GP Belgium: Free practice 1 & 2

1. F. Alonso, Ferrari, 2:00.797 (17 laps)
2. L. Hamilton, McLaren, 2:01.567 (7 laps)
3. R. Kubica, Renault, 2:02.081 (14 laps)
15. V. Liuzzi, Force India, 2:04.145 (12 laps)

1. F. Alonso, Ferrari, 1:49.032 (25 laps)
2. A. Sutil, Force India, 1:49.157 (17 laps)
3. L. Hamilton, McLaren, 1:49.248 (14 laps)
16. V. Liuzzi, Force India, 1:51.520 (17 laps)

Day one of the Belgian Grand Prix and the usual talking point for the majority of the day was the weather as rain, sun, further heavy rain, cloud cover and then more rain punctuated the F1 running. Tonio, who was running on a different programme to Sutil, put in some productive development work on the team’s new blown diffuser and finished in a 15th (FP1) and 16th (FP2) position respectively.

Tonio commented: “Overall a difficult day, not just because of the weather, but because of the programme we were running. We had a different programme from Adrian, running with some newer development parts. We have a really good speed into the corners and the car is very balanced. The blown diffuser does the work we expect it to and is performing quite well, but we tried a few things that we still need to define before tomorrow.”

“We are down on top speed and are losing a bit of time on the straights and of course that’s not what you want when you’re at a place like Spa that has such long straights. I’m positive for tomorrow though and looking forward to getting a complete package tomorrow.”