F1: Belgian Grand Prix – live!

Lap 38/44 Bottas’s latest lap is almost a second faster than Hamilton’s. Are we to have some late drama? The gap is still more than 5sec.

Lap 37/44 Perez continues to surge through the field, slamming on the DRS and outsmarting Kvyat. The Racing Point drive is ninth and counting.

Lap 36/44 A crumb of comfort for Ferrari! Leclerc overtakes Magnussen for 15th place.

Lap 35/44 Hamilton is in cruise control out front, the lead up to 5sec from Bottas, who has 4sec on Verstappen. It’s a procession.

Lap 34/44 Perez blitzes Raikkonen on the straight. “It’s like taking candy from a baby,” says the commentator. Perez is back in the points.

Lap 33/44 Gasly storms past Vettel into 12th and the Ferrari locks up. Earlier we heard Vettel swearing down the radio that he wasnt going to pit yet. Will he change his mind now?

Lap 32/44 Latifi pits and comes out last, 17sec behind Leclerc.

Lap 31/44 Sergio Perez takes three tenths out of Raikkonen in the first part of lap 31. He’s on the charge, up to 11th and counting from 17th.

Lap 29/44 Vettel is being challenged for 11th place by Perez, the Racing Point driver on fresh tyres and with the bit between his teeth. After a short battle Vettel has no answer to Perex’s speed.

Lap 28/44 Bottas slips back to almost 4sec behind Hamilton. Is he going for the fastest lap point?

Lap 27/44 Gasly pits and returns last but one, only ahead of Leclerc. But what’s this. Leclerc has just put in his fastest lap.

Lap 26/44 Ocon roars past Gasly and has Albon in his sights. Albon is still on the medium tyres, so he may be vulnerable.

Lap 25/44 Lecelerc pits again. It’s unclear why, but this is an ordeal for the Ferrari driver. He rejoins the race in last place, 13 seconds behind the Williams of Latifi in 16th.

Lap 24/44 Albon flies past Gasly on the straight to take fifth spot, but when the Alphatauri pits he could be a menace again.

Lap 23/44 Verstappen is quietly going about his business in third, 1.6sec behind Bottas. Hamilton has stretched his lead to 2.8sec.

Lap 22/44 Albon and Ocon now have Gasly in their sights. He won’t be able to hold them off for long.

Lap 21/44 Ricciardo overtakes Gasly to regain fourth. Gasly gives up quite easily. He knows there are more important battles to fight later in the race, and he can’t compete on the old tyres.

Lap 20/44 Perez is last after his late pit stop. It may pay off late in the race to have newer tyres but for now it looks ill-judged to have waited.

Lap 19/44 Leclerc tries to get past Vettel in the battle for 12th. Vettel shuts the door. The two Ferraris touch but survive. That could have been disastrous.

Lap 18/44 Gasly is hanging on in fourth, matching Ricciardo’s times behind him on tyres 17 laps older than his rival. Perez heads into the pits.

Lap 17/44 Normal order has been restored and Hasmilton. is stretching his lead at the front from Bottas.

Lap 16/44 Anne Baecher has emailed in to admonish me. “Leclerc is Monegasque not French,” she points out. Apologies all round. The Monegasque is now down to 14th, after a scrappy pit stop, though at least he’s now on hard tyres. Vettel is up to 12th.

Lap 15/44 The safety car is in, bunching up the field after the restart. Is this a chance for Bottas and Verstappen to put pressure on Hamilton?

Lap 14/44 We’ve seen footage of the Giovinazzi-Russell collision. Giovinazzi spins and careers into the wall. His wheel comes off and bounces towards Russell, sending him into the wall too. Both men thankfully walk away.

Lap 13/44 Gasly and Perez didn’t pit during the safety car period and are now up to fourth and fifth respectively. Will that decision come back to haunt them?

Lap 12/44 Bottas gets out of the pits just ahead of Verstappen. Hamilton, Bottas and Verstappen all on hard tyres now and will hope they wont have to change again.

Lap 11/44 There is debris all over the track. The drivers are all coming in. It’s too dangerous to continue racing until the track is cleared.

Lap 9/44 Leclerc must surely change his tyres soon. He is going backwards horribly. The Ferraris are 12th and 13th. Depressing stuff for the famous team.

Lap 8/44 Gasly is in a raging battle with Stroll for seventh place, perhaps driven on the memory of his great friend Anthoine Hubert, who was honoured before this race.

Lap 7/44 Leclerc is now going backwards. After jumping four places off the grid he has lost three of them..Lerclerc is on soft tyres, while Vettel is on medium, and the Frenchman’s recent laps are the slowest in the field.

