Verstappen cruises to Belgium Sprint win from Piastri

Max Verstappen roared past Oscar Piastri to win a heavily-rain affected and reduced Formula 1 Sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix.

Two rain cells passed over the circuit at the 17:05pm local time start, leading to a half-hour delay with cars setting off on the formation lap at 17:35pm for five sighting laps.

Once the Safety Car came in, half of the drivers dived into the pits for a switch to Intermediate tyres but leader Verstappen did not with Red Bull concerned about him being held while other cars filtered past.

Second-placed Piastri did pit, and undercut Verstappen for the lead once the World Champion stopped on the second lap, but Piastri's time in the lead was short-lived.

Fernando Alonso spun off at Pouhon while chasing Nico Hulkenberg's Haas having lost out in the stop sequence, triggering a two-lap Safety Car.

On the restart, Piastri went early, but Verstappen rocketed past the high-downforce McLaren on the Kemmel Straight.

Verstappen pulled away to win by seven seconds from Piastri with Pierre Gasly taking third for Alpine - capitalising on pitting in the first batch of drivers to vault up from his sixth on the grid.

Hamilton penalised

Lewis Hamilton did take fourth on the road for Mercedes, but was handed a five-second time penalty by stewards for causing a collision with Sergio Perez.

The two made contact exiting Stavelot on Lap 7 of an 11-lap affair, with stewards handing the sanction that demoted Hamilton to seventh at the flag.

Carlos Sainz inherited fourth for Ferrari, ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc with Lando Norris in sixth.

Geroge Russell finished a tenth behind the penalised Hamilton for the final point, with Esteban Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo rounding out the top 10.

Perez and Alonso both retired from the race - meaning Verstappen now has a 108-point lead in the Drivers' Championship over Perez.