Behind the top six of Antonelli, Norris, Verstappen, Hamilton and Hadjar, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, Russell and the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson completed the top 10 ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Verstappen was complaining about gearshifts, as he so often does, but his pace was encouraging considering the team have had to shelve their ‘flip-flop’ rear wing after consecutive crashes for the Dutchman in high-speed corners in Austria and at Silverstone.
The failure was that the wing was closing too much, removing the so-called ‘slot gap’ between the main plane and flap, meaning the car had less downforce than the driver expected on corner entry.
Reverting to the standard wing, which opens like the old DRS overtaking aid, is said by insiders to cost around 0.2secs a lap.
Red Bull hope to have a revised version of the new wing ready for the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.
Racing Bulls have an upgrade on Lindblad’s car this weekend. The team decided to give it to the Briton rather than Lawson after an agreement that the driver who qualified ahead at the British Grand Prix would have the new parts for Spa.
Lawson will get the next upgrade later in the year, which is also expected only to be ready for one driver initially, team principal Alan Permane said.
