Gary Anderson: Ferrari and Mercedes both made Spa strategy errors

There are three ways to win a race. The first is by having the fastest car, the second is by capitalising on the circumstances of the day and the third is by taking advantage of the misfortune of others. Two of them, you can do something about - but the third is in the hands of outside forces and not under your control.

At Spa, Ferrari showed it had the fastest car by locking out the front row. Then, it was about executing the race correctly to take a one-two. But the Mercedes cars proved during practice that they were good on their tyres over longer runs and wouldn't be easy to escape.

Both the Ferrari and Mercedes pitwalls made mistakes. Ferrari's was by pitting Sebastian Vettel very early on lap 15, and Mercedes by pitting Lewis Hamilton on lap 22, which was a couple of laps too late. We're only talking a few laps in either situation, but they did what they did and by lap 27 on the mediums Vettel was saying his tyres were getting past their sell-by date.

If Ferrari had committed to a two-stop race at that point and then pitted for the softs, it would have dropped behind the two Mercedes cars, but would have had enough laps to perhaps fight back and drag out a third-place finish.

Instead, Ferrari - and especially Vettel - played the team game and he stayed out, which delayed Hamilton just enough to give Charles Leclerc a little extra breathing space on his way to his first win career win and Ferrari's first of 2019.

Vettel ended up stopping again on lap 33 to fit an extra soft set of tyres, allowing him to get fastest lap but only finish fourth. With Monza coming next and Ferrari's apparent straightline speed advantage, there's every chance of another 1-2 on the grid, but the team will need to do better to have a chance of holding onto that in the race.

Leclerc executed his race very well. There were a couple of small errors under pressure, but he kept his head to take the first of surely many wins.

After the first-corner shenanigans - a regular occurrence at Spa - eliminated Max Verstappen and damaged Kimi Raikkonen's and Daniel Ricciardo's cars, the midfield scrap from fifth back was a battle royale.

I'm pretty sure I'm one of many who struggle to understand how the various grid penalties for new parts are handed out

There was a long queue of cars all within a second of each other, but that pack was trailing Lando Norris, who, like Leclerc up ahead, was doing a very professional job. Unfortunately for him, fifth place was cruelly robbed from him at the start of the last lap when his power unit seemed to cry enough.

That, plus the fact that Norris's team-mate Carlos Sainz had a clutch problem that left him stuck on the grid, and then after a pitstop stranded him at the Bus Stop chicane, meant McLaren didn't get the end result that its drivers - especially Norris - deserved.

It wasn't all plain sailing for the Mercedes power unit department last weekend. Toto Wolff was very complimentary about his engine plant burning the midnight oil when everyone else was sunning themselves on the beach, so Mercedes was able to introduce its V3 engine at Spa.

But when the new engines of Sergio Perez and Robert Kubica expired in clouds of smoke in practice and qualifying, it looked like Mercedes might just have been a little bit premature, and it will have been a case of fingers-crossed for the works squad.

On the subject of power units, I'm pretty sure I'm one of many who struggle to understand how the various grid penalties for new parts are handed out. Below, I have listed the Spa qualifying order and then the actual grid order, which perhaps allows us to understand a little more about where cars might have expected to start and what we should have expected from them in the race.

I always like to look at what the running order is at the end of lap one to see which drivers are best at handling the argy-bargy of the first lap, and then at the end of lap 10 when things have settled down but normally the pitstops haven't begun. Comparing that to the end result gives a reasonable overview of how each driver's strategy worked out.

The numbers after the driver's name on the lap-one column are positions made up from their grid position, but it should be noted that the bumper-cars at the first corner skewed this a little. The numbers after the driver's name in the finish column are place changes from the lap one column, so places made up or lost during the race itself.

I have also gathered a few thoughts about safety. Yes, these drivers are doing the job they love and have dedicated their lives to, but still safety needs to be the prime mover - especially circuit safety, which is out of the teams' or drivers' hands.

The death of Anthoine Hubert at Spa shocked everyone. Motorsport, especially F1, lives in a little cocoon it has created for itself. Success is everything, but at what cost? Hubert's accident will be a rude awakening that tragedy is just around the corner and that improvements in safety can never be neglected.

I'm all for fast racing cars, but the circuits need to be in line with that speed. A few years ago, Kevin Magnussen hit the barriers in a similar place at Spa. Yes, he was in an F1 car, but in reality it was nothing to do with that. He had his own accident and it meant he dusted himself down and more or less walked away from the crash. The main problem for me is that Hubert rebounded into the path of an oncoming driver and the cars - F1, F2 and F3 - are all traveling faster than they were in those days.

When two cars hit each other at high speed it's like an aeroplane accident. I was involved in CART in 2001 and was at the Lausitzring when Alex Zanardi spun leaving the pits. He ended up in the middle of the track and was hit by another car at around 200mph.

It cut his car in two and he lost his legs. He's gone on to do amazing things since, but for a few hours after the accident it was touch and go as to whether he would make it.

Any crash protection on the cars - nose impact, rear impact or side impact - should all be at or around the same height

Going back to the Spa weekend, Hamilton's accident in FP3 - when he went off at Fagnes - just showed that these low noses do submarine under the conveyor belt and tyres very easily. The nose is there to help decelerate the mass of the car in the event of an accident, so it needs to make contact with the barrier and not just push it upwards out of the way.

Back in 2001, Luciano Burti went under the tyre barriers at Blanchimont. Last weekend, Simo Laaksonen in the F3 race did exactly the same. Max Verstappen at Eau Rouge on the first lap of the grand prix was similar - even though he was traveling relatively slowly - and Antonio Giovinazzi suffered the same problem at Pouhon on the last lap.

In these incidents, the halo helps but something surely should be done to restrain these conveyor belts and tyre barriers to the ground.

Hopefully, with the major changes that should be coming for 2021, it will be adjusted so that a nose height of around the axle centre height might just be a slightly better compromise against riding over a slower car's rear wheel or submarining under a slower or stalled car on the grid, or the barriers in the case of the incidents I've highlighted.

Basically, any crash protection on the cars - nose impact, rear impact or side impact - should all be at or around the same height. If one car hits another, then at least the impact absorption components will all be in contact with each other.

Spa also reminded us of something that could be fixed immediately - stopping cars running slowly or almost stopping to get track position for a quick lap and/or cooling tyres, recharging the battery pack etc in qualifying, as this is dangerous.

My suggestion would be to look at the sector times and if a percentage was added based on each car's best lap, with something like 10% added, the drivers would have a maximum time they could lose.

As an example, these would be the numbers acceptable for Spa:

If something like this was introduced, it would at least reduce the speed differential between the cars. As we know, the runoff areas and crash-barrier protection are required because of the speed the cars are traveling at, but cars can still be going very slowly on a live race circuit.

Something could be done with a speed profile - the same as above but instead of using time, just allow a maximum of a 10% reduction in car speed from each driver's fastest lap around the slower lap. The only difficulty with this would be when a driver has to go slower to allow a faster car through, so perhaps a combination of both would be possible.

Whatever it is, it would surely be best to put in place and test it during the eight races left this season.