What happened in sole Spa F1 practice session

Oscar Piastri led the way for McLaren in the only practice session for Formula 1’s 2025 Belgian Grand Prix, as McLaren team-mate Lando Norris went off and lapped slower than Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

The Red Bull features a substantial upgrade for Spa, incorporating revised front wing, front suspension, sidepod inlet, engine cover and rear corner, but Verstappen still complained of a “weird” feeling with the car mid-corner, unable to rotate it as he wished.

The McLarens were there or thereabouts on the hard tyre in the early part of the session, with Piastri’s second timed run putting him just 0.005s off Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, which is running a majorly revamped rear suspension configuration this weekend.

Verstappen was just 0.088s away using the medium tyre at this stage, with Norris 0.128s back and Esteban Ocon’s Haas (on the medium tyre) in the mix too, suggesting a significant variation in fuel and engine modes being used at this point.

It took until the final 10 minutes for any meaningful performance runs to happen and this is where the McLaren showed an edge.

Verstappen’s Red Bull was predictably supreme through the first sector of lap, which after La Source (Turn 1) is basically an extended straight through Eau Rouge and Radillon before the braking zone at the end of the Kemmel Straight.

Red Bull usually runs a bit light on downforce here and asks Verstappen to work his magic through the twistier middle sector, but any gains Red Bull made through having a slippery car for sector one were more than wiped out by Piastri’s impressive pace and stability through sector two. A tow in sector one didn't hurt Piastri either.

McLaren has brought a lower-downforce rear wing option for Spa, but that car’s greater overall aerodynamic efficiency this season suggests at this early stage it has a potentially more suitable compromise for this circuit than Red Bull is potentially able to achieve.

Norris should probably have been ahead of Verstappen in the times, but he ran wide at Stavelot and touched the gravel on his first timed lap on softs, which before that moment looked to be putting him about three tenths behind Piastri.

Piastri shaved a tenth off on his final flying lap of the session to lower the benchmark to 1m42.022s. Norris did a cleaner job on his own final run to go 0.504s slower than Piastri and a tenth down on Verstappen.

After a nervy moment getting impeded by Franco Colapinto’s Alpine approaching Stavelot, George Russell eventually put Mercedes - running a new front wing here - fourth quickest, within a tenth of the Norris McLaren. 

Mercedes opted to do performance runs with the medium (C3) tyre rather than burn a set of softs and the other Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli finished the session sixth quickest, fractionally behind Leclerc’s Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton was seventh in the other Ferrari, 0.157s down on Leclerc’s time after complaining of rear locking and instability in the early part of the session, while the Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso headed the midfield runners in eighth and ninth, just ahead of Isack Hadjar’s Racing Bulls.

Stroll required a seat change after his installation lap, while Carlos Sainz had to immediately limp back to the Williams garage with what the team called an “issue with the fuel system”. 

Once that was fixed, Sainz returned to the track and finished with the 11th fastest time, 0.044s clear of team-mate Alex Albon who, along with Norris and Haas’s Ollie Bearman, also had an off-track moment at Stavelot.

FP1 results

1 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) 1m42.022s
2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.404s
3 Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.504s
4 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.576s
5 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.906s
6 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.957s
7 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +1.063s
8 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +1.090s
9 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +1.098s
10 Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) +1.100s
11 Carlos Sainz (Williams) +1.195s
12 Alex Albon (Williams) +1.239s
13 Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) +1.240s
14 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) +1.448s
15 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.456s
16 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.548s
17 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.907s
18 Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull) +2.470s
19 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +2.825s
20 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +3.055s