Kimi Antonelli resisted a spirited challenge from Ferrari's Charles Leclerc to win the Belgian Grand Prix, almost doubling his Formula 1 championship lead in the process as Mercedes team-mate George Russell retired after a lap-one clash with Lewis Hamilton.

Despite briefly losing the lead to fellow front-row starter Max Verstappen at the start and spending seven laps chasing down Leclerc, who was assisted by stopping under a virtual safety car, Antonelli always looked like the favourite and ended up winning by 1.9 seconds.

He had reclaimed the lead from Verstappen by the time the field reached Les Combes on the opening lap, where Russell's race came to an abrupt end.

Russell was, in his own words, "swallowed up" by the cars around him on the run along the Kemmel Straight where he claimed he was "slower than an F2 car", and was hit by Hamilton mid-corner - which sent him off into the gravel and brought out the safety car.

Replays showed Hamilton having a snap of oversteer mid-corner and running into the side of the Mercedes, and though he was quick to report to Ferrari that he was "right behind another car so I had no front end" and even Russell felt it was a "racing incident", the stewards ultimately gave Hamilton a five-second penalty.

Antonelli largely controlled the opening stint when racing did resume, albeit with Verstappen giving chase gamely once the Red Bull driver had passed Leclerc into Les Combes - the Ferrari having slingshotted ahead at the same corner on the opening lap.

Verstappen was the first of the frontrunners to pit on lap 17 of 44, swapping from mediums to hards, with Mercedes bringing Antonelli in a lap later to cover off any threat of the undercut - having just missed the window to pit under a brief virtual safety car.

But a second virtual safety car period did change the complexion of the race, as it stayed in play for long enough to allow both Leclerc and Hamilton to pit. Leclerc duly jumped ahead of Antonelli at this point, and took the lead once he'd cleared the long-running McLaren of Lando Norris on lap 23.

It took Antonelli another three laps to pass the McLaren but once he'd found a way through he began to chip away at Leclerc's advantage, and moved for the lead on lap 34 with a big straightline speed advantage on the run to Les Combes.

Leclerc stayed with Antonelli for three laps after that, but started lap 39 more than a second behind the Mercedes and despite being encouraged to adjust his engine braking setting and that the race was "not over", he ultimately never got back within a second.

Victory was Antonelli's sixth of the season but his first since the Monaco GP at the start of May, and provisionally extended his lead to 45 points over Hamilton.

Verstappen was never a factor in the closing stages but still brought his Red Bull home in third, comfortably ahead of Hamilton - who did in the closing stages pass Oscar Piastri but who ended the race with the threat of another investigation hanging over him.

That was for an unsafe release, Hamilton having clipped a mechanic on his way out of the Ferrari pitbox. Hamilton claimed he was given a green light to leave the pitbox, and had to do the following stint without the wing change which should have been done in that stop.

Behind Piastri, who'd been squeezed by Leclerc at Les Combes in the first stint and picked up some damage, Norris's offset strategy yielded seventh.

He set the fastest lap on the final tour, but ran out of time to overtake Isack Hadjar, who moved up from 21st on the grid to finish sixth.

Hadjar started on hard tyres, with Red Bull using the early safety car to cycle him onto mediums and then back to hards and then taking advantage of the virtual safety car period to make a third stop, where he again took hard tyres.

Having scored just two points in its first eight races as a manufacturer, Audi secured a second eighth-place finish in a row as Gabriel Bortoleto was another driver to take advantage of the virtual safety car for a cheap pitstop.

That meant Racing Bulls - which had been the class of the midfield through the weekend - was restricted to ninth place only through Arvid Lindblad, who finished 1.2s behind Bortoleto.

Liam Lawson had run in the points with Lindblad and they even had a dicey run-in as his rookie team-mate exited the pits, but he ended up embroiled in a scrap with the Alpines and Audi's Nico Hulkenberg and ended up 12th.

The final point ultimately went to Franco Colapinto, who took advantage of Lawson's attempt to overtake Pierre Gasly on the Kemmel Straight to pass both the Racing Bulls driver and his Alpine team-mate for 10th.