McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were best in show in second practice for the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday afternoon at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.
Max Verstappen was third quickest for Red Bull but faces a Sunday grid drop for taking a new engine, opening a window of opportunity for Ferrari duO Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to step up after finsihing P4 and P5 today.
It was a mixed session for Mercedes' George Russell and Lewis Hamilton and also for Sergio Perez in ninth, but Esteban Ocon was back in the fray and seventh fastest after missing FP1 due to a water leak on the Alpine.
It still a lovely summer's afternoon in the Ardennes, although cooler than the midday session and there were some dark clouds moving around Spa-Francorchamps with a 40 percent chance of rain as the cars headed out on track for second practice. They were led out by Alpine's Pierre Gasly on the medium tyres, Max Verstappen hot on his heels on the same compound.
As Spa is the longest circuit on the calendar at just over 7km, it was a while before the first laps came up on the timing screens with Verstappen posting a first effort of 1:43.456s, slightly slower than his FP1 benchmark but 0.116s ahead of Lando Norris on the softs. Carlos Sainz, Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc were also quick from the get-go, with Lewis Hamilton making his own bow in sixth.
George Russell went quicker than his Mercedes team mate, going third behind Verstappen and Norris, while Verstappen shaved another tenth off his target time at the top. Also out and hard at work was Esteban Ocon after his Alpine was sidelined in FP1 with a water leak, but everything was looking ship-shape now.
Several cars looked to be running a particularly low ride height this weekend, with both McLaren and Mercedes sending up showers of sparks on the climb out of La Source. "There's a lot of grounding for Norris through Eau Rouge," Sergio Perez commented over the Red Bull team radio.
After 20 minutes, Russell, Sainz, Piastri and Verstappen all moved to the soft compound. That allowed Sainz to briefly jump up to the top on a time of 1:43.098s but then Piastri found an extra six tenths, despite straying onto the gravel in the process. "Just need to check the floor, I turned into a skateboarder at turn 7." he admitted over the McLaren radio.
Despite this, Piastri's time still proved to be 0.002s ahead of Verstappen's immediate response. Ferrari duo Leclerc and Sainz were several tenths slower than the top two, and then there was another gap back to Russell and Kevin Magnussen who had sneaked ahead of Perez and Lance Stroll. Norris and Hamilton were rounding out the top ten at the halfway mark of the one hour session.
Norris soon presented his latest push lap to go top with a time of 1:42.260s to make it a McLaren 1-2. Norris had run two sets of softs during FP2 - suggesting he didn't see much need for them on Saturday with rain forecast - while Piastri had split his time between softs and mediums. Ocon had also got into the groove now and was into the top ten with his latest effort. Hamilton aborted his own flier but put in another effort to edge out Stroll.
That was pretty much all the time there was for fast laps. A brief touch of light drizzle brushed parts of the circuit, a taster perhaps of wet weather to come tomorrow, but on this occasion it was short-lived and not nearly enough to warrant intermediates. Teams had already started switching back to the medium tyres for heavy fuel long distance runs, meaning that the order at the top remained unchanged until the chequered flag.
While there were no on-track incidents, Daniel Ricciardo's session ended prematurely with ten minutes remaining after reporting that "something feels strange" on the RB. The team pushed him back into the garage for an in-depth investigation of the problem, as the remaining 19 drivers still out on track concluded their business for the day.
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