Kimi Antonelli fastest as furious Max Verstappen issues 'unacceptable' message

Kimi Antonelli topped second practice ahead of this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, but it was far from Mercedes dominance in what was a disrupted session featuring two red flags.

Max Verstappen was third quickest and triggered an initial brief red flag after dragging gravel onto the circuit at Spa-Francorchamps, before issuing a furious radio message in which he described his gear shifts as "unacceptable".

Reigning world champion Lando Norris was Antonelli's closest challenger, just 0.190s adrift in second, while Lewis Hamilton and Isack Hadjar completed the top five.

More concerningly for George Russell, the Briton endured a difficult session to end the opening day of track action, finishing eighth on the timesheets and nearly 1.3s behind his team-mate. A second red flag was of greater length after Pierre Gasly crashed.

How Belgian GP FP2 unfolded

There was no hanging around as second practice got under way, with all drivers except Oscar Piastri leaving the pit lane almost immediately. The McLaren driver finally made an appearance 20 minutes into the session following repairs.

Dry conditions greeted the field, although there had been a shower a couple of hours before the session during Formula 3 qualifying. Nevertheless, wet weather was no concern for F1.

What was a concern was gravel on the circuit at the bottom of Spa-Francorchamps, caused by Max Verstappen, resulting in a brief red flag just over 12 minutes into the session.

As the red flag was shown, Verstappen issued a furious radio message about his gear shifts, describing them as "unacceptable". Running resumed five minutes later.

Initially, everyone was on the medium tyres with long runs in mind before switching to the soft tyres for qualifying simulations 25 minutes into the session. On the mediums, Antonelli was fastest, with Isack Hadjar and Verstappen both within 0.031s.

That tiny gap was initially blown out of the water on the soft tyres, as Antonelli posted a 1:45.944 to go nearly five tenths quicker than Verstappen's effort on the same compound. Lando Norris did manage to reduce Antonelli's advantage to just two tenths.

Staggeringly, George Russell was almost 1.3s off the pace, behind Alpine's Franco Colapinto. It meant that, halfway through FP2, Antonelli topped the timesheets ahead of Norris, Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Hadjar.

Each driver completed just one outright qualifying simulation before almost the entire field returned to the medium tyres for long runs in the final 20 minutes, leaving the timesheets unchanged. 

Unfortunately, the long runs were heavily interrupted by a second red flag with a quarter of the session remaining, caused by Pierre Gasly hitting the wall and severely damaging his Alpine.

The Frenchman spun on the exit of Turn 13, complaining that he "just absolutely lost it". His rear wing was ripped off the car, while one of the rear tyres was left barely attached. The session resumed with just two minutes remaining, but no lap times were improved.