Home Formula 2 Nyck de Vries leads Spa F2 practice ahead of Nicholas Latifi

Nyck de Vries leads Spa F2 practice ahead of Nicholas Latifi

by Peter Allen
de vries

Photo: Joe Portlock / LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship

Formula 2 championship leader Nyck de Vries led the way in practice at Spa ahead of his chief rival Nicholas Latifi.

Latifi headed straight into F2 practice following his latest Formula 1 practice outing with Williams and set the early pace as the first driver beneath the two-minute mark.

ART driver De Vries – who took the pole and feature race win at Spa 12 months ago – then went 0.383 seconds faster, with his 1m59.509s standing as the session best time.

Louis Deletraz was third for Carlin, with Latifi’s DAMS team-mate Sergio Sette Camara fourth and Jack Aitken fifth for Campos as the last driver within one second of de Vries’ time.

Luca Ghiotto was seventh ahead of Mick Schumacher, whose session ended early when he had a high-speed spin at Stavelot and could not restart his car.

Ralph Boschung was eighth, 0.007s ahead of his Trident team-mate Giuliano Alesi, but stopped on track with a car issue once again in the closing stages, triggering a red flag that brought an early end to the session.

Nobuharu Matsushita rounded out the top 10 ahead of Anthoine Hubert and Guanyu Zhou.

Euroformula Open leader Marino Sato was 19th in his first session at an F2 race weekend with Trident, 3.4s off the pace. That was still 2.8s faster than the slowest driver, Mahaveer Raghunathan.

 

Practice results
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1 Nyck de Vries ART Grand Prix 1:59.509 12
2 Nicholas Latifi DAMS 1:59.892 0.383 11
3 Louis Deletraz Carlin 2:00.008 0.499 12
4 Sergio Sette C?mara DAMS 2:00.258 0.749 12
5 Jack Aitken Campos Racing 2:00.460 0.951 9
6 Luca Ghiotto UNI-Virtuosi 2:00.607 1.098 11
7 Mick Schumacher Prema Racing 2:00.932 1.423 9
8 Ralph Boschung Trident 2:00.980 1.471 11
9 Giuliano Alesi Trident 2:00.987 1.478 13
10 Nobuharu Matsushita Carlin 2:01.027 1.518 11
11 Anthoine Hubert BWT Arden 2:01.301 1.792 13
12 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi 2:01.301 1.792 11
13 Sean Gelael Prema Racing 2:01.423 1.914 13
14 Callum Ilott Sauber Junior Team by Charouz 2:01.562 2.053 14
15 Jordan King MP Motorsport 2:01.645 2.136 12
16 Nikita Mazepin ART Grand Prix 2:01.795 2.286 13
17 Juan Manuel Correa Sauber Junior Team by Charouz 2:02.014 2.505 7
18 Tatiana Calderon BWT Arden 2:02.819 3.310 15
19 Marino Sato Campos Racing 2:02.962 3.453 12
20 Mahaveer Raghunathan MP Motorsport 2:05.746 6.237 12