After 26 days of inactivity, the Formula 1 cars roared again this Friday in the first practice at Spa-Francorchamps, a session that began with intermediate tires after some rain that fell earlier.
However, Alexander Albon was quick to report that the track was “bone dry” on his first outing and slicks soon appeared, with a varied choice between the three compounds – soft, medium and hard – between the different teams on the grid. .
The first reference of the day came after the initial seven minutes and from the hand of Carlos Sainz, with a lap of 1m51s622 with hard in his Ferrari, although that mark was soon lowered to 1m49s712 by Lando Norris, running soft in his McLaren.
Max Verstappen, after having to dodge Nicholas Latifi in the pitlane due to an unsafe exit from the Williams driver's garage, set a time of 1m47.456s to take the lead on the soft tyres, while Sergio Pérez was seventh working on the hard tyres, behind almost three seconds behind his Red Bull teammate.
The Mexican would then jump to second place after the first ten minutes with a time of 1m49s136s, still far from Verstappen, who took the reference up to 1m46s755s behind the wheel of his RB18.
Charles Leclerc and Sainz, both with the hard compound, broke Red Bull's 1-2, but Pérez lowered his personal mark again to place himself second again, 1.719 seconds behind Verstappen.
Mercedes, meanwhile, were working on medium tires in the first part of practice and were running fifth and sixth with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, before the seven-time champion jumped up to second with a lap of 1m48.420s.
Going into the second half hour of the session, Verstappen was finally pushed off the top as Sainz turned in 1m46.538s, beating the Dutchman by two tenths, and then Leclerc moved within 69 thousandths of his partner for a 1-2 partial. Ferrari.
With 23 minutes to go before the checkered flag, Kevin Magnussen was stopped in his Haas after turn one, causing a red flag that, being an electrical fault in the car, required special treatment to be removed from the track, which led to the session only being able to restart 14 minutes later.
With less than ten minutes to go, the track soon filled up when the green flag returned, but any intention of improving the times was ruled out by the appearance of rain in the final minutes.
In this way Ferrari was left with 1-2 at the hands of Sainz and Leclerc, with Verstappen in third place followed by Russell and the surprising Lance Stroll and Alexander Albon.
Daniel Ricciardo finished seventh in the session, followed by Yuki Tsunoda, Hamilton and “Checo” Pérez, who completed the top ten positions.
The activity for the Belgian Grand Prix will continue with the second practice this Friday. Enter here to know the schedules in Latin America.
