The 12th round of the 2017 F1 season got underway at the Spa-Francorchamps Circuit on Friday under disparate weather conditions.
Nestled in the Ardennes region of southeast Belgium, Spa-Francorchamps is the longest track in Formula One and produces some of the sport's highest speeds, but it is also well known for quickly changing weather, and that was on display, with FP1 run under a warm and sunny sky while FP2 began cloudy and ended with rain.
Haas F1 Team driver Romain attacked the undulating circuit, logging 20 laps in FP1 and 15 laps in FP2 setting the 17th best time with a 1:48.626 in FP1.
Speeds picked up and lap times dropped in a rain-shortened FP2, and Grosjean improved to set the 13th-quickest time with a 1:47.285, which was 1.341 seconds better than his best lap in FP1.
“Generally, we've been struggling a little bit on low downforce circuits and that seems to be the case here again at Spa,” Romain said. “We're trying to find the setup between drag and downforce, but we're struggling a bit with it."
"We're going to see where we can do better tonight, work hard, find the last few tenths and decide on the downforce level – which will be a big decision for us. It's a tricky one getting everything to work and the right top speed. Hopefully, tomorrow we'll have slightly more performance and that'll put us in a decent place.”
Light rain moved in over turns five and nine with 30 minutes remaining before heavy rain with 20 minutes to go washed out the rest of FP2.
The track record at Spa remained untouched, but it appears set to fall when qualifying begins Saturday. Jarno Trulli currently owns the fastest lap at Spa – a 1:44.503 set in his Toyota during the second round of qualifying for the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix.
Hamilton's quick FP2 time was just .25 of a second shy of eclipsing Trulli's eight-year-old mark.
