Belgian Grand Prix – Race
It was wet in all the practice sessions and in qualifying, so it’s been a challenging weekend. It’s not raining now (just before the start of the race) but that’s probably going to change during the race.
The provisional grid was: SV, LH, MW, FM, NR, JA, BS, FA, SP, VP, SB, KK, JB, RB, AS, PM, HK, PD, JT, TG, JD, VL, DR, MS … but that was assuming (a) PM isn’t penalised and (b) those that didn’t make the 107% time requirement are allowed to compete on Sunday.
Williams’ Pastor Maldonado has been dropped five places on the Spa grid as a penalty after clashing with McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton during qualifying for Sunday’s Belgium race. Maldonado, who had qualified in 16th, will now start the race from 21st. [...] Hamilton, meanwhile, was given a reprimand for his involvement in the incident.
[source: FIA]
SV leads everyone away on the formation lap
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Belgian Grand Prix – Qualifying
It’s been three weeks since the last race when Jenson Button won the Hungarian Grand Prix. It’s also 20 years since Michael Schumacher’s debut! Mark Webber has confirmed he has re-signed with Red Bull for next year, and it’s his birthday tomorrow.
Bruno Senna has replaced NH in the Renault for this (and, it’s rumoured, the next) race.
Tyre compounds for this weekend are medium (white band) and soft (yellow), although the intermediate and maybe even full wet tyres are likely to get a lot of use 
MS was fastest in Free Practice 1 – only he and Mercedes teammate NR posted lap times before the rain; PD spun and hit the tyre wall, resulting in a brief red flag.
FP2 was headed by MW, followed by FA, JB, LH, FM & NR although the rain arrived about 35mins into the session and effectively put an end to it.
This morning’s FP3 was very wet; MW was fastest again, followed by LH, JA, JB, SV & SB.
Rain is forecast again for Qualifying; although it’s not raining right now the track is wet.
Qualifying 1
Lights turn green; long line of cars waiting to get on track
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Apologies to anyone who’s tried to reach this website in the past few days – I just noticed that it wasn’t loading unless I was logged in. A quick rummage through the logs revealed a problem with a plugin (W3 Total Cache) trying to grab more memory that permitted.
I don’t understand why I didn’t see this problem when I’m logged in, but I’ve disabled the plugin and everything seems to be OK again (both logged in and not).
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