F1 Belgian GP: Verstappen beats Leclerc by 0.8 in qualifying

Verstappen had entered the qualifying session at Spa having had a fifth gearbox of the season fitted, which triggers a five-place grid penalty for the GP but does not impact his starting spot for Saturday's sprint race.

The Dutchman had trailed Leclerc after the first runs in Q3, having only just scraped through in 10th in Q2 following the switch from wet to dry tyres in that session and as he disagreed with Red Bull's run plan that led to a terse exchange with his engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.

On the second runs in Q3, Leclerc led the frontrunners around and improved the top spot benchmark to a 1m46.988, gaining nearly a second on his previous personal best.

He was untroubled by all but Verstappen, who, running deep in the Q3 pack behind, blasted to the top spot in all three sectors on his final lap and he secured the fastest time with a 1m46.168s, with the world champion set to start Sunday's race in sixth following his penalty.

Sergio Perez will join Leclerc on the front row for that event as he improved with his final run to knock Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton down to fourth.

Hamilton faces a post-qualifying investigation for a possible unsafe rejoining infraction following a bizarre incident in which he briefly went off the track at Eau Rouge/Raidillon while running ahead of team-mate George Russell, who ended up eighth in Q3 in the other Mercedes.

Carlos Sainz finished fifth ahead of McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, who went off into the gravel exiting the second part of the Stavelot sequence during the early wet running on the intermediates in Q1.

Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll rounded out the top 10.

In Q2, led by Piastri with a 1m51.534s, the field made the switch from the intermediate tyres after the first half of the middle segment, a dry line having appeared around much of the long Spa layout.

This increased the track evolution factor that had dominated the Q1 segment, with several drivers putting in times that had them high up the order when they crossed the line with the chequered flag out, only for the rest behind to go even quicker and shuffle them down and out.

This happened to Yuki Tsunoda, who had briefly been top in Q2 with his personal best time set right at the end of that part of qualifying, with the AlphaTauri driver eventually eliminated in 11th.

Pierre Gasly and Kevin Magnussen set their personal bests after much of the rest had completed their final laps, but they did not trouble the top 10 and they were knocked out behind Tsunoda.

Valtteri Bottas, who had led the change to slicks aboard his Alfa Romeo and ran on them longest, ended up 14th, with Esteban Ocon 15th after crashing at Turn 9 while he was pushing early in the late-Q2 slicks running.

The Alpine driver lost control of the rear of his car over a part of the circuit that was still rather wet, his right rear wheel hitting the barriers on the track's outside before his right front also hit the advertising hoardings at that spot, which ripped several of these off and badly damaged Ocon's front wing.

He managed to keep going and made it back to the pits, but Ocon did not take part in the final Q2 running, and the gravel that had been brought onto the track during this incident had to be swept away before Q3 began, which triggered another five-minute delay before the final segment began.

Q1, which Leclerc eventually topped, was delayed by 10 minutes to allow extra time for the track to dry out following the dousing it had had only 30 minutes earlier in the preceding Formula 2 qualifying session.

The Mercedes drivers were sent to the end of the pitlane well ahead of the rest, where Russell noted the bright sunshine burst through the clouds over the La Source hairpin on the other side of the pitwall, while Hamilton spotted his right-side mirror had become dislodged.

When the action did get going, the cars circulated more or less throughout other than coming into change inters at some teams, for fear of more rain arriving from the direction of the Les Combes chicane, as the times fell from Russell's initial 2m02s bracket to Leclerc's then best of 1m58.300s.

He jumped from 16th in the drop zone ahead of completing his final lap, with the times getting ever quicker and the improvements meaning Albon was shuffled down the order as he did not complete his lap following an off at Turn 9, which will be investigated for a possible unsafe rejoining.

Albon was joined in exiting in Q1 by Zhou Guanyu, who could not produce a personal best on his final flier, while Logan Sargeant just behind did but nevertheless got eliminated in 18th.

Sargeant missed the first half of Q1 as Williams worked to change his gearbox following his FP1 crash, with the American likely to have missed any qualifying running had the session's start not been delayed.

Daniel Ricciardo thought he had done enough to progress but the Australian's second 2023 qualifying for AlphaTauri was brought to an early end as his best time, set on his final lap, was deleted for a track limits violation at Raidillon.

Nico Hulkenberg missed taking part in the final fliers as Haas had to try and work to fix a hydraulic issue on his car and although he headed back out in the closing minutes of Q1 he did not have enough time to get around and start a full-speed lap.