Max Verstappen showcased his dominance in FP1 at the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix, finishing ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and well in front of his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.
This weekend is particularly significant for Perez as Red Bull evaluates his future heading into 2025 during the summer break; he finished nearly a full second behind Verstappen.
Meanwhile, Alex Albon demonstrated that Williams’ competitive package remains effective at Spa, while Lewis Hamilton voiced concerns about his Mercedes experiencing “bouncing” during late-race simulations.
Following a calm session, the Mercedes drivers were the first to head out of the pits, but Verstappen quickly claimed the top spot early on, running on hard and medium tires.
Verstappen set a time of 1m44.706s on hard tires, narrowly surpassing Hamilton’s first lap. He then gradually improved his time over the session’s first quarter, ultimately clocking 1m44.524s after three consecutive flying laps, which included necessary slow cool-down laps to manage tire temperatures.
A quiet phase followed, with George Russell momentarily leading Hamilton in second and third, ahead of Piastri and Lando Norris (all on medium tires). Charles Leclerc later injected himself between the McLaren drivers with a late effort on yellow-walled tires before returning to the pits.
Russell then began his own flying laps on soft tires, taking the lead with a time of 1m44.225s.
However, Verstappen was already poised to improve significantly, and he soon flew to a remarkable 1m43.372s that would not be surpassed.
Piastri moved up to third, relegating Russell to fourth with a time that was 0.706s slower than Verstappen’s. He further improved on a subsequent attempt, finishing 0.531s behind the reigning champion.
Perez’s time put him nearly a second off Verstappen, as he struggled with corner entry and frequently brushed his left-rear tire in the gravel at Les Combes. Albon then surged up the rankings for Williams.
Adopting a different strategy, Albon excelled in the first and last thirds of the circuit, placing himself in third and pushing Russell down to fourth. He was followed by Hamilton, Leclerc, and Perez, with Norris, Carlos Sainz, and Lance Stroll rounding out the top 10.
As the one-hour session neared its conclusion, the group shifted focus to higher-fuel long runs, with the sky growing cloudy compared to the earlier sunny conditions of FP1.
Esteban Ocon was sidelined for most of the session in his upgraded, rebranded Alpine due to issues stemming from a suspected water leak during an early practice start.
One potential replacement for Perez at Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo, had a rocky start but finished 13th for RB, while his teammate Yuki Tsunoda came in 16th, expressing concerns over both understeer and oversteer.
Perez’s performance engineer, Richard Wood, was heard on Red Bull’s team radio throughout FP1, as the team opted to temporarily rotate race engineer responsibilities among different staff — a strategy they previously used with Verstappen and his performance engineer Tom Hart covering for Gianpiero Lambiase during early practices in Imola.
Belgian Grand Prix – Free Practice 1