Lap 6/44 Bottas cuts the gap to Hamilton to less than two seconds. Can he challenge the championship leader.

Lap 5/44 Gasly is flying through the field. The Frenchman is up to eighth, after starting 12th on the grid.

Lap 4/44 Verstappen is dropping back from Bottas in second, but opening a gap to Ricciardo in fourth.

Lap 3/44 It was a decent start for Ferrari. Leclerc is up to ninth from 13th, while Vettel is up one place to 13th.

Lap 2/44 Perez is fighting back to overtake Gasly with Norris hot on their heels in the scrap for ninth. Bottas is already over a second behind the leader Hamilton.

Lap 1/44 The Mercedes are one and two, Leclerc is up four places in to ninth. Gasly and Magnussen also big moves on the opening lap.

Hamilton flies away from the start but Verstappen is pressurising Bottas with Ricciardo close behind in fourth.

Carlos Sainz explains what happened to his car. “I started smelling something not quite right and started hearing the exhaust had broken,” the McLaren driver says. “I went into the pits and heard it’s a fuel issue that generated a problem in the exhaust. Im not happy.”

There will be 44 laps of the 7.004km Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps today, and the start could prove vital. The expectation is that if Hamilton leads out of turn one he’ll win the race, but drama is common off the grid here. Race seven of this shortened 17-race season is almost upon us.

A reminder of the standings in the drivers’ championship as we move towards lights out …

1 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) 132 points
2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) 95
3 Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) 89
4 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) 45
5 Lance Stroll (Racing Point) 40
6 Alexander Albon (Red Bull) 40
7 Lando Norris (McLaren) 39
8 Sergio Perez (Racing Point) 32
9 Carlos Sainz (McLaren) 23
10 Daniel Ricciardo (Renault) 20

There will be a minute’s silence before today’s race in memory of Anthoine Hubert. The young Frenchman died in a Formula 2 crash at Spa-Francorchamps a year ago tomorrow. Pierre Gasly is wearing a “special helmet for a special friend”, he said two days ago, and he just posted this …

Max Verstappen will start third on the grid, behind the two Mercedes, while the Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon have looked impressive so far this weekend for Renault. Here’s the full starting grid.

1. Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes – 1m41.252

2. Valtteri Bottas – Mercedes – +0.511s

3. Max Verstappen – Red Bull – +0.526s

4. Daniel Ricciardo – Renault – +0.809s

5. Alex Albon – Red Bull – +1.012s

6. Esteban Ocon – Renault – +1.144s

7. Carlos Sainz Jr. – McLaren – +1.186s

8. Sergio Perez – Racing Point – +1.280s

9. Lance Stroll – Racing Point – +1.351s

10. Lando Norris – McLaren – +1.405s

11. Daniil Kvyat – AlphaTauri – +1.478s

12. Pierre Gasly – AlphaTauri – +1.493s

13. Charles Leclerc – Scuderia Ferrari – +1.744s

14. Sebastian Vettel – Scuderia Ferrari – +2.009s

15. George Russell – Williams – +2.216s

16. Kimi Raikkonen – Alfa Romeo Racing – +2.491s

17. Romain Grosjean – Haas – +2.586s

18. Antonio Giovinazzi – Alfa Romeo Racing – +2.698s

19. Nicholas Latifi – Williams – +2.886s

20. Kevin Magnussen – Haas – +3.062s

How has it got this bad for Ferrari? Sebastian Vettel is 11th in the title standings, 116 points behind the championship leader, Lewis Hamilton, after only six races. Charles Leclerc has not fared much better, the lack of power rendering their drivers unable to compete for victories all season, and only just staving off humiliation in qualifying at Spa.

The Ferraris have performed terribly since they arrived in Belgium, hitting rock bottom on Saturday morning when Vettel finished last in final practice. Eventually Leclerc and Vettel qualified 13th and 14th for today’s race, at a track where they locked out the front row last season. “There is not much more I can do,” said Leclerc after his final lap, swearing over the radio. Vettel’s disillusionment was just as palpable. “It is the true picture of what the car can do around here,” he said. “We tried everything.”

Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton’s dominance shows no signs of abating. His sadness at the death of Chadwick Boseman – and his desire to pay tribute to the actor he calls “the first black superhero” – seemingly driving the British driver to new heights. He broke the track record twice in qualifying, taking pole with a lap half a second quicker than his nearest rival, Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas. Can anyone stop Hamilton winning his 89th race to move within two of Michael Schumacher’s record total? Stay with me to find out.

Lights out: 2.10pm BST