Stavelot, Aug 30 (IANS): Lewis Hamilton won the Belgian Grand Prix for the fourth time in his career, finishing ahead of his Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

Hamilton has thus drawn level with Jim Clark and Kimi Raikkonen on third in the all-time list for Spa victories, behind Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna.

Verstappen meanwhile has maintained his record of finishing on the podium at every race he's been classified in this year.

Ferrari's struggles continued with both Sebastian Vettel and Charles LeClerc finishing outside of the top 10 and thus gaining no points.

Following his dominant pole on Saturday, Hamilton resisted the first lap slipstreaming contest down to Les Combes to hold onto the lead, before retaining it for all 44 laps to close out his fifth victory out of seven races this year. He went around the track in 1:24:08.761 while Bottas came home around eight seconds behind his team mate. Verstappen was a further seven seconds down the road.

Renault's Daniel Ricciardo led home the team's best finish of the year in fourth, crossing the line under four seconds behind Verstappen after some rapid final laps, with Esteban Ocon overtaking the Red Bull of Alex Albon on the final tour to take fifth, Albon just holding onto sixth from the McLaren of Lando Norris.

An impressive drive from Pierre Gasly saw him take eighth for AlphaTauri, while the final points were taken by the Racing Point pair of Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez in P9 and P10