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Fernando Alonso's main focus for the Belgian Grand Prix weekend will be making sure he gets home in time to watch Spain play Argentina in the World Cup final on Sunday.The Spanish driver's Aston Martin team have been Formula One backmarkers this season, struggling to finish races and scoring just one point from nine rounds.Belgium, the last race before Aston Martin introduce a major chassis upgrade with an improved engine still to come, could mark a low point before things start to improve.In 2010, the last time a Formula One race coincided with soccer's biggest match, Alonso was at Ferrari and fighting for wins.Spain, now the European champions, won that World Cup in South Africa and are chasing their second crown against the holders."It will be different. As we don't expect much this weekend," two-time world champion Alonso told reporters at Spa-Francorchamps."The main focus on Sunday will be to get home and watch the match, to be honest."The final is scheduled for 9 p.m. European time (1900 GMT) with the Formula One race starting at 3 p.m. local time (1300 GMT)."It's going to be tricky because we are flying back home," said Alonso."So maybe again on Sunday the second half will be probably the moment that I will watch the game. And the first half, just miss it."Argentine Franco Colapinto, who races for Renault-owned Alpine, and Spaniard Carlos Sainz at Williams will face similar problems."I'm definitely going to be much more nervous about the match than the race," said Colapinto."Yesterday (the semi-final against England) we had a lot of fun, a lot of suffering. But if you don't suffer a bit, you're not Argentinian."It was one of those matches that, you are really nervous, but then you celebrate a lot. So it was a long night, but very fun." 

Lewis Hamilton returns to one of his favourite circuits for the 20th consecutive year this weekend in pursuit of a victory for Ferrari to equal Michael Schumacher's record six Belgian Grand Prix wins.After finishing third behind triumphant Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc and fellow-Briton George Russell of Mercedes at his home British GP two weeks ago, the seven-time world champion is set to bid for an eighth.Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli, who reeled off a record five straight 'maiden' wins earlier this year, leads the title race for Mercedes on 179 points, after nine races, 25 clear of Russell and 32 in front of Hamilton.But the precocious 19-year-old has failed to score in two of his last three races while Ferrari have found resurgent form and unexpected power to score wins for each driver in the last three outings. His once luxurious lead of 66 points has halved."Reliability issues have cost us points," admitted Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff."In a championship as competitive as this, it's something we cannot afford. There's no value in having pace if we don't get the results."Antonelli suffered an agonising race on the majestic Spa circuit, set in the Belgian Ardennes forest, last year. He qualified 19th, started from the pit lane and finished a tearful 16th during a difficult spell in his rookie season.However, he experienced similar disappointment at the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix, where he was lapped twice and finished 18th, before turning that on its head this year.He was gloriously triumphant and dived into the harbour to celebrate his fifth consecutive win.If his car is reliable, and Mercedes recover their power and straight-line speed advantage, he and Russell will be the men to beat, but Hamilton, with all his experience and his rediscovered vim, will be a contender, as will four-time champion Max Verstappen.Hamilton might already have the record for Belgian wins if it had not been for some wretched luck in the past, notably in 2008 when he finished first in teeming rain but was stripped of his win by a controversial post-race 25-second sanction.This time, he will be 18 years' wiser and hoping Ferrari's renaissance, notably their straight-line speed, can carry him into the fight for victory.But that goes too for Leclerc and Red Bull's Verstappen if he has regained trust in his car.The Dutchman, for whom Belgium is a second 'home' race - his mother is Belgian and he was born in Belgium - where he is always backed loudly by his 'orange army', aims to add to his three previous wins.But he departed Silverstone cursing a failed rear wing on his car for a second time.After a disappointing home race in Britain, champions McLaren also need to prove a point.Oscar Piastri won last year ahead of team-mate and defending champion Lando Norris, another son of a Belgian mother, with Leclerc, winner in 2019, third.Energy management will once again be an issue on a power-hungry high-speed circuit with fast straights and sweeping corners, often prone to dramatic changes of weather leading to dramatic races."It could be tricky with the limitations on the straight, but historically, we have done well here," said a hopeful Verstappen. "So, let's see and hope for the best." 

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever gave his deadlocked ruling coalition more time to agree a cost-cutting budget Thursday, staving off fears of an imminent government collapse. The straight-talking Flemish conservative — who only became premier in February after seven months of painstaking negotiations — set a new 50-day deadline to strike a deal. That came after he had sought to pile pressure on his governing partners by dangling the prospect that he could resign over the failure to agree through €10bn ($11bn) of savings by 2030. De Wever — who earlier insisted he wanted to reach an agreement by Thursday — said he had told Belgium's King Philippe he now wanted until Christmas to get there. "I immediately added that this would be the maximum timeframe," De Wever said in an address to parliament. Talks over the new budget have already dragged on for several months, missing a number of self-imposed deadlines. De Wever says the spending cuts are vital to help reduce Belgium's eye-watering national debt, one of the steepest in the European Union. He is calling for a series of "historic" reforms to liberalise Belgium's labour market, curb high unemployment benefits and cut back on pension costs. "Tomorrow's prosperity begins with today's courage. Let's dare to make the reforms that will bear fruit in a few years," De Wever told lawmakers. But trying to get a disparate five-party coalition that includes French-speaking economic liberals and Dutch-speaking socialists to agree on what needs to be done is proving tough. While those on the right are rigidly opposed to hiking taxes, the left is pushing to hit the wealthy harder rather than slash benefits. De Wever, a cat-loving former mayor of Antwerp known for his three-piece suits, is hoping the additional breathing space will pay off and he can solve the deadlock. A long-time proponent of independence for his Flemish-speaking region, he would be loath to relinquish the post of prime minister after years of questing for the top job. The stand-off over the budget comes at a sensitive time for the country, after unexplained drone flights shut down several Belgian airports earlier this week. De Wever chaired an emergency security meeting on Thursday over the incidents, with ministers saying they would look to step up the ability of authorities to monitor drones. As the budget talks consume his attention at home, De Wever is also facing pressure himself on the European stage for holding up a potential mammoth EU loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets. The vast majority of those assets are housed in international deposit organisation Euroclear in Belgium and De Wever has insisted he needs strict guarantees from EU counterparts before giving his green light.