Sebastian Vettel furious after his tyre bursts as Lewis Hamilton wins the Belgian Grand Prix and extends drivers' championship lead

• Lewis Hamilton won the Belgian Grand Prix with a dominant performance  
• The Mercedes driver led from the front after securing pole position 
• Nico Rosberg came second and was followed by Romain Grosjean in third after Sebastian Vettel's tyre blew in the final moments
• Hamilton now leads the drivers' championship by 28 points  

By Jonathan McEvoy for the Daily Mail

Published: 08:31 EST, 23 August 2015 | Updated: 05:22 EST, 24 August 2015

Lewis Hamilton’s total mastery of the Belgian Grand Prix was threatening to send us dozing off when the right rear tyre of Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari went pop at 200mph.

He somehow kept the car on the track, but the third-place finish that waited just a lap-and-a-half hence suddenly went the same way as a million threads of his exploding rubber.

Vettel usually has the air of a gap-year student without a care under the sky, but he was furious. He sought out Paul Hembery, director of motorsport at Pirelli, the tyre manufacturers. The conversation was short and heated.

Lewis Hamilton was dominant once again as the Mercedes driver won the Belgian Grand Prix

Hamilton celebrates after winning the race and continuing his excellent form this season

The British star holds the trophy at the top of the podium after a crushing win in Belgium

Ferrari's Vettel saw his right rear tyre blow in the final couple of laps as he limped back to the pits

Vetell was livid about the consequences the tyre explosion could have had upon his safety

‘You told us the tyres could do 40 laps,’ screamed the German. Hembery contests that accusation, as we shall see.

Vettel then let rip in front of any notebook or microphone in the vicinity, suggesting that had his tyre blown moments before at Eau Rouge, the steep climbing corner that is taken foot to the floor, he may not have been long for this world.

‘If this had happened earlier then I’m ******,’ he said. ‘I was almost stuck in with the spectators. It’s unacceptable.’

Vettel, along with Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, raised questions about tyre safety at the pre-race drivers’ briefing.

Those three are real racers. They are not fainthearts. They were prompted by Nico Rosberg suffering a blowout in practice on Friday. That was the right rear, too. It was only fractionally further on from Vettel’s puncture on the Kemmel Straight.

Pirelli investigated Rosberg’s problem, reporting that the tyre appeared to be structurally sound and that an external force — such as debris — had penetrated the rubber. Rosberg was less than impressed, calling it ‘a theory with no real evidence’.

Vettel agreed. ‘It’s bull****,’ he said. ‘If Nico tells us he didn’t go off the track, he didn’t go off the track. Same with me. Out of the blue the tyre explodes.’ 

Vettel soon fled the circuit, his spokesman claiming he had a helicopter to catch before the weather turned.

Vettel sought out Paul Hembery, director of motorsport at Pirelli, for a furious confrontation afterwards

The 30-year-old beat team-mate Nico Rosberg once again and extends his overall lead

Romain Grosjean took advantage of Sebastian Vettel's burst tyre to finish in third place 

The Frenchman celebrates after finishing on the podium as Lotus picked up some valuable points 

How the drivers finished following the conclusion of the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa 

He left behind a febrile paddock. TV cameras crowded around Hembery, six or seven deep, on the lower of the two levels of a paddock built in the Ardennes forest. Hembery was irritated by the accusations that Pirelli were to blame for Ferrari’s plan to stop once. No other team did fewer than two stops.

He also pointed out that since the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 2013, when blowouts were occurring left, right and centre, his company had produced 70,000 race-worthy tyres. 

‘We have never told the teams how many laps they should be allowed to do on tyres because they do not want us to,’ said Hembery. ‘When we said the mediums would be good for 40 laps, it was not a guarantee; it was a mean average and that could vary from driver to driver and car to car.

‘No one told me that Ferrari were going one stop and if they had said that, we would have sat down with them to discuss it. You have to ask why the fastest team here — Mercedes — should be convinced they would need two stops and even considered three. And this is one of the toughest and longest tracks in Formula One, don’t forget.’

The 30-year-old described the win as a 'dream' as he extended his lead at the top of the championship

Hamilton celebrates with a bottle of champagne following another dominant performance 

Hamilton received a rapturous welcome when he arrived at the track in Spa 

The nub of it is that Ferrari took a gamble. They lacked competitiveness and devised a clever strategy to get round the fact, one that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff called ‘risky’. 

Ferrari were one-and-a-half laps from looking like geniuses, as Hembery noted wryly. And had they pulled it off, they would not have given the lion’s share of credit to Pirelli.

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