Michael Schumacher marked the 20th anniversary of his first F1 race by heading the times in the first practice session.
The Mercedes pair were the only drivers to set a time before heavy rain hit the track. Schumacher, wearing a special gold helmet, headed the times with a 1’54.355, Rosberg managing a 1’54.829.
A little over five minutes into the session morning sunshine was replaced by heavy rain. The cars remained in the pits for half an hour as the traditional Spa rain doused the circuit.
Once the rain had blown away Sebastian Vettel was the first driver to return to the circuit. Surprisingly, he chose a set of intermediates.
Lewis Hamilton did likewise when he came out shortly afterwards. Like Vettel, he did one installation lap and returned to the pits. His McLaren twitched wildly as he tried to put the power down.
The next drivers preferred wet weather tyres as they took to the track for more extended runs.
But inevitably the trick conditions caught a few drivers out and the first of them was Bruno Senna, taking over from Nick Heidfeld at Renault. He spun backwards into the barrier at turn nine, damaging the back of the R31.
He wasn’t the only driver to do so. With 15 minutes left to go Paul di Resta skidded his Force India sideways into the same barrier. It caused less damage, but the session had to be red-flagged while the car was recovered.
Other drivers had less damaging moments: Schumacher ran wide at Pouhon and Jarno Trulli had a couple of spins in his Lotus.
It resumed with seven minutes left and most of the remaining drivers returned to the track to set times in the best conditions the track had been in since the beginning of the session.
Hamilton’s first full lap put him third but he was pegged back by Jenson Button, who set a 2’02.740 with his final effort.
Vettel also edged Hamilton with a 2’04.301, while Adrian Sutil put Force India sixth with a 2’04.663.
Felipe Massa was the fastest Ferrari on a 2’04.728. Rubens Barrichello, with the last lap of thesesssion, put his Williams eighth in front of Jaime Alguersuari and Kamui Kobayashi.
2011 Belgian Grand Prix
Image © Daimler
Prisoner Monkeys (@prisoner-monkeys)
26th August 2011, 10:40
I’d like to see that special helmet. Will Schumacher wear it in the race, or is it like the McLaren overalls that Button and Hamilton only wear on Fridays?
jake
26th August 2011, 10:42
saturdays
bananarama
26th August 2011, 10:48
I quite like the helmet. Seems its actual gold and plenty of it. Looks good with 1991 seven stars 2011 on the side. Guess he’ll wear it for this weekend only.
This was a bit of vintage Schumacher by the way. Immediately took Eau Rouge flat out without a question and overtook his teammate to go faster. Thats how I remember him from the good old days, setting a perfect lap on his first lap already. Sad that its not going to last the weekend but I’ll stay positive :-P
bosyber (@bosyber)
26th August 2011, 11:52
To be honest, the helmet itself looks better gold than in the red design, but I would prefer to see something like his old German flag design back. And it is a bit sad that the yellow bits+helmet=ROS, red bit+helmet=MSC that always makes them easy to distinguish is thus gone.
bosyber (@bosyber)
26th August 2011, 12:36
Having seen that video below, I now why this one is a better one than the red: on the red, the black doesn’t stand out, and so the design becomes unclear, just red, with some black pattern. On this one, it actually looks pretty good and clean. He should consider going to a brighter, vermilion, red (or is that too vodafone?).
Fixy (@)
26th August 2011, 18:17
I’d have preferred a helmet reminescent of his 1991 one, but at least it isn’t his usual one.
BasCB (@bascb)
26th August 2011, 12:04
If he has a good weekend, maybe he can keep this helmet!
Icemangrins
26th August 2011, 14:23
yeah, I guess he is a bit supersitious about numbers :-)
Last year in the winter testing, he tried a black crash helmet…. didn’t work it may seem
dennis
26th August 2011, 10:58
There’s a picture on here, on the page of a german newspaper.
http://www.bild.de/sport/motorsport/michael-schumacher/rekord-weltmeister-mit-gold-helm-19594108.bild.html
Apparently it was the idea of the helmet manufacturer, as Schumacher gave them a lot of input for the development of new helmets.
