Sainz leads McLarens as Sargeant crashes in wet Belgian GP practice
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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 Ferrari at the top of the timesheets. F1 2023 Belgian Grand Prix – Friday Practice ResultsHow have McLaren turned their 2023 F1 season around?Video of How have McLaren turned their 2023 F1 season around?Running on intermediate tyres, Sainz was 0.585s faster than Oscar Piastri, with McLaren teammate Lando Norris ending up 1.277s off the pace in third. Times were not particularly representative as the drivers mainly elected to get an initial feel for the tricky track conditions on both the intermediate 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 the Haas of Kevin Magnussen. Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg completed the top-10 order for AlphaTauri and Haas respectively.
The session was briefly red-flagged after Logan Sargeant collided with the barriers at the of the Kemmel Straight. Fernando Alonso, the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, and the Alfa Romeo duo of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, were the only other drivers to set lap times. Related Interim Alpine F1 boss explains timing of management upheaval Szafnauer leads sudden exodus of key Alpine F1 personnel Reigning world champion Max Verstappen, who will be hit with a five-place grid penalty after 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 take 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 qualifying cannot go ahead.
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