F1: Sainz Jr. tops rain soaked practice at Spa

Carlos Sainz Jr.  topped the one and only practice session for the Belgian GP at Spa – rain soaked that severely limited running.

Sainz turned a lap of 2m03.207s in his #55 Ferrari, tip-toeing around the rain soaked track.

Oscar Piastri was 2nd for McLaren, 0.585s behind in a session where no one pushed to hard to avoid crashing.

Championship leader Ma Verstappen never ever bother to turn a timed lap.

Lando Norris was third in the #4 McLaren, ahead of Charles Leclerc in the #16 Ferrari.

Sergio Perez rounded out the top-5, a full 5 seconds off the pace.

A disappointed Mercedes team wanted to test out different rear wings on their two cars, and Alpine needed data on their new floor, but the rain ruined all that

They were just two teams needing laps here who didn’t really get them, while Williams now have an investigative job to do to work out what happened to Sargeant’s car in FP1.

Sargeant reported that something broke and he lost all steering.

All of which means qualifying in 2 hours is going to be fascinating – assuming the rain eases enough so that it can go ahead.

Do the teams opt for wet weather set-ups, or dry with Sunday’s race potentially looking like it might run in dry conditions? How much downforce do they bolt on or take off?

Remember, parc fermé conditions will be in effect later on if qualifying takes place, which is absolutely ludicrous. Cars will be locked down to any further adjustments, and teams have to guess whether Sunday will be wet or dry.

This makes it a total crap shoot.  Parc Ferme rules should be relaxed if the weekend is wet like this.

Belgian GP Practice 1 Results