Kimi Antonelli broke the track record in Spa‑Francorchamps’s final practice, clocking an unprecedented 1:45.990 on a soft‑tyre set that left Lewis Hamilton 0.145 seconds adrift in the session.
Antonelli’s Breakaway
The Italian sprinter began the session in a dry spell of low tyre mileage and swiftly lit up the time‑table with a 1:46.789 lap, then detonated the hard markers by taking the soft set back in for a razor‑sharp 1:45.990. This performance forced every team to recalibrate
Max Verstappen and George Russell were unable to match the tempo in their first soft‑tyre attempts, but Antonelli pushed the boundaries again in his second run, producing the fastest lap of the day and a margin of eight‑tenths over Hamilton’s next best.
Hamilton’s Closed‑Circuit Fall
On the final soft‑tyre sequence, Hamilton tried to claw back the gap, but his run deteriorated into a hard‑edge crash. Replicating a similar setup issue seen in FP2, he misjudged speed at Les Fagnes, cut wide inside Turn 13, and clipped the gravel and the wall. The rear‑right tyre forced a wheel alignment fault, leaving the red‑banded Ferrari crew to resolve potential gearbox damage before the upcoming session.
In the aftermath, Hamilton ended the practice without a lap time and had no choice but to revisit his data for a late‑night overhaul.
Second‑Wind Summaries
Lando Norris stole second place on a late soft‑tyre turn‑in, eclipsing Verstappen by nine‑hundredths; Verstappen, in turn, lost 0.148 seconds to Antonelli’s benchmark after squeezing a slipstream from Valtteri Bottas in the final sector. Russell moved onto fourth with his second set of tyres before finding Sergio Perez in the Raidillon sector and hardening the pace again, while Charles Leclerc’s second soft tyre drive cramped him into sixth place, only one metre behind Hamilton.
Oscar Piastri and Alexander Hadjar continued to trail Norris, with Hadjar overcoming a pit‑lane stall and a punishing stop‑and‑go to return to track in a fashionable 10th place, separated from Arvid Lindblad by 0.08 seconds.
The Swiss drivers, Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto, occupy eighth and the tenth block from the finish, completing a field that showcases multiple Alpine teams.
As the session ends, all squads will keep Antonelli’s blistering 1:45.990 in mind; it will set the bar for the qualifying battle, with many scrambling to match the temp at Spa‑Francorchamps.
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