{"id":806955,"date":"2026-07-17T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/806955\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:14:10","slug":"what-we-took-from-disrupted-belgian-gp-long-run-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/806955\/","title":{"rendered":"What we took from disrupted Belgian GP long run picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pierre Gasly sliding off the track into the gravel and into the barriers at Spa ruined many drivers\u2019 long runs during second practice at Formula 1\u2019s Belgian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s led to an incomplete long-run picture, but there are still some clues we can take from Friday\u2019s running\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

Single-lap pace\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) 1m45.944s
Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.190s
Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.472s
Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.747s
Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) +0.770s
Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.982s
Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.203s
George Russell (Mercedes) +1.285s
Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +1.350s
Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.490s
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +1.524s<\/p>\n

FP2 long runs\u00a0<\/p>\n

Antonelli 1m51.511s (4 laps)
Verstappen 1m51.876s (7 laps)\u00a0
Russell 1m51.980s (3 laps)\u00a0
Hadjar 1m52.449s (6 laps)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kimi Antonelli\u2019s Mercedes continues to look in fine form with a short but consistent long run, with all four laps separated by less than three tenths of a second.<\/p>\n

He was complaining of an edgy car in FP1, but Mercedes made \u201cmassive changes\u201d between sessions and he felt much better in FP2.<\/p>\n

Team-mate George Russell looked a step behind on both single-lap and long-run pace. He was down on power because of an issue in FP1, which was fixed for FP2.<\/p>\n

The Mercedes deployment trick The Race revealed at Silverstone appears to be back at Spa with both drivers lifting off just before the start\/finish line – but Russell\u2019s lift on his quickest FP2 lap was much bigger than Antonelli\u2019s, and he lost half a second there.<\/p>\n

Russell is shipping much of that 1.285s laptime loss on the straights versus Antonelli, in line with a straightline deficit he\u2019s previously complained of, and something that would suggest he\u2019s not harvesting energy as efficiently as Antonelli.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Red Bull might have had to park its flamboyant \u2018Macarena\u2019 rear wing this weekend, but the RB22 looked solid in the hands of Max Verstappen, despite complaints of \u201cunacceptable\u201d gear shifts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verstappen explained those complaints after FP2: \u201cI’m always very sensitive to these things because I want to work on that and improve it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a software update, or downgrade, that took a bit of time for the shifts to learn, and it got a bit better again at the end.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verstappen completed the longest long run, yet he split the Mercedes duo and looked solid over a single lap too.<\/p>\n

Team-mate Isack Hadjar was a clear step behind, although his weekend\u2019s already been massively compromised by a back-of-the-grid penalty for multiple engine component changes that exceed his 2026 allowance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lando Norris says the McLaren is \u201cstill very, very difficult to drive\u201d and said while McLaren seems \u201crelatively competitive\u201d at Spa \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t expect anything different from normal\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Norris faces a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday anyway due to taking his fourth battery of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ferrari remains the big unknown as Charles Leclerc was only a lap into his long run when the red flag was flown, while Lewis Hamilton hadn\u2019t even properly started his. Its single-lap pace wasn\u2019t great, but there have been plenty of underwhelming Fridays that have turned into very good Saturdays and Sundays for Ferrari.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Team boss Fred Vasseur also pointed to another big variable on Friday at Spa – vastly different energy deployment strategies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout disclosing any secret, but if you have a look on the race trace, we were 20km\/h slower than some of our competitors before Les Combes, but we were 20km\/h faster in the last straight line,\u201d Vasseur said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a trade-off for sure. It’s not that you can do a plus 20[km\/h] and plus 20[km\/h].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The run to Les Combes is the perfect example of how differently Mercedes and Ferrari are approaching those deployment strategies right now (as this intertwining GP Tempo shows, with Hamilton\u2019s fastest FP2 lap in red and Antonelli\u2019s FP2 benchmark in green).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You\u2019d expect strategies to converge more by Saturday, and that means there\u2019s plenty of room for the pecking order to shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As McLaren said in its post-Friday summary: “At a circuit where differences in energy deployment and maximum performance extraction play a key role, the current pecking order remains far from fixed, and today’s result does not portray the true competitive standing.” <\/p>\n

The midfield long runs were disrupted too, so it\u2019s hard to validate whether Alpine is back in the fight with a Racing Bulls team that\u2019s now only one point behind it for fifth in the constructors\u2019 championship.<\/p>\n

Franco Colapinto certainly feels Alpine has \u201cfound a little bit of performance this weekend\u201d and is benefitting from the cooler Spa conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pierre Gasly sliding off the track into the gravel and into the barriers at Spa ruined many drivers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-806955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}