F1 | Belgian GP | Verstappen crashes in FP2 but leads Bottas and Hamilton
World Championship contender Max Verstappen led the Mercedes’, Fernando Alonso and Pierre Gasly in the second practice session. However, he crashed with a couple of minutes to go in FP2.
After some rain between FP1 and FP2, Bottas and Norris went out on inters but immediately reported it was too dry for those tyres.
Norris returned to the circuit on hards and logged a 1:48.219 to set the first time of the session. He lowered that to a 1:47.138 on his next flier.
20 minutes into the session saw Valtteri Bottas on top on a 1:44.513, 0.031s in front of his teammate Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen was 0.6s off, losing all his time in the first sector as the Dutchman's race engineer suggested Mercedes were running a higher engine mode. Verstappen improved on his second attempt to move within a tenth of both Mercedes’.
Gasly, Latifi, Stroll, Ricciardo, Norris and Perez completed the top 10 at that point.
Bottas led Hamilton, Verstappen, Perez, Gasly, Alonso, Norris, Latifi, Stroll and Ricciardo was the order ahead of the qualifying simulations.
Yellow flags were brought out as Esteban Ocon had a major spin as he got on the power out of T13. Luckily for the Frenchman, he avoided the wall and returned to the pits with flat-spotted tyres.
Yellow flags flutter briefly as @OconEsteban goes sideways out of Turn 14 😮
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 27, 2021
The Alpine driver gets going again and heads back to the pits#BelgianGP 🇧🇪 #F1 pic.twitter.com/ok4ZJtiMvz
Unfortunately for Charles Leclerc, he wasn’t so lucky a few minutes later. As he got on the power on the exit of turn 6, he lost the car heading towards turn 7 and hit the barriers on the left-hand side.
🚩 RED FLAG 🚩
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 27, 2021
Leclerc goes into the barriers coming out of Turn 6 💥
He's out of the car 👍#BelgianGP 🇧🇪 #F1 pic.twitter.com/WYerZJkoEC
Mercedes seemed to turn down their engines on the soft tyre as Bottas and Hamilton failed to improve on the soft tyre. Verstappen pumped in a purple middle sector as he improved slightly on the red wall compound to go quickest, 0.041s and 0.072s ahead of Bottas and Hamilton respectively.
Alonso [fastest in sector 1], Gasly, Stroll, Ocon, Vettel, Norris and Perez rounded out the top 10 as 0.932s covered them.
Sainz, Tsunoda, Giovinazzi, Raikkonen, Ricciardo, Latifi, Russell, Leclerc, Mazepin and Schumacher filled the second half of the timesheet.
Verstappen joined Leclerc in causing a red flag as he lost the rear on entry into turn 7 and hit the wall, breaking his right rear suspension. The session was ended early following that incident.
Max is ok, but his car has been quite badly damaged by the look of things
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 27, 2021
The session will not restart#BelgianGP 🇧🇪 #F1 pic.twitter.com/EvYPqfZ5A6
