Max Verstappen will receive a 10-place grid penalty at the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday, and McLaren won the race.
It appears that this season will be much harder for Verstappen to recover from than previous ones.
Max Verstappen dominated Friday practice sessions leading up to Formula 1’s summer break at the Belgian Grand Prix, while Lando Norris recorded the fastest time in FP2. Due to a 10-place engine penalty for bringing new power unit components to Spa-Francorchamps weekend, as he has done in the previous two race editions, Verstappen is assured of qualifying but will not be starting from pole. The Dutchman rallied to win those races, but considering how competitive the McLaren squad is this year, it will be much harder to pull off that success.
However, what are his chances of success and is there any other contender outside McLaren and Ferrari? We have analyzed the long-term data from FP2 to determine who is doing well and who requires an overnight silver bullet to arrive.
The day’s events
Verstappen led the first practice session by more than half a second over his closest rival, Oscar Piastri, after announcing his intention to compete in spite of a grid penalty.
After an early-morning rainfall, there was less expectation of rain, so the teams were able to get in a lot of dry-weather running before Sunday’s predicted sunny weather. After topping the podium in Hungary, Piastri was crowned the Grand Prix champion and was two tenths faster than Alex Albon’s somewhat unexpected third place finish.