If the 2020 Belgian Grand Prix lingers in memory for any reason, it’ll be because of Ferrari’s performance (and that potentially risks being overshadowed by upcoming tracks that look potentially less favourable).

But beyond the shadow of Ferrari and another victory battle that never quite was, there were some other Formula 1 drivers and teams having pretty bad days – and a number of others excelling.

Winners

Mercedes

Can’t really leave the team that cruised to a 1-2 out of a list of winners, can we?

With its 2020 level of domination, Mercedes just has to eliminate potential banana skins. An enforced long stint on the tyres is definitely one of those given what happened at Silverstone, but this time it was handled smoothly.

We’re left pinning our hopes on distant hints of possible drama – a trip over a run-off area, a radio report of a numb leg or power loss, some gloomy clouds in the sky.

But this team has enough in hand to cope with all but freak stumbling blocks now. – Matt Beer

Renault and Daniel Ricciardo

This was a brilliant performance from Ricciardo, underlying once again his credentials as one of the absolute elite.

Extracting Renault’s great performance on low downforce in qualifying, he did his usual thing in the race of combining pace with tyre conservation and then unleashing it all at the end. It was even enough to put the tyre-heavy Max Verstappen under pressure for third and taking fastest lap off Lewis Hamilton.

Ricciardo should never have been away from a top car these last few years. – Mark Hughes

Renault, and the battle for third

The 23 points Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon combined for at Spa-Francorchamps mark Renault’s best return from a grand prix since its return as a factory team in 2016.

That mantle has been taken, by virtue of Ricciardo’s fastest lap point, from last year’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza. And Monza is up next, so Renault has every reason to get pretty excited.

What might be even more exciting – both for Renault and for F1’s audience during what hasn’t exactly been a vintage campaign so far – is that the French manufacturer, though still sixth in the standings, now trails McLaren by nine points, Racing Point by seven and Ferrari by two.

Those are the ingredients for what will hopefully be a pretty gripping battle for third in the constructors’ standings – which, while not exactly a title battle, is also not nothing. – Valentin Khorounzhiy

Pierre Gasly

A lot of positives have been written about Pierre Gasly’s impressive season with AlphaTauri but this race deserves an entry in the catalogue.

He was combative on hard tyres early on to rise into the points, utilising the Monza-spec low-drag set-up to good effect in battle.

When AlphaTauri opted not to pit under the safety car to keep him on his original strategy, Gasly didn’t panic and did a fine job to maintain track position as best he could.

Once back in the pack, Gasly could easily have overdone it on medium tyres fighting back through the order. Instead, he carved his way through to eighth, ahead of both Racing Points and comfortably clear of team-mate Daniil Kvyat.

It was a fine return. – Scott Mitchell

Ferrari-beater Kimi Raikkonen

Twelfth place doesn’t sound like much, but this gave Kimi Raikkonen and Alfa Romeo ‘victory’ in the Ferrari-engined class.

It’s not often Ferrari has been beaten on merit by a customer team, but Raikkonen passed Vettel on his way to prevail in the battle at the back. While not exactly matching his four Spa wins, it was a triumph of sorts for the Finn. – Edd Straw

Losers

Antonio Giovinazzi

The Belgian GP on Sunday was preceded by the Formula 2 sprint race, in which a Ferrari junior finished first and a Ferrari junior finished second. Chances seem pretty good that at least one of the two – they being Robert Shwartzman and Mick Schumacher – will be in an Alfa F1 car next year.

So it’s definitely added pressure for Giovinazzi, who occupies the designated ‘Ferrari’ seat at the Hinwil team. The good way the respond to that pressure would be to assert dominance over Raikkonen and perform in such a convincing way that you retain your seat independent of any promotions from F2.

The bad way is to be outqualified by Raikkonen for a second race running, and then crash out from a second consecutive Belgian GP.

The 2019 shunt was costlier in terms of points, but in terms of career ramifications, this one might be worse. – VK

Red Bull’s tyre prowess

Max Verstappen is looking at his third place as a glass-half-full kind of result, as his tyre woes were so bad that he feared a puncture was “quite close” late on.

But that in itself is cause for some Red Bull concern, as the RB16 chewed through its tyres at Spa and left Verstappen in a “boring” third and Alex Albon on the defensive for most of the second stint.

Red Bull won the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix on tyre management and it’s been talked about being its big weapon vs Mercedes but on the evidence of the last two races, there’s not much Red Bull has in its locker – if anything, it looks worse.

Albon had hoped for an improvement in this area after working the rears too hard in Spain but a long stint on mediums and the relative pace of the Renaults eventually doomed him to sixth, even though his pace wasn’t too dissimilar to Verstappen’s.

It just so happened that Verstappen had earned a much better track position once they both shifted into quite extreme management mode. – SM

Former Belgian GP specialists Racing Point

Historically, Spa is good for this team but Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez came home ninth and 10th.

Given they opted for different strategies, with Perez not stopping under the safety car and Stroll on the orthodox strategy, it pretty decisively showed where the car was on pace today.

With Carlos Sainz not starting, this was an opportunity missed to close on McLaren and represented a big loss against Renault. Still, at least Racing Point pulled a few points on Ferrari… – ES

Valtteri Bottas

For the sixth consecutive race, Bottas lost ground in the championship to Lewis Hamilton, with the seven-point loss putting him 47 points behind his team-mate. Both the start and the restart looked like potential opportunities to prevent this, given the sheer length of the Kemmel straight, but neither was taken.

Where once the question was whether he could challenge Hamilton for the championship, now Bottas faces a battle even to take it down to the last couple of race weekends. – ES

Ferrari

The cars looked like part of the Class C fight in qualifying and adopted that position in the race as well.

Charles Leclerc’s heroic opening lap got him up to eighth, but it was a false dawn. He finished 15th on a two-stop strategy, two places behind Sebastian Vettel.

One Ferrari was beaten by an Alfa Romeo, the other almost by a Haas.

There are deeper problems to analyse after a miserable weekend, but even the most basic assessment of this grand prix yields Ferrari as a loser. – SM

Carlos Sainz Jr

Sainz qualified an impressive seventh and obviously wasn’t at fault for not getting to start the race, so his reputation won’t have suffered at all from the Spa-Francorchamps weekend.

On the other hand, having been forced out of a race in which his team-mate proved the MCL35 was quite competitive, Sainz then had to watch from the garage as his 2021 team got thoroughly embarrassed. In no context was this a good day for the Spaniard. – VK