Red Bull Motorsports
F1
And the overtake of the season award goes to: Pierre Gasly
Aston Martin Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen bagged another podium finish in the Belgian Grand Prix, as Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly pulled off the overtake of the season.
For the seventh time in 2020 the Formula One world gathered to battle it out, this time at Spa Francorchamps for the Belgian Grand Prix, considered by many drivers and racing fans to be the finest racing circuit in the world.
As with all the races this year, no fans were in attendance, but the action wasn't lacking in intensity, as Aston Martin Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen bagged another podium finish in third place and Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly pulled off a jaw-dropping overtake.
Spa Francorchamps sits deep in the Ardennes forest in southeast Belgium and boasts spectacular scenery and challenging elevation changes for the drivers, most notably the legendary Eau Rouge and Raidillon sequence of corners – a downhill run into an uphill series of corners peaking at a summit.
It's corners like this that attract thousands of fans to this part of Belgium and they'll be hoping to return in 2021 to perhaps witness a repeat of Gasly's audacious early-race overtake on Sergio Pérez first-hand.
Max Verstappen finished third to retain second in the Drivers' Championship
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Starting from third on the grid, Verstappen executed a superb defensive first lap of the race, skilfully repelling a keen challenge from Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault, to set about challenging the two Mercedes cars for the lead.
After 44 laps of racing, Verstappen made his sixth visit to the podium in 2020, finishing third behind the Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and race winner Lewis Hamilton, while Verstappen's team-mate Alex Albon came home sixth. The result means that Verstappen heads to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza second in the Drivers' Championship standings and still very much in the hunt.
Alex Albon scored sixth in Spa
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
The highlight of the race centred around Gasly, who executed a stunning overtake heading into the Eau Rouge and Raidillon section. Gasly pulled alongside the racing point of Pérez at the beginning of Lap 2 and hung on through the rollercoaster of corners to take ninth place on a part of the circuit where overtaking is reserved only for the brave.
Gasly's pass was made all the more impressive when Pérez appeared to squeeze the French driver towards the wall at over 290kph on the approach to Eau Rouge. Undaunted and not content with that scalp, Gasly soon made his way around last year's Belgian Grand Prix winner, Charles Leclerc, in the Ferrari.
By Lap 11, Gasly had made his way from 12th to fourth, when a nasty collision between the Alfa Romeo of Antonio Giovinazzi and the Williams of George Russell brought out the safety car, effectively resetting the race. A late-race pit stop for Gasly dropped him down the order, but at the chequered flag he'd made his way up to an impressive eighth and won the fan's vote as 'Driver of the Day'. Team-mate Daniil Kvyat finished just outside the points in 11th.
