Verstappen delighted to end Friday on top at home GP

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Max Verstappen was definitely the star of the show on the first day of the Belgian Grand Prix, with an impressive turn out of Dutch and Belgian fans supporting their local hero at what is effectively his home race.

Verstappen - who was born in Belgium and raised in the Netherlands - is racing at Spa for the first time since his elevation to the Red Bull team, and for the time in Belgium since he claimed his maiden victory at Barcelona in May.

"Very happy to be first here in front of all your fans," agreed the 18-year-old sensation. "It's of course great that I could see a lot of fans cheering me on with their flags, it gives you a lot of motivation.

"It was a good day," he continued. "This track is not easy to set up the car with the long straights but then also the fast inner section, so I was finding my way a bit.

"Once I got that balance right the time was there, the fans were cheering me on which gives you a lot of motivation and it’s great to see so many already on a Friday."

Verstappen did have one brief scare during the morning when the car went sideways in turn 13, but he was able to hold on to it and avert a big accident.

"It was a good drift, I have to test my reflexes sometimes!" he laughed afterwards.

Despite finishing the day faster than anyone else, Verstappen cautioned against expectation that he might be able to pull off his second Grand Prix victory this weekend.

"Difficult to say yet. I don’t know where they are. If we are very close and we hopefully get a good start we will have to wait and see. They will be very competitive, some other teams are also very competitive.

"We can definitely improve even more. We have to wait and see what they do but so far I think we have a good car and a very good starting point."

The surprisingly hot and sunny weather has also been an unexpected twist for teams this weekend, as Spa is known for its predominantly cool and overcast conditions.

"It was very hard on the tyres, no-one really expected it to be that hard," agreed Verstappen of the 40C track temperatures seen so far.

"But it is the same for everyone so we have to analyse everything now and we have to see what we can do for the race."

FP2 report: Verstappen leads Ricciardo in FP2 at Spa

Romain Grosjean column: More motivated than ever

Chris Medland's 2016 Belgian Grand Prix preview

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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.