Well, the break is over and the action moves to Spa as drivers took to the track for the first practice session of the Belgian Grand Prix. The battle, yet again was between the Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg however, the latter beat him to it with a margin of less than 0.1s on this 7.002Km track.
Both the Mercedes cars looked the fastest yet again this season but Hamilton looked to struggle at Pouhon where he ran off the track twice. In fact, he was just one among the others struggling there with strong tail wind pushing them off the track.
Rosberg managed to set a best time of 1:51.577 to Hamilton's 1:51.674 and made his mark at the top of the time charts. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was the closest behind the Mercedes pair with just 0.228s off the pace.
Jenson Button, who is no stranger to this track, having won here in 2012 was fourth fastest and the McLaren was the only other car within a second of Rosberg's time. Kimi Raikkonen impressed with his run and he came in fifth fastest and he showed good pace. Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen, Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo followed the Ferrari while it was Valtteri Bottas, who rounded out the top ten. Sebastian Vettel endured another difficult session. The German completed completed just 11 laps before he was consigned to the Red Bull garage and spent time with his mechanics looking at a problem at the rear of the car.
Alexander Rossi got his first FP1 run in place of Max Chilton in the Maurissia, but news broke early in the session that Chilton would return to complete the race weekend himself. There was another debutant on the track - Andre Lotterer - filling in for Kamui Kobayashi this weekend. He was 0.1s faster than his Caterham team-mate Marcus Ericsson.
FP2 session begins soon. Stay tuned as we keep you updated!
