{"id":810230,"date":"2026-07-18T14:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T14:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/810230\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T14:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T14:24:10","slug":"what-happened-in-final-f1-practice-at-belgian-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/810230\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened in final F1 practice at Belgian GP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kimi Antonelli laid down a huge marker in final practice ahead of qualifying at Formula 1\u2019s Belgian Grand Prix while Lewis Hamilton crashed his Ferrari into the barriers in the dying moments of the session.<\/p>\n<p>In an almost carbon copy of Pierre Gasly\u2019s incident at the Turn 13 left-hander on Friday, Hamilton ran wide through the gravel and, by his own admission, \u201cdestroyed\u201d the rear of his Ferrari against the barriers.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Crash for Hamilton! <\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s ok &#8211; it\u2019s a very similar incident to Gasly yesterday. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/aOYGDlQYbv?ref=the-race.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/aOYGDlQYbv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The Race (@wearetherace) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/wearetherace\/status\/2078442724529701042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&amp;ref=the-race.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">July 18, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hamilton briefly continued before stopping his wrecked Ferrari on track a few corners later, giving his team a time-pressured repair job before qualifying starts two and a half hours later.<\/p>\n<p>Antonelli topped FP2 on Friday and continued his strong Spa form on Saturday by setting a 1m45.990s, which was over seven tenths quicker than the next-best car at the midway point in the session.<\/p>\n<p>No driver on their final qualifying runs could beat Antonelli\u2019s benchmark with Lando Norris\u2019s McLaren the closest, as he was in FP2, this time 0.139 seconds adrift of Antonelli.<\/p>\n<p>He won\u2019t be a threat for pole position as he has to take a 10-place grid penalty for taking a fourth battery of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Max Verstappen was third quickest for Red Bull, 0.148s slower than Antonelli\u2019s best.<\/p>\n<p>Even Antonelli couldn\u2019t beat his earlier benchmark as he had to abandon his first lap of his final run because he \u201cdidn&#8217;t get the gear in\u201d, and he then had a moment out of Les Combes on his second tour and had his laptime deleted for track limits, one that was over two tenths off his best anyway.<\/p>\n<p>George Russell struggled to match the pace of his team-mate, initially over 1.2s off before he improved to being 0.367s behind Antonelli.<\/p>\n<p>Before his late-session crash, Hamilton was the faster Ferrari in fifth place, 0.392s off the pace but 0.368s faster than Charles Leclerc in sixth.<\/p>\n<p>Oscar Piastri was seventh for McLaren, six tenths adrift of Norris and just ahead of Audi drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto, who led the midfield battle.<\/p>\n<p>Isack Hadjar, who will start the Belgian GP from the back of the grid due to multiple engine component changes, rounded out the top 10 ahead of the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson.<\/p>\n<p>FP3 result<\/p>\n<p>1 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) 1m45.090s<br \/>2 Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.119s<br \/>3 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.148s<br \/>4 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.367s<br \/>5 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.392s<br \/>6 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.760s<br \/>7 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.795s<br \/>8 Nico Hulkenberg (Audi) +0.934s<br \/>9 Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi) +1.059s<br \/>10 Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) +1.106s<br \/>11 Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +1.186s<br \/>12 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.700s<br \/>13 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.914s<br \/>14 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1.930s<br \/>15 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.959s<br \/>16 Alex Albon (Williams) +2.000s<br \/>17 Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac) +2.654s<br \/>18 Carlos Sainz (Williams) +2.702s<br \/>19 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +2.740s<br \/>20 Sergio Perez (Cadillac) +3.000s<br \/>21 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +4.165s<br \/>22 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +4.641s<\/p>\n<p>        <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli laid down a huge marker in final practice ahead of qualifying at Formula 1\u2019s Belgian Grand&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-810230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}