Carlos Sainz was fastest in FP1 of F1 Belgian GP in wet conditions from McLaren pair of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

As expected, the drivers and teams were greeted by wet weather conditions in FP1 of F1 Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps where they could do only handful laps to prepare for a weekend which will see a sprint qualifying and race on Saturday.

There was a red flag situation for an incident involving Williams’ Logan Sargeant after his car didn’t turn in the corner. His teammate Alexander Albon had double off moments with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu having one.

The Chinese racer clipped the wall too but managed to continue. Amid the weather situation, it was Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz on top in FP1 of F1 Belgian GP with a 2m03.207s lap ahead of the McLaren pair of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

The other Ferrari of Charles Leclerc was fourth from Red Bull’s Sergio Perez in the Top 5. Albon was sixth from AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda, Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, AlphaTauri’s Daniel Ricciardo and Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg in the Top 10.

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was 11th from Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell and the Alfa Romeo pair of Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu in the Top 15 with no other driver managing to set a proper lap time.

With the weather prediction for the weekend, the FIA clarified that the Sunday order won’t be set on the basis of FP1 result but by the championship order if qualifying is unable to take place. They will cancel or reschedule other sessions to accommodate qualifying.

But it is unclear if those will be the F1 sessions and or the support series. “We can confirm that the teams have been informed that Free Practice will not be used to set the grid for either the Sprint or the Grand Prix this weekend,” said the FIA. “This has been done to ensure that teams do not treat the first session of the weekend as a competitive session.

“While the situation regarding the weather is constantly evolving, the priority will be to run a qualifying session for the Grand Prix. Other sessions may be cancelled or rescheduled to facilitate this, and if it is impossible to run a qualifying then the grid will be set by championship order.”

The PU element saw a host of drivers taking new parts with all the Mercedes-powered cars taking a new ICE along with Magnussen apart from Russell. There were set of drivers taking new TC, MGU-H, MGU-K, ES and CE.

Here’s new PU elements list: https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2023%20Belgian%20Grand%20Prix%20-%20New%20PU%20elements%20for%20this%20Competition.pdf

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