With two laps under the safety car regime completed, Max Verstappen goes down in history as winner of the shortest Grand Prix ever. Due to the heavy rain and the lack of visibility, the race start was delayed multiple times.

At 15:25 the drivers completed two formations laps to evaluate track conditions, and the Dutchman, starting on pole, was the only one to advocate for a race start. The session was red-flagged again for almost three hours, and another couple of laps were put in at 18:17.

Full send on Saturday 🚀 Trophy on Sunday! 🏆 #BelgianGP 🇧🇪 #F1 pic.twitter.com/B3ehs8ov4E

— Red Bull Racing Honda (@redbullracing) August 29, 2021

In a post-race interview Verstappen, who reduced his gap to championship leader Lewis Hamilton to three points, expressed his disappointment in not doing actual racing this afternoon, but reckons that the drivers' visual range was very limited while driving, especially for the midfield and back of the grid cars:

"Now in hindsight it was very important to get that pole position but of course it's a big shame to not do proper laps, but the conditions were very tricky out there. I said at 3:30pm, like, let's go. I think the conditions were decent, but the visibility was very low. So I think if we would have started at three o'clock, we had a better chance."

In his opinion, they could have raced at the beginning of the session, but, as time passed, the weather drastically got worse:

"But nevertheless, after that it just stayed really wet and kept raining. The conditions were just very difficult out there – even worse of course for the guys behind me – even though my visibility wasn’t that bad.”

"It's a win, but not how you want to win," he added.

Obviously the Red Bull driver was pleased with the points scored today, but he's already thinking about F1's next race, and how to return at the top of the championship standings: 

“Still a long way to go of course. We closed the gap a little bit but we’ll see in Zandvoort again how competitive we’ll be. We have to keep on pushing, keep on trying of course to close it [the gap] and I’m confident that we have a good car; we just need to keep on trying to get a bit more performance out of it.”

His last words were to praise and acknowledge the fans attending the prix, who spent many hours in the grandstands in spite of the lack of actual driving:

"I think for today, you know, big credit goes to all the fans around the track to stay here, you know the whole day in the rain and the cold, windy conditions, I think they are the bigger winners today."