Red Bull in freefall, are they?

Max Verstappen won the first race since the sudden sacking of Christian Horner – a first-lap overtake setting up the Red Bull man for victory in the sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix.

With Horner watching on his sofa at home for the first time since 2004, Verstappen showed his timeless class to claim the team’s maiden win of any sort since Imola in May.

It was an immediate fillip for Horner’s replacement, Frenchman Laurent Mekies, who took over a fortnight ago. He has not had time to work miracles, which suggests Red Bull are not quite down the pan.

‘Well done, Max,’ Mekies told Verstappen over the radio. ‘Very, very impressive defence, very well controlled. You didn’t leave anything on the table there.’

‘Thank you, Laurent,’ replied the four-time champion.

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Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the first race since the sudden sacking of Christian Horner

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Horner was watching from his sofa for the first since 2004 as Verstappen showed his class

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The former team principal has been replaced by Laurent Mekies, who congratulated Verstappen on his victory

In claiming victory, Verstappen took advantage of a skinny rear wing, which helps achieve superior straight-line speed, as well as a tow along the Kemmel Straight, to make the decisive pass on McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, the pole man, at Les Combes.

Could Piastri come back as DRS was enabled? No, Verstappen clung on but the two of them were nose to tail for all the 15-lap appetiser for Sunday’s main event.

Piastri had superior speed in the middle sector but was in dirty air, and Verstappen is a faultless front runner.

Verstappen has ruled himself out of the title race – probably right, but never discount Max.

For now, Piastri is the one duelling with his team-mate Lando Norris for that honour, and the result took the Australian, who finished runner-up, seven-tenths off Verstappen at the chequered flag, nine points clear of his in-house British rival.

That was because Norris started and finished third. He had slipped to fourth as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc squeezed him just as Verstappen made the killer pass on Piastri. He reclaimed the advantage over the Monegasque on lap four down Kemmel.

Further back, British teenager Ollie Bearman took a fabulous seventh for Haas.

His compatriot George Russell was 12th for Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton moved up three places from 18th to 15th, his spin in qualifying the crucial handicap to the Ferrari man’s sprint race ambitions.

The sun shone on Spa today, but rain is forecast tomorrow. It might be heavy stuff, but it is hard to know in the capricious Ardennes.