Once more, the weather at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps provided controversy in the Formula 1 paddock and the fandom. As had been the case in the infamous 2021 event, rain arrived shortly before the start of the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix and race control decided to abort the start sequence. Thankfully, unlike the 2021 event, the rain eventually passed over and thus Liberty Media and the race promoters were not in a position where they had to defraud the ticket-buying audience again. At 16:20 local time, the cars exited the pits behind the safety car and with the end of lap 4, said safety car pulled out of the way to let Lando Norris lead the field into racing action.

As is often the case in these situations, the intermediate tyres used in the safety car phase were discarded relatively quickly. By the time a quarter of the race was done, teams were beginning to toss away said tyres for mediums. The decision to wait for as long as race director Rui Marques did was not met favourably by all twenty competitors on the grid. While some drivers claimed to seriously struggle with visibility even on the safety car laps, both Max Verstappen and Sir Lewis Hamilton wondered on the team radio what race control was waiting for and they were joined by Franco Colapinto in wondering why race control chose a flying start.

Of course, the media was quick as usual to encourage the drivers to make their feelings known after the race. The aforementioned Hamilton and Verstappen both said they could have had a proper standing start and started earlier respectively. They were met with opposition by Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri, who agreed with the decision to play it safe. It was also pointed out that the tragic deaths of Anthoine Hubert and Dilano van ‘t Hoff at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps were a valid argument to be particularly careful at this venue. Fan debate also raised considerations mentioned in 2021 like keeping parts of the track under a perpetual yellow flag until they were safe enough to race properly on.

The author did not turn on the race broadcast until a few minutes before the announcement of the new starting time. Therefore, he will not bother with giving an opinion right now on whether race control were right or wrong to make the move, whether they should have started earlier or later, whether it should have been a rolling or standing start or whether the original start should have even been aborted.

Instead, he will encourage the reader to take a look at a few examples of severe wet conditions throughout history, as there is one thread that will become apparent regarding whom fans should listen to when it comes to deciding whether an event is safe or not to start.

The first and perhaps most infamous example is the 1976 German Grand Prix. Wet weather on Saturday spelled danger, a danger that Niki Lauda was more than aware of. The by-then primitive and unsafe Nordschleife caused Lauda to request a vote on the cancellation. That vote did not go the Austrian’s way. Sure enough, on the drying track, Lauda suffered a severe accident that left him on the verge of death and caused disfiguring scars.

Jumping forward in time to one of Niki Lauda’s later teammates: Alain Prost. The 1989 Australian Grand Prix was thrown in disarray when a rain storm hit the track on Sunday. The organisers and the FIA had prepared for that eventuality and ran another warm-up session to allow teams to prepare for the wet race. Alain Prost crashed out of the session and felt that the weather was not suitable for racing. He joined forces with Gerhard Berger to get race control to move the start of the Grand Prix by a few hours, being willing to organise a driver strike. Unfortunately, they failed to organise the backing of anyone other than Riccardo Patrese and Thierry Boutsen when making their demands. Prost would go on to withdraw from the race after doing one lap. While the race did see its full two-hour duration run in the end, it is honestly a miracle nobody but Piercarlo Ghinzani – in his final Grand Prix – picked up so much as an injury, let alone worse. Ayrton Senna crashed out in a desperate attempt to keep his theoretical title dreams alive. The Brazilian would go on to say that he would have joined Prost in his withdrawal if there had not been the small chance of becoming world champion.

The same line of thinking would provoke Ayrton Senna into starting the 1991 Australian Grand Prix. Only two years after the horrible rain at Adelaide, an even worse shower came down on the street circuit ahead of the 1991 season finale. Officially, this race would only last 14 laps. Senna famously gestured for a red flag while driving. In the post-race interview, Senna said the race was worse than the 1989 Grand Prix and would have not started if he felt not obligated to secure McLaren’s 1991 constructor’s title. 

Another jump forward to the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix. The 805th world championship Grand Prix saw a massive storm drop gallons of water on the circuit. Formula 1 obviously hoped to be able to continue the race, but Fernando Alonso made his feelings clear. Telling his team that there would be a chance of a major incident if the race were to become green again, Alonso was ahead of the curve. The race would not be restarted, as the skies turned dark, leaving Jenson Button the winner to take the five points on offer for the win of a Grand Prix that saw less than 75% of the scheduled distance completed.

The thread connecting these samples is very simple and the savvy reader may have already recognised them: these drivers all, at the time of these incidents, had a very solid case to be called the best Formula 1 driver on the planet. As the famous scene in the movie Rush pointed out, Niki Lauda was the reigning world’s champion and had managed the first and only Formula 1 qualifying lap around the old Nordschleife with a sub-7:00 time. Alain Prost is arguably the greatest driver of all time and had de facto locked up the 1989 title by the time Adelaide rolled around. As he had been booted out ahead of the 1991 Australian Grand Prix for pointing out Ferrari’s usual state of being – failure – Ayrton Senna had inherited the sceptre of the best driver (no offence to any Nigel Mansell fans). Fernando Alonso also was, while his reputation had taken hits as the consequence of his issues with McLaren, generally accepted as the best driver in the sport.

This is not and cannot be useful information to race directors. To make use of that knowledge in their decision-making, they not only would need to determine the best driver alive at any point ahead of a wet race, they would need to figure out if the driver may be affected by biases (as the two Senna examples show). The author would personally deny the latter for the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix, as it is safe to say that the wet conditions would not have stopped the superior McLaren package from running away with the victory regardless of when the race would have happened. There is a realistic chance one of the McLaren drivers would have crashed (one need only remember qualifying for the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix), but the author does not think Verstappen was expecting both McLaren drivers to be unable to handle the wet track.

However, for the debate within fandom, this is a useful thing to keep in mind. Generally, there is nobody who knows better than the drivers whether a race is safe or not to go ahead. However, among drivers there are the elite and then there is the very much not-elite (this site is about celebrating the latter, after all) – and who knows better where the edge is than those the closest to it.

Therefore, all things considered, when Max Verstappen, the undisputed best driver in Formula 1, said race control took too long to restart and that the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix could have been started earlier with a standing start, the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix should have been started earlier and it should have been a standing start.

Simple as.

Sources: BBC, formula1.com, motorsport-total.com, racefans.net

Image sources: heute.at (licensed under CC BY 4.0, re-sized), Juan Pablo Donoso (licensed under CC BY 2.0, re-sized)