McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were on top of their game in the second practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps on Friday afternoon.
Max Verstappen was third-fastest for Red Bull but is in danger of being demoted from the grid on Sunday with the new engine in place, leaving the door open for Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, who finished fourth and fifth today.
It was a mixed session for Mercedes’ George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, with Sergio Perez in ninth, but Esteban Ocon was seventh fastest after being forced to return to contention in the Alpine after missing FP1 with a water leak.
It was still a beautiful summer afternoon in the Ardennes, but cooler than the midday session, with dark clouds hovering around Spa-Francorchamps and a 40% chance of rain as the cars took to the track for the second practice session. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly led on intermediate tyres, with Max Verstappen close behind on the same compound.
Spa is the longest circuit on the schedule at just over 7km, so it took a while for the timing screens to show the first lap, with Verstappen clocking a first time of 1:43.456s on the softs, slightly slower than the FP1 benchmark but 0.116s ahead of Lando Norris. Carlos Sainz, Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc were also quick from the start, with Lewis Hamilton extending his lead in sixth.
George Russell outran his Mercedes teammate to take third behind Verstappen and Norris, with Verstappen shaving a tenth off his target time at the top. Esteban Ocon also worked hard after Alpine was ruled out of the race in FP1 due to a water leak, but everything is now going smoothly.
Several cars appeared to be running particularly low this weekend, with McLaren and Mercedes both flailing on the climb to La Source. “There’s a lot of ground for Norris through Eau Rouge,” Sergio Perez said on Red Bull team radio.
Twenty minutes later, Russell, Sainz, Piastri and Verstappen all moved to the soft compound. That gave Sainz a brief jump to the top with a 1:43.098, but Piastri added six-tenths of a second despite falling on the gravel in the process. “I have to check the floor,” he admitted on McLaren Radio. “I turned into a skateboarder at Turn 7.”
Despite this, Piastri’s time was 0.002s ahead of Verstappen’s immediate reaction. Ferrari duo Leclerc and Sainz were a few tenths of a second behind the top two, while Russell and Kevin Magnussen had another gap, barely ahead of Perez and Lance Stroll. Norris and Hamilton rounded out the top ten at the halfway point of the one-hour session.
Norris soon showed his latest push lap to take the top spot with a 1:42.260, and McLaren made it 1-2. Norris ran two sets of softs during FP2, which he felt was not necessary with rain forecast for Saturday, while Piastri split the time between softs and mediums. Ocon has now found his groove and is now in the top 10 with his latest effort. Hamilton gave up his flyer but put in another effort to pass Stroll.
There was little time for a quick lap. A light drizzle had washed away parts of the circuit, and there was a hint of possible rain tomorrow, but this time it was brief and not enough to warrant an intermediate stage. The teams had already started switching back to medium-sized tires for the long distances, so the top order remained unchanged until the chequered flag came out.
There were no track incidents, but Daniel Ricciardo’s session ended prematurely with 10 minutes remaining after he reported “something felt strange” at RB. The team forced him back into the garage to conduct a more in-depth investigation into the problem, while the remaining 19 drivers on track finished their day’s work.
