F1 Spa: Charles Leclerc wins his first Grand Prix

At the weekend, Formula 1 super talent, the young Monegasque, Charles Leclerc celebrated his long-overdue first victory in a Formula 1 race at the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix.

Since the start of the Formula 1 season, Ferrari's "junior driver" has been delivering points after points in Formula 1 races in 2019. And time and again he has proven that he is even faster than his stablemate Sebastian Vettel, a four-time Formula 1 world champion in his own right. But he was always referred to his place behind "Seb" and the related stable order, but Ferrari itself now no longer wants to know anything about that, as Charles' brilliant results speak for themselves. This weekend he delivered an impressive qualifying session in which he took pole position and distanced his stablemate by a surprising 0.748 seconds. For the "Reds" this was also a super starting position to win the race in Spa and to close the distance to Mercedes in the WRC again.

The last doubt that remained after qualifying had not yet been dispelled, too often he had failed to convert obvious winning opportunities, and one wondered whether Charles Leclerc would be able to translate his massive advantage in qualifying into the race and finally take his first victory.

The start promised a lot of good things and was encouraging. Charles Leclerc pulled away right from the start and quickly built up a gap of 1.6 seconds. Behind him were Vettel and the Silver Arrows. Now it was all a question of tire strategy. But this time everything went according to plan, especially since Mercedes also chose the same tire strategy.

For Max Verstappen, the start was also the end of the race, as he collided with Kimi Räikkönen in the first corner and shortly afterwards shot into the side barrier because the car was no longer maneuverable. So the countless Dutch fans got to see virtually nothing of their star on race day, although Red Bull had certainly expected a place on the podium. Red Bull also made a name for itself this weekend with another story: the racing team had reassigned Pierre Gasly to the smaller Toro Rosso team in exchange for Alexander Albon from Toro Rosso to the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing team, who repaid the "promotion" with a 5th place behind the "Reds" and the "Silver Arrows".

In the end, it came as it deserved to: Charles Leclerc crossed the finish line first at Spa to win his first Formula 1 Grand Prix, closely followed by the two Mercedes and Sebastian Vettel in fourth place. Ferrari thus achieved its best result of the current season so far and was able to close the gap to Mercedes by 5 points.