Bottas quickest in damp final practice session

Valtteri Bottas headed the time sheets as practice came to an end at Spa-Francorchaps.

Damp conditions greeted the drivers on the second day of the Belgian Grand Prix and most used intermediate tyres to perform their installation laps at the start of the session.

Few drivers did any serious running while the track was at its wettest, but with no further rain falling the track had dried considerably at the halfway point in the one-hour session.

Esteban Gutierrez was the first to tackle the circuit on slick rubber. Soon afterwards the rest of the field joined him on the track to resume their truncated programmes on the medium tyres.

The Mercedes drivers inevitably made their way to the top of the times – Lewis Hamilton taking the quickest time off his team mate by a mere thousandth of a second at one stage, having lost over three-tenths of a second in the final sector.

However when the drivers switched to soft tyres for their qualifying simulation runs at the end of the session both Mercedes drivers found themselves knocked off the top spot.

Kimi Raik konen, running with noticeably more rear downforce on his Ferrari than team mate Fernando Alonso, set the initial pace with a 1’49.817. Hamilton then matched that time to within a thousandth of a second.

That identical time was beaten by three drivers before the end of the session. Nico Rosberg was among those, but the quickest Mercedes driver was only third-fastest when the chequered flag fell.

By the time the track was at its driest the best effort by Bottas was just three-tenths of a second shy of yesterday’s quickest lap. Daniel Ricciardo joined him at the top of the times, beating Rosberg by six-thousandths of a second.

Combined practice times

Image © Williams/LAT