Belgian GP: Max Verstappen tops a rain-shortened FP3 as Lance Stroll crashes

Max Verstappen set the pace in the early minutes of a wet FP3 session at Spa before a Lance Stroll crash and heavy rain brought an end to the on-track action barring a late two-minute run.

As such, the drivers had just 13 minutes of running in total with Verstappen the fastest on a 2:01.565 while no driver completed more than seven laps.

Max Verstappen tops a rain-aborted FP3 session

Having escaped the rain on Friday, Formula 1 swam into its first wet session of the Belgian Grand Prix in FP3 with heavy rain hitting the circuit an hour before the start of the session.

But with the rain forecast to continue for the rest of the day, the drivers didn’t hang around with Max Verstappen out on the intermediate Pirellis ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo. And so began the list of those slipping and sliding off the track, headed by Verstappen and F1’s newest race winner Oscar Piastri.

Verstappen laid down a 2:03.2 to sit P1 ahead of Piastri before upping that to a 2:01.5 as Ricciardo complained about “heavy” steering. Piastri was informed there’d be heavy rain for 10 minutes, several drivers experiencing the consequences of that as they aquaplaned.

11 minutes into the session Lance Stroll brought out the red flags with a big hit after Raidillon as he had a snap of oversteer and crashed into the barrier. The Aston Martin driver climbed out of his stricken AMR24 by himself but the car suffered heavy front and left-side damage.

Aston Martin reported: “Lance had an incident in the rain in FP3. He got out of the car unaided and has been taken by the medical car to the medical centre for routine precautionary checks.”

The stats that matter ahead of the Belgian GP

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ standings after the Hungarian Grand Prix

Back underway nine minutes later, there were no immediate takers with the drivers informed the conditions will improve near the end of the session. That gave McLaren time to have a look at Lando Norris’ floor before making the call to change it.

As the rain continued to bucket down, news from Mercedes was that they’d switched back to their previous specification floor, ditching the upgrade introduced on Friday. The decision had been made in light of Saturday’s weather forecast as the team wanted a known baseline after Friday’s performance difference.

Such was the rain and low-level clouds, Formula 1 threw the red flags with 25 minutes remaining in the session with only Safety Car driver Bernd Maylander putting in any laps.

The green light was shown again with two minutes on the clock, eight drivers making their way out of the pits – and Carlos Sainz spinning.

Three drivers, George Russell, Kevin Magnussen and Sainz didn’t set times.

Times

1 Max VERSTAPPEN 2:01.565
2 Oscar PIASTRI +1.433
3 Pierre GASLY +1.610
4 Lando NORRIS +1.807
5 Esteban OCON +3.685
6 Charles LECLERC +4.468
7 Lance STROLL +4.472
8 Valtteri BOTTAS +4.927
9 Lewis HAMILTON +5.186
10 Sergio PEREZ +5.538
11 Alexander ALBON +5.878
12 Nico HULKENBERG +6.475
13 Fernando ALONSO +6.506
14 Daniel RICCIARDO +6.845
15 Yuki TSUNODA +7.879
16 Guanyu ZHOU +9.544
17 Logan SARGEANT +9.655
18 George RUSSELL
19 Kevin MAGNUSSEN
20 Carlos SAINZ
Read next: Follow PlanetF1.com’s WhatsApp channel for all the F1 breaking news!