat it. They can be fast in sector 2 without sacrificing too much speed on the straights, but so can McLaren.
McLaren were half a second slower in FP1, but obviously put on a bit more downforce for FP2 and went a couple of tenths faster than the Red Bull. They now had a like for like set up and were faster. That is a fair reflection of the two cars’ performance right now. McLaren are the favourites, because they are faster.
Grid Penalty
Red Bull are further compromised by the fact that Verstappen will start the race in 11th place, at best. He needs a racey car. It surprised me that that they ran the car with a set up that was good for lap time on Friday.
It doesn’t matter if Verstappen is the fastest qualifier, he cannot start from pole thanks to his grid penalty. He needs a car that can overtake, and that means being fast in sector 1 and 3. The car is good enough for him to qualify reasonably well, even with a lower downforce set up.
The rules are that your set up is locked in at the start of the qualifying session. If the race tomorrow is declared wet, the teams can make some minor ‘climatic adjustments’, but if you have a ‘dry’ lower downforce set up, you are going to be stuck with it. If you set the car for a wet qualifying, but the race is dry, you are stuck with it.
Wet FP3
I am now watching a very wet FP3 and it is all very pointless. The fact that it looks as certain as you can be in Spa that we are getting a dry race, means the drivers should just bite the bullet, and set the car up for a dry race (lower downforce), and try not to crash in FP3.
Lance Stroll did just that. He caused a red flag after hitting the barriers and his mechanics have a couple of hours to repair his car for qualifying.
The drivers do not want to burn through their wet tyres in FP3. They will try to get a few sighters in, get a feel for the wet track, but there is little point in pounding round on a wet track. Stroll’s red flag was effectively the end of the session.
Nobody had done more than seven laps, Sainz and Magnussen did not do any. Verstappen went out just before the heavy rain hit and he ended up fastest, 1.5 seconds ahead of Piastri, but the session was a write off in terms of any kind of a form guide.
The stewards declared the track open with two minutes to go, and seven drivers took to the track on the full wets, including Sainz, who promptly went off, but escaped intact. No times were set.
Confusing
Just to confuse things a bit more, my forecast has the rain stopping before the start of the qualifying session, but more rain is forecast for the final 10-15 minutes of the session. Most drivers did a few laps, and that was enough. They should now all do the right thing, choose a lower downforce set up and do whatever is the reverse of a rain dance.
The better cars are better because they are more aerodynamically efficient. The two best cars are McLaren and Red Bull, in that order. Wet or dry, they should still be fighting for pole position.
If it were to be wet, that does introduce a random factor. The driver can crash, and the rain can come in variable amounts. The track may not be in a universal condition. A driver could be on their flyer, just as conditions get worse, or they complete their run, just as conditions improve.
Hard To Predict In Wet
I prefer a dry scenario, as it is a little easier to predict what should happen. However, if it is wet, you have to widen the number of possible contenders, but you cannot predict ‘luck’. A wet session is OK, but wet-drying, or dry-wet is not. Intermittent showers, no thank you.
This is not a qualifying session to get heavily involved with. It looks like we may have a damp-drying track to start with, but Q3 may be wet. Having any bet on qualifying is now effectively a double. A bet on the driver’s performance, and a bet on the weather, and betting on the weather at Spa is a mug’s game.
We had a rain affected qualifying session in 2021. Q1 and Q2 were run on inters, but the rain got worse for Q3. Norris, who was fastest in Q1 and Q2, crashed in the worsening conditions in Q3. It was back to full wets for the final runs and we ended up with Verstappen fastest, George Russell in a Williams second, and Hamilton in third. The top six were all from different teams.
2024 Belgian GP Qualifying Summary
We have a sub-optimal weather scenario, i.e. the weather is crap. Crap for driving in, crap for spectating in and crap for betting on. There will be those that see an opportunity. The chance to back a 2021 George Russell at huge odds, but that is just down to luck. In the end, it was Verstappen who got pole, and Norris should have if he wasn’t caught out by the downpour.
If you feel lucky, by all means throw some loose change at an outsider and hope to get lucky. Alex Albon, Nico Hulkenberg, Fernado Alonso? But be prepared to lose and keep the stakes small and make sure you get BIG odds. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy the show, in the expectation that Norris gets pole. He has the best car, and he is good in the wet.
Verstappen is the 2.50 favourite to be the fastest qualifier, which makes no appeal. Norris is 3.00 which makes more sense. Piastri, second in every session so far, is 6.00. The Mercs and Ferrari are in the 26.00 – 34.00 range.
Of the favourites, Norris at 3.00 looks the best bet.
What about the outsiders? Alonso is 101.00, Hulkenberg 151.00 and Albon 201.00.
I will keep stakes small and have one sensible bet, and three shots in the dark for minimum stakes.
