Antonelli leads Norris by two tenths in red-flag-hit Belgian GP practice

Andrea Kimi Antonelli topped the timesheets in second practice at the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday, posting a 1m45.944s to finish 0.190 seconds clear of Lando Norris in a session twice halted by red flags at Spa-Francorchamps.

The Mercedes teenager secured his benchmark on his opening soft-tyre run, reeling off a pair of purple sectors to go almost half a second clear of Max Verstappen at that point. Norris got closest to matching the time but could not break into the 1m45s bracket, with McLaren showing solid pace through the middle sector. Verstappen ended up third, just ahead of Lewis Hamilton, whose lap was briefly deleted by race control before being reinstated.

The session was disrupted twice. The first red flag was called early to clear gravel from the road at Stavelot — a routine stoppage that gave teams an opportunity to switch to qualifying simulations. The second, and more damaging, interruption came in the final 15 minutes when Pierre Gasly lost the rear of his Alpine exiting Les Fagnes, clipped the outside wall and shed his rear wing, ending his afternoon and cutting short the field’s long-run data collection.

Before the session was halted, Isack Hadjar had briefly led on mediums and then again on his first set of softs, clocking a 1m46.714s. The Red Bull junior will carry a significant grid penalty into Sunday’s race after taking a series of powertrain components outside his allocation. Hadjar ultimately finished fifth, just ahead of Oscar Piastri, who missed the opening 20 minutes while his McLaren was repaired following a suspected hydraulics problem in FP1. Piastri was the last driver within a second of Antonelli’s time.

Franco Colapinto took seventh with a composed lap, while Gasly’s best effort — set before his crash — was two tenths down on team-mate Hadjar and was subsequently deleted for a track-limits violation.

The result continues a strong run of form for Mercedes in practice at Spa, with Antonelli’s time also bettering Verstappen’s FP1 benchmark from earlier in the day. Whether that pace translates into qualifying and race trim remains to be seen, particularly with Gasly’s incident leaving Alpine with significant repair work ahead of Saturday.