Dorian Boccolacci has claimed the early honours after topping this morning’s free practice session at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, grabbing the top spot late in an uneventful session by four tenths from Tatiana Calderon and Kevin Jörg.

The Frenchman’s time of 2:06.163 came with 3 minutes remaining in a session where most of the drivers held a lot in reserve and working on race runs, given the expected difference in temperatures between practice and this afternoon’s qualifying session.

The track opened to cold but clear conditions, with everyone running straight out on track to get some laps: Anthoine Hubert and then Jack Aitken set the early pace, with Nirei Fukuzumi grabbed P1 at the half hour mark, and it looked like the session was done for fast laps.

But with 7 minutes remaining Calderon grabbed the top spot by over a second, prompting a number of her rivals to push to match her time: the Campos drivers squabbled with the other DAMS teammates as Calderon returned to the pits, and with 3 minutes to go Boccolacci nicked the top spot as teammate Jörg slotted into P3.

On the final lap Boccolacci was pushing again, running purple on sector 1 until a yellow in sector 2 slowed everyone, and the session was done: Leonardo Pulcini, Matthieu Vaxivière, Ryan Tveter, Marcos Siebert and Raoul Hyman were within a second of the top spot, with new driver Juan Manuel Correa a creditable P9 in his first session, with the ART teammates ran P13-16, led by Aitken. Qualifying promises a lot of change this afternoon.

Provisional Free Practice Classification

 Pos

Driver

Team

Laptime

Laps

1.

Dorian Boccolacci

Trident

2 :06.163

17

2.

Tatiana Calderon

DAMS

2:06.568

14

3.

Kevin Jörg

Trident

2:06.569

16

4.

Leonardo Pulcini

Arden International

2:06.610

17

5.

Matthieu Vaxivière

DAMS

2:06.791

15

6.

Ryan Tveter

Trident

2:07.067

17

7.

Marcos Siebert

Campos Racing

2:07.099

15

8.

Raoul Hyman

Campos Racing

2:07.103

16

9.

Juan Manuel Correa

Jenzer Motorsport

2:07.189

17

10.

Alessio Lorandi

Jenzer Motorsport

2:07.237

16

11.

Julien Falchero

Campos Racing

2:07.470

14

12.

Bruno Baptista

DAMS

2:07.865

15

13.

Jack Aitken

ART Grand Prix

2:07.915

15

14.

George Russell

ART Grand Prix

2:08.009

14

15.

Nirei Fukuzumi

ART Grand Prix

2:08.124

15

16.

Anthoine Hubert

ART Grand Prix

2:08.283

14

17.

Arjun Maini

Jenzer Motorsport

2:08.517

16

18.

Giuliano Alesi

Trident

2:08.743

17

19.

Steijn Schothorst

Arden International

2:09.254

14

20.

Niko Kari

Arden International

2:09.330

13

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