Belgian Grand Prix FP1 Results

Belgian Grand Prix FP1 was another session dominated by Mercedes with The Red Bulls making good use of their upgrades while the Racing Points show they are still here for the fight.

Bottas would be greeted on his 31st birthday with a session topping time of 1:44.493 in FP1 of the Belgian Grand Prix. This was better than the rest of the field in the top 10 including his teammate Lewis Hamilton who he has never out-qualifed while at Merc here in SPA. Verstappen was just 0.012 seconds behind Hamilton for a third placed event as he gives the Dutch hopefuls fuel to stoke the orange army flames. Both the Merc’s showed weakness though as Hamilton would make a sector 3 error and Bottas would end the session with a puncture following a flat spot he picked up.

Albon made his debut here one year ago and put on a good show but in FP1 he was split by the pink arrows as Perez returns to form and Stroll remains a threat in 4 & 5, respectively while Albon closed out those top 6 half a second behind the Racing Point of Stroll.

Esteban Ocon beats his teammate Daniel Ricciardo with the Renault pair split by Carlos Sainz. The sophomore Lando Norris rounded out the top 10 with a 1:45.274.

The Scuderia had nothing to be happy about as they were beaten by Raikkonen’s P13 effort with Leclerc and Vettel following. Sebastian also ran the least amount of laps in the field. They would beat the newly acquired Williams duo of Latifi and Russell, so there’s that. The Canadian would beat his teammate by 0.082 seconds but they’d be nearly 2 seconds off the pace.

Both of the Haas drivers would fail to set a lap time with Grosjean bringing the car back in after power issues early in the session. Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi would similarly fail to set a time but for unexplained reasons.

Williams’ Nicholas Latifi finished 16th, his team mate George Russell just behind in 17th and over two-seconds off P1.

Neither Haas driver set a time after Romain Grosjean encountered power issues on his early out lap. Both he and Kevin Magnussen were kept in the garage without setting a time in FP1 as Haas examined their Ferrari power units. didn’t set a time either, with unexplained issues. You can find the times for the session below. 

Belgian Grand Prix FP1 Outlook

For the rest of the weekend, the forecast will remain a talking point as will the quali mode bans issued recently by the FIA. Let’s see if that stops The Arrows from taking their first SPA wins in a few years. Stay tuned for FP2 which takes place at 9am EST/14:00 BST.