(Motorsport) Reigning Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen was fastest in Final Practice 2 ahead of Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix as Red Bull dominated over Scuderia Ferrari at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. Charles Leclerc, who finished 2nd was almost a second behind the Dutchman while McLaren’s Lando Norris and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll ended up in third and fourth place. Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, who finished first in Final Practice 1 finished in a disappointing fifth place ahead of seven time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes followed by Fernando Alonso’s Alpine and George Russell.

However, the drivers who finished in the top three in FP2 (Verstappen, Leclerc and Norris) will start the Belgian Grand Prix from the back of the grid after incurring penalties for the installation of new engine parts. Just like FP1, the session was interrupted by mild rain during the final quarter of FP2 but conditions are expected to be dry and warm for the race itself, a crucial factor that may benefit Ferrari and Mercedes in their bid to close the gap with Red Bull. Verstappen was in incredible form in FP2, taking little to no time to get on top of the race chart and finished with a time of 1:45.50, 0.8 seconds faster than Leclerc.

Speaking after the session, Verstappen said “We just looked at how we set up the car in the best possible way. As soon as we went out the car was working pretty well. After basically the first run I was happy with the car." The track became wetter due to rain and with 15 minutes remaining in the session and Mick Schumacher ran his Haas into the gravel at Turn 7 with a few other drivers also struggling with grip. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez finished in a disappointing 10th place and will need to improve to close his 2 second gap over his teammate Verstappen.

As for Mercedes, the Silver Arrows were hoping that with the introduction of tougher controls on the flexing of floors, both Red Bull and Ferrari could lose enough pace but that didn’t seem to be the case. Both Hamilton and Russell struggled with pace in the practice sessions with no apparent reason for the underperformance of the W13. Speaking after the session Hamilton said “We're just not very quick. We're going out and giving it everything we've got. It could be tyres, it could be tyre temps, it could be wing level, it could be a multitude of things. It doesn't feel disastrous out there, it's just we're a long way off. We often find this on the Friday and then things change a little bit more on the Saturday, so I hope that's the case. It doesn't feel the same as it did at the last track in qualifying kind of time, but Friday and Saturday morning it feels kind of similar to that, so that gives me hope that we can turn it around."

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