Gasly crash stops FP2 at Spa as Antonelli leads Belgian Grand Prix practice
NXTbets Pro | Published On: July 17, 2026
Antonelli leads FP2
Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli set the pace in second practice at the Belgian Grand Prix, clocking a 1:45.944 to finish fastest in a session that kept changing shape as the track dried and the red flags cut into the running. The weather between FP1 and FP2 left Spa on a drying surface, and that gave the field conditions close to what they wanted for qualifying simulations. Antonelli took full advantage. He put together the benchmark lap and held it when others had their chances. McLaren driver Lando Norris came closest, finishing second and trailing by 0.190 seconds. Red Bull driver Max Verstappen followed in third, 0.472 seconds off the top time, while Lewis Hamilton took fourth to round out the leading group. The order at the top showed how fine the margins were once the circuit came into better shape. A small mistake or a brief interruption mattered, and the front-runners had little room to recover once the session slowed. Antonelli’s lap stood up through the delays and the stoppages, and that made his time the standard for the rest of the field to chase. For Mercedes, it was a clean statement in a session that never settled for long enough to let drivers build a full rhythm. For Norris and Verstappen, the speed was there. For everyone else, the clock kept running down while the track and the stoppages kept reshaping the picture.
Spa red flags
FP2 turned into a stop-start session at Spa, with two red flags breaking the flow and leaving drivers with less uninterrupted track time than they expected. The first stoppage came after gravel landed on the racing line at Stavelot. That forced the field back to pit lane and halted the action before the session could build proper momentum. The second red flag followed Pierre Gasly’s crash, which ended the Alpine driver’s practice run and brought another pause to the afternoon. Once the session finally restarted, it lasted only long enough for practice starts. That left the teams with limited time to run through the longer programmes they had in mind, even though the drying surface had offered conditions that looked close to ideal for qualifying runs. The timing made the interruptions harder to absorb. Drivers came out looking for clean laps on a track that was improving, then lost those laps to the red flags just as they started to find the grip. At a circuit like Spa, where rhythm and commitment matter, the pauses stripped away some of the value of the session. The field still got a read on pace, and the top times settled into place, but the red flags shaped the story just as much as the lap chart did. The result was a session that looked ready to deliver a full evaluation of the field, then delivered only a partial one.
Gasly crash
Pierre Gasly’s crash became one of the defining moments of FP2, and it left the Alpine driver down in 18th at the end of the session. Gasly said a sudden snap caused the crash that ended his run, and that single mistake carried a bigger cost because it came in a session with limited time to recover. He finished 11 places behind teammate Franco Colapinto, who delivered a stronger result for Alpine in seventh. That split gave the team two very different lines from the same practice hour. Colapinto used the available running and placed himself near the front of the midfield group. Gasly never got the chance to answer after the crash stopped his programme. The gap between the two Alpine cars also stood out because the session never settled into a long green-flag rhythm. On a drying track, every lap mattered, and Gasly lost his chance to bank more representative runs once the car came unstuck. His crash sent him into the second red flag and added another layer to a disrupted afternoon. By the time the session restarted, the focus had shifted away from long runs and toward the simple task of getting practice starts in before the clock ran out. Gasly’s off had the clearest individual impact of the stoppages, and it came at the expense of a better read on Alpine’s pace. Colapinto’s seventh showed the upside. Gasly’s 18th showed how quickly the session could turn once the track started to come in and the margin for error narrowed.
