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The second free practice of the Belgian Grand Prix was especially close: the fastest Max verstappen he was with Red Bull, but third-placed Lewis Hamilton was also just 96 milliseconds behind the Dutchman – Daniel Ricciardo “broke” between the two drivers.
The other finalists were also close enough: the top 8 was 8 tenths of a second away. Hamilton later said he thought Red Bull was a bit faster than them.
“I think Red Bull is a bit faster than us at the moment, but even Racing Point can be there with us, and Daniel Ricciardo and Renault are very close. That makes it exciting. We still have a lot to do, we need to get more out of our car, but the W11 didn’t feel bad at all. “
“The field is going to get even narrower as the weekend progresses, all of Formula 1 is evolving, and we can see that already this weekend. Everyone is very close to everyone and we have to understand why. “
“Maybe they took a step forward, maybe we took a step back, maybe it’s because of the line drawing or the level of downforce, that’s not what we know, but we are going to work on it. But I’m excited, I’m sure we’re going to have an interesting race ”.
Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas was even the fastest in the early free practice, but was “only” sixth in FP2 to celebrate his 31st birthday today.
“The field looks very tight, but I think some teams tend to perform a little better on Fridays than Saturdays, but so far the field has been the tightest so far.”
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W11, locks the brakes
Photo by Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“It’s going to make tomorrow exciting. I am sure that we will make a lot of progress and we will see how much others can advance. The car was pretty badly oriented all day, even in the second free practice there was a lack of traction here and there from the front. “
“So I’ll be able to run stronger laps if the front of the car gets stronger and if I can steer the car to the right place in the corners.” Bottas said.
Horner: We don’t see the “real” Vettel in 2020 …
We first saw the launch of an F1 car according to a new Formula 1 protocol: mouth masks are mandatory and, as far as possible, team members must keep their distance from each other. And Mercedes launched an F1 car for the first time in months.
