Spa Friday takeaways: Verstappen and Antonelli split the headline runs as red flags blur the picture

Max Verstappen opened Belgian Grand Prix weekend by setting the pace in FP1, underlining Red Bull’s strong start to Friday at Spa. The session gave the team the first headline of the day, while also hinting that Ferrari was in the mix straight away. By the time Kimi Antonelli went quickest in a red-flag interrupted FP2, Friday had already started to look like one of those practice days where the order at the top is interesting, but the amount of clean running underneath it matters just as much.

That distinction is central to how Spa should be read. The sources describe second practice as being hit by two red flags, and the separate long-run analysis says those interruptions interfered with attempts to build a proper race picture. In other words, the timing sheets were not useless, but they were incomplete. At a circuit like Spa, where fast corners and changing conditions can make lap time swing quickly, a session broken up by stoppages can flatter some cars, stall others, and leave teams with only fragments of the information they wanted.

Even so, Friday still offered a few credible clues. Verstappen’s FP1 benchmark suggests Red Bull started the weekend on solid footing, at least over one lap in opening practice. Ferrari’s presence near the front in that session also points to a competitive opening run for the Scuderia. Then FP2 added Mercedes to the leading conversation, with Antonelli topping the session. That does not prove Mercedes is the outright favourite for the rest of the weekend, because the sources do not support that level of certainty, but it does show that three different teams took turns at the front across the two sessions.

The more difficult question is what the field learned beyond the headline times. The winners-and-losers review from the day says early winners and losers are already emerging from the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, which is a reminder that Friday was not just about fastest laps. Some teams likely left Spa with momentum, while others were still chasing answers, especially if their long runs were broken up before they could gather enough consistent data. That is particularly relevant here because the long-run picture was also contaminated by the red flags, making it hard to judge tyre behaviour, stint stability, or whether a quick lap could be repeated over a realistic run.