91Èȱ¬

will have left Belgium a relieved man on Sunday night after he yet again escaped from a poor weekend with minimal damage to his championship lead.

After a qualifying a quite dreadful 14th, the Englishman expected his title rivals , and to make up some serious ground.

Instead, Button's team-mate Barrichello - who had - clawed back only two points. The Brazilian is now with a maximum of 50 still available.

And while Vettel finished third, that served only to leapfrog him ahead of Webber into third place in the championship - still 19 points off the lead. Webber, whose hopes of a strong finish were hit by a drive-through penalty for an unsafe release from a pit stop, finished ninth, out of the points.

For Button, it could have been so much worse.

He was always going to have a retirement at some point or another this season, and it came on the first lap at Spa as he was tipped into a spin by Renault new-boy . As Button himself pointed out, if you qualify that far down, you are always more likely to get caught up in trouble.

By then, though, Button had already received some good news. Barrichello - who was starting fourth, 10 places ahead of Button - had crawled off the grid and was down to 15th by the end of the first lap. From there, he did well to score some points.

But hot on the heels of Button's relief that his rivals seem incapable of capitalising on his problems, there will nevertheless be a deep concern that the wheels are coming off his title challenge and that he appears to be able to do nothing about it.

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There were two obvious potential front-runners in our selection of five great Belgian Grands Prix for the latest edition of our classic Formula 1 races series, and the thrilling 1995 and 1998 races did indeed turn out to be the most popular.

Michael Schumacher's brilliant victory for Benetton in 1995 is our pick and the full 'Grand Prix' highlights programme of the time is embedded below. There are also links to shorter highlights of that event and the other four races we chose - 1985, 1992, 1998 and 2008.

If you would like to know a little more about these races before watching them, then have a quick look at last week's blog on this subject.

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With the political rows that have dominated this Formula 1 season more or less over apart from a few late skirmishes, attention in Valencia has turned to the driver market.

The key move this season is . This has not been officially confirmed yet, but it is considered a given. And it will trigger a series of swaps that will significantly change the look of the F1 grid next season.

Among the top teams, only Red Bull are not changing their line-up and there are attractive seats available at Ferrari, McLaren and Brawn.

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The and energy storage systems have certainly enlivened the racing this season but it had looked as if these would become a .

The teams had agreed to but a new twist behind the scenes has raised the possibility they may yet survive - and in the process fuelled some bad blood within the sport.

, and are similar to those that are becoming increasingly prevalent in road cars - , and are among the manufacturers already using them to reduce fuel consumption in their models.

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This was supposed to be the weekend when the world's attention was focused on Valencia to watch the comeback of one of the greatest sportsmen of all time. But instead of .

The disappointment is palpable here. At least it is among the media, for whom a Schumacher return briefly appeared to be a fantastic story laid on a plate, vastly increasing interest in what, to be frank, is not one of the most glamorous events on the calendar.

World champion Lewis Hamilton, who has said that he always wished that he could have raced against the seven-time champion, summed up the wider mood by expressing his disappointment: "He's a racing legend, so it would have been a privilege and honour to race against him and to see him back would have been great."

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Formula 1 returns from its summer break this weekend to start a busy climax to the season. That means this blog asking for your views on the next event in our classic races series comes before the race preceding it - Sunday's European race in Valencia - rather than after it.

While attention is focused on the matters of Valencia - whether , McLaren's return to form, Ferrari's decision to pick Luca Badoer as a replacement for the injured Felipe Massa, and so on - hopefully you will find some time to consider which great Belgian Grand Prix you would like to see again.

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There are no prizes for guessing the great Formula 1 race we have chosen to highlight in the latest edition of our classic races series.

gets the treatment - the full Grand Prix highlights programme of the time as well as the shorter highlights package that we have also cut for the other four races we asked you to debate.

That debate was interesting, not least for the fact that it was not quite the runaway I expected it to be.

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The European Grand Prix edition of our classic Formula 1 races series presented us with a few problems - mainly that there has been only one race at , and it was !

That being the case, we have decided against including that in our list of five races and have instead made our pick from events that have gone under the title of European Grand Prix, regardless of the circuit at which they were held.

So we are going to ask you to debate the merits of the , , , and European GPs - as well as any other races we may have left off that list that you think should be on it. As ever, we will select a race to highlight, influenced by your preferences - and if that event is from the era in which the 91Èȱ¬ owned the rights to F1, we will broadcast the full 'Grand Prix' highlights programme at the time. In this case, that means 1993 and 1995.

It - and the shorter highlights of all races - will be shown on the bbc.co.uk/sport website and on the red button on digital TV in the week leading up to this year's race, which is on 23 August. Only UK users will be able to see the material, though.

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