Formula 2 championship leader Charles Leclerc topped practice ahead of round eight of the season at Spa-Francorchamps, despite enduring a truncated session as a result of a fire extinguisher issue.
Leclerc’s 1m57.681s benchmark was set during the qualifying simulation runs at the start of the session before his fire extinguisher was activated at the bottom of the hill at Eau Rouge.
Prema subsequently spent much of the remainder of the session replacing the faulty part. It remains to be seen whether a lack of running on the medium compound tyre will compromise Leclerc’s weekend.
Antonio Fuoco joined his Prema team-mate at the top of the timesheet, a slender 0.138 seconds adrift of Leclerc.
Championship challenger Oliver Rowland finished the session third for DAMS, while Artem Markelov was fourth. However, with the pair four and five tenths behind Leclerc respectively, both have time to find heading into qualifying.
Arden’s Norman Nato and Sean Gelael both finished in the top ten, placed sixth and eighth respectively. Galael will unquestionably be encouraged to have lapped within 0.15 seconds of his team-mate’s best time.
The Racing Engineering duo of Nyck De Vries and Gustav Malja were seventh and ninth. De Vries spent the session acquainting himself to his new surroundings having switch teams over the summer after leaving Rapax.
Roberto Merhi, who has been drafted in to replace Sergio Canamasas at Rapax this weekend, ended the session at the bottom of the timesheet in 20th.
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