Round 10 of the 2026 season takes Formula One to Belgium and Spa-Francorchamps this weekend, and few venues get drivers as excited as the one buried deep in the Ardennes forest.
Spa is the longest lap on the calendar at just over seven kilometres, which means the race runs to only 44 laps, the fewest all year. It is a proper old-school test, with the famous Eau Rouge and Raidillon sequence flicking uphill towards the long Kemmel Straight and fast corners that reward commitment. The lap is so long that it can be pouring rain in one part while another stays dry.
The weather is worth watching. The forecast has improved since the start of the week, but showers remain possible across the weekend, with Saturday qualifying currently carrying the greatest storm risk and rain still possible on Sunday morning.
Nobody at Spa places much faith in a forecast for long, though. Add in the demands of the new engines on such an energy-hungry circuit, a tightening title race, and a driver market threatening to rearrange the grid, and there is plenty to chew on.
Here are the best talking points looking ahead to the Belgian GP:
Antonelli's lead melting away
Kimi Antonelli arrived at Barcelona three races ago with a 66-point cushion over his nearest rival. He goes to Spa with just 25 in hand over Mercedes teammate George Russell.
The teenager has been quick everywhere, but his Mercedes has let him down at the worst moments. A battery problem in Barcelona ended a certain second place, and at Silverstone he had started from pole and was reeling in Charles Leclerc for the lead when a shield around his front-left wheel gave way, sending the car off track and ruining his afternoon. He finished well outside the points.
Toto Wolff has been vocal that a part like that should never have broken, and that the team cannot fight for a title while throwing away big points to problems it does not even see coming. That is the worry going into Spa, whose long straights should suit the car. The pace is there, but so is the nagging fear of another failure at the wrong moment.
Antonelli insists he will keep attacking rather than nurse his advantage, saying he needs to “race freely, without worrying about anything else”.
Ferrari contenders, but how long can they let both drivers race?
Ferrari have won two of the past three races and now have a realistic shot at their first drivers' title since 2007. Lewis Hamilton broke through for his first win in red at Barcelona, then Leclerc beat him fair and square at Silverstone. Hamilton now sits third, 32 points behind Antonelli, close enough that the season is no longer just about damage limitation.
So should Ferrari start favouring one driver? With a car that is quick but probably still short of the Mercedes, some pundits have argued that Scuderia’s strongest chance would be to get behind Hamilton now and ask Leclerc to support him, though the team has given no sign it plans to.
It would not be simple either, because Leclerc has just won, sits on a fresh long-term contract, and would not take kindly to standing aside weeks later. Team boss Fred Vasseur has repeatedly rejected any talk of favourites, insisting both his drivers are free to race.
Verstappen can walk away from Red Bull – and everyone knows it
Max Verstappen's future has been the paddock's favourite subject all year, and after Silverstone it became urgent. His retirement there means he is now guaranteed to be outside the top two at the summer break, which reportedly activates a performance clause allowing him to leave before 2027.
He has been linked with McLaren, although McLaren insist they are happy with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen was reportedly unhappy at Silverstone after a rear-wing failure pitched him off at high speed, a fault he called “super dangerous”. It followed a similar wing problem in Austria.
A photograph then appeared of his father Jos Verstappen, manager Raymond Vermeulen and former Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko meeting at an Amsterdam hotel, and Dutch television analysts suspect it was leaked deliberately, reading it as a signal that his camp is weighing its options, though no details about the meeting have been revealed.
On the other hand, his management has already put next year's Verstappen grandstand tickets on sale for the Austrian race, which hardly suggests a man planning to walk away.
Piastri's future is the domino that could reshape the whole grid
Piastri's situation is the piece that makes the Verstappen saga so combustible, because if the Australian moves, a top seat opens and the whole grid can shift.
The rumour doing the rounds is that Piastri, unhappy since last season's team orders repeatedly favoured Norris, could walk away from McLaren early and clear a path for Verstappen, with Piastri himself heading to Red Bull as its clear No 1.
It is a neat swap on paper, and the rumours refuse to go away, but the people closest to driver and team are adamant there is nothing in it.
Piastri's manager, Mark Webber, has dismissed the idea outright, calling talk of his driver agitating to leave “nonsense” and stressing that Piastri is contracted to McLaren for the foreseeable future.
Piastri has said much the same, pointing to a contract in place and repeated reassurances that the team are happy with him. McLaren boss Zak Brown has been just as blunt, noting that any time a name like Verstappen is floated, people get excited, but that he is very happy with the two drivers he has.
The denials are firm, yet the rumours persist, because as long as Verstappen's own future is unsettled, Piastri's name will be dragged into it. There are two more races, Spa and Hungary, before the summer break.
Spa will expose which cars are yet to master the new rules
Spa is one of the toughest tracks of the year for the new engines, and how teams cope could shuffle the order in ways the points table does not predict.
This year's power units aim for roughly an even split between petrol and electric power, with the electric motor adding up to 350kW, but the battery only holds so much before it runs flat. Spa's long full-throttle stretches drain it quickly, while the length of the lap and its few heavy braking zones limit the chances to recover it.
Drivers cannot use full electric power everywhere, so they choose which straights to spend it on and ease off elsewhere, and a car caught with a flat battery on a straight is suddenly slow. Fernando Alonso put it bluntly, warning that if you use it all early, it is “finito for the rest of the lap”.
This matters most for Red Bull. F1 has removed DRS and brought in active aerodynamics, where the driver manually switches the wings into a low-drag Straight Mode in set zones before they return to their high-grip setting under braking or at the end of the zone. The FIA has set five of these zones at Spa, the joint-most at any circuit this season alongside Australia.
That is the problem for Red Bull, because Verstappen's Silverstone crash came when his rear wing did not return to its normal setting cleanly off a straight, robbing the car of grip at speed, and it followed a similar wing problem in Austria a fortnight earlier. The design is used by Red Bull and Ferrari, and the FIA is reportedly examining whether it is safe.
