F1 Belgian GP: Carlos Sainz fastest from McLaren pair as Logan Sargeant crashes in wet practice session
The only hour of practice before qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps was affected by heavy, consistent rain as Sainz emerged from the gloom to put his Fe🦄rrari at the top of the timesheets.
Running on intermediate tyres, Sainz was 0.585s faster than Oscar Piastri, with McLaren teammate Lando Norris ending up 1.277s off the pacꩵe in third.&🔴nbsp;
Times were not particularly representative as the drivers mainly elected to get an initial feel for the tricky track conditions on both the inജter🌳mediate and full wet compounds.
Charles Leclerc was fourth-fastest in the other Ferrari, nearly five seconds adrift🗹 of his pace-setting teammate.
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez was fifth, ahead of Alex Albon’s Williams, AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and t🍌hꦍe Haas of Kevin Magnussen.
Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg completed the top-10 order ⛦for AlphaTauri and Haas respectively.
The session was briefly red-flagge꧅d after Logan Sargeant collided with the barriers at the of the Kemmel Straꦑight.
Fernando Alonso, the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russel𒉰⛎l, and the Alfa Romeo duo of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, were the only other drivers to set lap times.
Reigniꦿng world champion Max Verstappen, who will be hit with a five-place grid penalty a♊fter exceeding his gearbox allocation, completed just a single installation lap as he propped up the FP1 order.
Qualifying for Sunday’s main grand prix is scheduled to ꧑take place at 5pm local time (4pm UK).
The FIA has already confirmed that the current championship order, rather than the results of practice, will be used to set the grid if quꦯalifying cannot go ahead.
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