Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is likely to win the Belgian Grand Prix despite starting 15th, Mercedes driver George Russell says.

Russell, who will start fifth, said: “Max is probably going to slice through and win the race pretty comfortably.

“I think he and Red Bull are just miles ahead of everyone.”

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who qualified second to Verstappen and will start from pole, said he, too, thought Verstappen could fight for the win.

“Especially with the pace Max has,” Sainz said, “as soon as there is a safety car, or even with the pace he has, with 42 laps he can come back and we have seen him do it before.”

Verstappen, who won the last race in Hungary from 10th on the grid, starts one place ahead of title rival Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, who also has an engine penalty and is optimistic of a strong result.

“With the pace we have in the car I want to move forward and be at least on the podium,” the Dutchman said.

Sainz said Verstappen’s pace over the weekend was “a bit puzzling – he was more than 0.5secs ahead of us in every (tyre) compound and every situation”.

Verstappen’s performance has been a blow to Leclerc, who is 80 points behind his rival and effectively needs to beat him at pretty much every race to have any hope of overhauling him to win the title this year.

Leclerc said: “0.7secs is a lot. They found something this weekend that is quite impressive. It is a big gap.

“I hope in Zandvoort [next weekend] it will change but before that we have the race tomorrow. We seem to be a bit more competitive [on a long run]. Let’s see how it goes.”

Another Ferrari error

Leclerc also had to face another Ferrari pit error, when the team fitted him with the wrong tyres for his sole run in final qualifying.

Leclerc went out on new soft tyres, and immediately questioned why he was on them. The team told him to press on and do the lap.

Afterwards, Leclerc said: “I mentioned it because I was a bit surprised, but it doesn’t change anything for the rest of the weekend.”

It was a relatively small error, but nevertheless the latest in a series this year – Leclerc has lost three potential wins as a result of mistaken pit calls, including at the last race in Hungary.

“It was probably a miscommunication,” Leclerc said. “I won’t go too much into details, but it was no big deal.”

It seems the plan had been to send Leclerc out on used tyres for that run, which did not matter in terms of grid position because of his penalty.

But it suggests Ferrari were trying save a set of new soft tyres for the race, because of the grip advantage afforded over a used set. That could be to gain places at the start, or to save to the end of the race to charge through then.

In itself, this strategy will surprise some teams.

Alpine’s Fernando Alonso, who starts third, said that “no-one will use the red [soft] tomorrow” because it was too fragile.

Hamilton says lack of pace ‘hurts’

It was another difficult day for Mercedes. Hamilton and Russell start fourth and fifth, but the seven-time champion was 1.838secs off the pace.

Hamilton said: “I never, ever thought we’d ever be two seconds off. It’s way, way worse than I thought.”

Mercedes have brought an upgrade to Spa and hoped that it and some rule changes they believed would affect Red Bull and Ferrari would bring them close to the front, but instead had their worst qualifying in terms of overall pace of the year.

Hamilton said: “I wish we had got it right and we had upgrades that put us forwards and we were fighting at the front but it isn’t the way it is.

“Believe me, it hurts. But you just have to laugh it off and say: ‘I am not fighting for a championship.’

“If I get too serious and too low, I have a responsibility to try and keep morale high. You can’t be discouraged. Yes, it sucks and it’s slow.”

Reminded that he was starting fourth and had a strong chance of continuing his run of five consecutive podiums, he said: “That’s how crazy it is. We’re really slow but starting fourth and maybe have a chance to get a podium, who knows… just have to be optimistic.

“This car this weekend has not told me it wants to win but maybe I will have a conversation with it tonight and tomorrow it will be a bit more responsive.

“We don’t know how fast or slow we will be tomorrow. That is the biggest gap we have ever had in qualifying, but what we do is talk about meetings we will have next week – where are we going to be with next year’s car? What we can take from our understanding of the data and apply it to make sure next year’s car is not like this one at all?”

Russell blamed tyre temperatures for the lack of performance, saying: “We are a little bit lost with the tyres, especially on a Saturday. It has been a limitation all season. The qualifying limitation becomes our race strength but we don’t have the right compromise.

“It is the inherent car limitations we have. Over the course of a season, we benefit a lot more on a Sunday than the limitations we have on a Saturday. We have probably only had three or four of 14 races that are really bad qualifyings – here and Imola and maybe Monaco. There is a clear theme and we want to find a solution but we don’t have an answer at the moment.”

Albon shines for Williams

Alex Albon went to Williams this year in an attempt to rebuild his career after being dropped by Red Bull at the end of 2020 and spending last season as their reserve driver. And, boy, is he making a good job of it.

The British-born Thai, a close friend of Russell, has produced a series of strong performances and Saturday was the team’s best qualifying of the year, Albon making it into final session for the first time and finishing it ninth. The various penalties promote him to sixth on the grid.

“The car has been feeling really good all weekend,” Albon said. “We knew we tend to suit the low-downforce circuits and we knew this was a chance to get into Q2, but to get into Q3 is a different ball game, so I’m really proud of everyone. We maximised everything.”

He said that he was aware of the potential of many faster cars coming through from behind him, but was targeting points, and said that his performance underlined the performance Williams have been making since a big upgrade was introduced at the British Grand Prix.

“We are P9 on pure pace,” Albon said. “That’s not on getting lucky or others getting unlucky. Everyone seemed to have clean runs and we were only a couple of tenths behind the Mercedes, so it shows that in certain situations we can really maximise what we have and get into those positions.

“But it is hard to get that consistently when everything has to be just right.

“We know the weaknesses of our car. This track hides them a little bit more than other circuits. We know going [to Zandvoort] next week it is not going to be as smiley as this week, but it gives us motivation and shows we are going there right way.

“We are making improvements, we are learning from the new package. It is going in the right direction and now it is about seeing what else we can do because realistically we don’t have any more updates this year.”