After his strong pace in the morning, Lewis Hamilton finally moved to the top of the timesheets in Practice 2 for the Belgian Grand Prix as rain ended the action early in the afternoon.
The Mercedes driver posted a 1m44.753s on his lower fuel run on the Ultrasoft compound, just two tenths shy of the all-time lap record around the current Spa layout, to lead Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari by a quarter of a second.
Valtteri Bottas, Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel were all covered by just over half a tenth of a second in third, fourth and fifth respectively, as Red Bull appear to have decent pace in standard engine modes once again although the Mercedes and the Ferrari driver's both had poor middle sectors on their qualifying-style runs.
Daniel Ricciardo would be sixth in the second Red Bull but quite some way off the pace as he continued to use a Monza-style rear wing with very little drag which saw him fastest of all in the first and final sector but almost 1.5 seconds slower in the sweeping middle part of the lap.
In the midfield, the two Renault’s look to be following the Australian's route of less downforce and it helped as Nico Hulkenberg was seventh and Jolyon Palmer in 10th for the French manufacturer.
Esteban Ocon continued his strong start to his anniversary weekend, maintaining his eighth place from the morning in the Force India and finishing half a second clear of teammate Sergio Perez, who was only 12th. Carlos Sainz also remained in the top 10 in ninth for Toro Rosso.
Despite their concerns over pace, McLaren are looking reasonably good with Fernando Alonso 11th and Stoffel Vandoorne 14th as Romain Grosjean enjoyed a better session for Haas in 13th with Daniil Kvyat dropping to 15th.
Kevin Magnussen was 16th with Lance Stroll the sole Williams to participate in the second session in 17th as Felipe Massa’s car needs to be re-scrutineered by the FIA before it can be driven again on Saturday, following his crash in the morning. Marcus Ericsson and Pascal Wehrlein continue to bring up the lap times, some 1.4 seconds off the pace from the rest of the grid.
In a largely uneventful session, teams were hoping to conduct extensive high-fuel running on the different tyre compounds to determine a strategy for the race on Sunday. Unfortunately, before a good number of laps could be completed the infamous Spa weather intervened with a heavy rainstorm soaking the track with 20 minutes to go.
In the early running, there were signs that the advantage Mercedes appears to have on the Soft tyre does not transfer to the Supersoft or Ultrasoft tyre meaning Ferrari and possibly Red Bull, who both usually run better on the softer compounds, could well be in the hunt this weekend.
As it stands Hamilton and Mercedes have the advantage, as many were expecting, but it would be interesting to see if that remains the case when the pace increases on Saturday.
