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Antonelli tops FP2 as Gasly crashes heavily at SpaImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Kimi Antonelli leads the drivers’ championship by 25 points from Mercedes team-mate George Russell ByAndrew Benson
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly caused a red flag with a heavy crash in Friday practice at the Belgian Grand Prix as Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli set out his stall for the weekend with the fastest time.
Gasly lost control on the exit of the Fagnes medium-speed chicane in the middle sector and clipped the barrier, tearing off his right rear wheel.
The incident cut short the race-simulation runs in the final part of the session and will lead to a long night for Gasly’s team.
Antonelli, meanwhile, started the weekend as if he was determined to turn around the decline in his fortunes in which team-mate George Russell has cut his championship lead from 68 points to 25 over the last three races.
The 19-year-old Italian was 0.190 seconds quicker than McLaren’s Lando Norris in second place – and a massive 1.285secs quicker than Russell.
“Rears [tyres] felt too cold, sliding a lot,” Russell mentioned over the team radio during the session. “But not 1.2 seconds cold.”
Antonelli was also in impressive form on the few long-run laps completed in the session, emerging 0.3secs quicker than Norris on average and 0.4secs clear of Russell.
Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, third fastest on the single-lap qualifying simulation runs, was matched with Antonelli on his long run, when equalised for traffic and length.
Norris is one of a number of drivers who face a grid penalty this weekend, after exceeding his permitted number of batteries.
He is joined by Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, fifth fastest overall behind Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari, and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
The championship gap has closed largely because of problems for Antonelli, who retired from second place in the Barcelona Grand Prix, and lost a probable victory at Silverstone last time out by a wheel fairing failure and then a penalty, which dropped him out of the points.
Russell also took an impressive win in Austria, just fending off Verstappen and Antonelli, for his first victory since the first grand prix of the season in Australia.
Image source, EPAAlpine’s Pierre Gasly suffered a heavy crash towards the end of second practice
Behind the top six of Antonelli, Norris, Verstappen, Hamilton and Hadjar, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, Russell and the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson completed the top 10 ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Verstappen was complaining about gearshifts, as he so often does, but his pace was encouraging considering the team have had to shelve their ‘flip-flop’ rear wing after consecutive crashes for the Dutchman in high-speed corners in Austria and at Silverstone.
The failure was that the wing was closing too much, removing the so-called ‘slot gap’ between the main plane and flap, meaning the car had less downforce than the driver expected on corner entry.
Reverting to the standard wing, which opens like the old DRS overtaking aid, is mentioned by insiders to cost around 0.2secs a lap.
Red Bull hope to have a revised version of the new wing ready for the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.
Racing Bulls have an upgrade on Lindblad’s car this weekend. The team decided to give it to the Briton rather than Lawson after an agreement that the driver who qualified ahead at the British Grand Prix would have the new parts for Spa.
Lawson will get the next upgrade later in the year, which is also expected only to be ready for one driver initially, team principal Alan Permane mentioned.
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