There’s 2 grams of real gold worked into the design.
grichardsonf1 (@grichardsonf1)
26th August 2011, 11:08
The making of the gold helmet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky5ZoiEKtgU
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th August 2011, 11:40
god those gold leaves are delicate! brilliant job there, literally!
BasCB (@bascb)
26th August 2011, 12:07
wow, that is amazing. A gold plated helmet! Looks really nice, I like the design a lot more than his regular one.
Eggry (@eggry)
26th August 2011, 10:40
Hard to read…
Tango
26th August 2011, 10:59
Nay, impossible :D
Eggry (@eggry)
26th August 2011, 12:24
Haha, I have to agree!
Atticus
26th August 2011, 11:43
Yep.
Typical adventurous session in Spa.
I just took my time watching the scenery, which is fantastic (of course this is my favourite track as well – and I know quite a lot, including non-F1 ones like Laguna Seca; amazing but doesn’t come close). Overall I concentrated on the track; what changed, what not, what are they doing differently to my driving in GP4 etc.
dennis
26th August 2011, 10:56
Looks like Renault did just the right thing in replacing Heidfeld with Senna…
Matt
26th August 2011, 11:24
Be realistic, It was Senna’s first time in this version of the car, First time in the wet in this car, First time on the intermediate tires since February(If he used them then) It was always going to happen to someone and in fact it happened to two people.
PieLighter (@pielighter)
26th August 2011, 11:29
Bring on the Senna bashing!
Seriously guys, give him some time. Rate him at the end of the season, not after his 3rd outing in the car (testing, Hungary FP1).
BBT
26th August 2011, 15:45
True give him time, but it was the easiest F1 bet I ever made, so obvious he would end up in the barrier lol.
I could hardly watch during his out lap.
In his defence it was tricky conditions.
OzF
26th August 2011, 11:10
So ignoring the times MercGP did on the dry track, it was Button fastest followed by Vettel (they ran at the exact time). Lewis probably would have been there too but he ran on a slightly damper track.
Atticus
26th August 2011, 11:48
It was more like who run later.
We don’t have much more information as to who is beginning to develop the quickest car this weekend than we had before FP1.
We already knew it would be close between Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, but early signs – based on press releases – are that the two England-based team have a slight, slight edge.
We can never know for sure though, Fernando can always raise his game.
BBT
26th August 2011, 15:46
How dare you ignore what MercGP did, MSC is back in a big way ;-)
sato113 (@sato113)
26th August 2011, 11:10
he will win now for sure!
Craig
26th August 2011, 11:27
Who?
Shimks
26th August 2011, 11:35
Senna!
Matt
26th August 2011, 11:39
+1, I can dream right?
OzF
26th August 2011, 11:49
I felt really sorry for Bruno for that. It was a simple mistake and many far more experienced drivers have made that style crash before (Seb has once this season in FP, Mark Korea 2010, Alonso Spa 2010 etc).
I hope that doesn’t take all the shine off his mid field season debut.
Luis
26th August 2011, 13:46
I hope that off track moment doesn’t ruin Bruno’s confidence, on the contrary, just make him cautious during the race.
BasCB (@bascb)
26th August 2011, 12:39
Schumacher
Matt
26th August 2011, 11:48
Any update on Senna’s Renault? If it will be fixed for P2?
Roald (@roald)
26th August 2011, 11:55
Even if it’s quite a useless statistic at this point, must feel good for Schumacher to see his name on top of the tables on the day of his 20 year anniversary.
Dev
26th August 2011, 12:25
in wet conditions
fastest sector 1 times – Adrian Sutil 34.418
fastest sector 2 times – Adrian Sutil 55.676
fastest sector 3 times – Jenson Button 32.225
too early to predict anything if the conditions keep changing then it will lot depend on team’s ability to react to those conditions & drivers ability to adapt to the evolving track & weather conditions…
looking forward to FP2.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
26th August 2011, 13:43
Very nice for Schumacher.
He knows as much as the rest of us that it’s not really indicative of much, especially given the weather but nevertheless, a good result for him.