F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Follow FP2 for the Belgian Grand Prix LIVE

Follow live coverage of the second free practice session for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix LIVE, with comprehensive as-it-happens coverage from F1i.

After a long summer break, it's wonderful to have Formula One back in action once more, with the 13th round of the 2016 season at one of the genuinely iconic motor racing circuits of the world - Spa-Francorchamps, located deep in the Ardennes forest.

Lewis Hamilton arrives here with a 19 point lead in the world drivers championship over his Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg. But Hamilton will take a load of grid penalties this weekend after needing to make a number of power unit upgrades. He'll start from the back of the grid, giving Rosberg a perfect opportunity to claw back vital points.

Rosberg started the weekend just as he needed to, topping the times in FP1 despite running the new Halo cockpit protection system. It didn't seem to inconvenience him in the slightest, and speed certainly doesn't appear to be an issue: Rosberg was seven tenths faster than Hamilton, and only Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and Force India's Sergio Perez were within a second of the German's benchmark time.

There were no major incidents in this morning's practice, although Romain Grosjean had a brief off through the gravel and Max Verstappen and Marcus Ericsson both had to pull off big saves to avoid potentially serious accidents. Jolyon Palmer's session ended early when something seemed to snap on his Renault leaving him limping home to pit lane, while Fernando Alonso's session never even got started - a fluid leak left him unable to set any time.

It was a good start for Esteban Ocon, however. The Frenchman is replacing Rio Haryanto at Manor this weekend and he finished an impressive 16th place in the FP1 timesheets, over a second faster than his team mate Pascal Wehrlein. Ocon put in 26 laps of the seven kilometre Spa circuit, with only Rosberg, Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa completing more.

If that's whetted your appetite, then there's more to come with the second of today's 90-minute practice sessions getting underway at 14:00 local time (1pm BST). As always we'll be bringing you all the news and information from trackside the minute that it happens on F1i's live page.

FP1 report: Rosberg fastest despite Halo as Hamilton penalty confirmed

Romain Grosjean column: More motivated than ever

Chris Medland's 2016 Belgian Grand Prix preview

How Eric Boullier keeps McLaren on its toes

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.