TRACKSIDE VIEW

LES COMBES IS A SPOT TALKED about more for overtaking and incidents than it is for driver challenge. But with the right/left Turn 5/6 combination followed immediately by the Malmedy right-hander taking up around 7% of the lap time, it’s a medium-speed section that can have a big impact.

The high-speed approach, with drivers at 190mph or more, makes picking the braking point hugely challenging. There are also the camber and slight elevation changes in the corner, which make it easy to overload the rear-left mid-corner. That can, in turn, make the mid-sequence transition more violent and lead to the rear stepping out in the middle.

The entry, too, is a challenge. Early on, Kimi Raikkonen takes his usual approach and initially seems to get the car set with minimal provocation on turn in. But after a few laps, he begins to struggle as the grip starts to improve. Bottas appears to have trouble, just as he did last year, to get the rotation on entry, and has a couple of slightly wide moments.

One sub-plot from the session is Lando Norris’s first appearance on a grand prix weekend for Mclaren. The 18-year-old Formula 2 ace immediately looks comfortable, which perhaps should be no surprise for a driver who already has 336 F1 test laps under his belt.

The most interesting phase is early on after the 40-minute cut-off when Norris and team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne are running on the same medium Pirellis. They are on the same pattern of push and recharge laps and, despite Vandoorne’s earlier – and later – problems in the session, appear to be on similar programmes. But the way they are driving is very different.

Norris appears to carry in either a little more speed, or achieve less rotation of the rear, meaning he’s climbing over the kerb in the left-hander and controlling the wheelspin. It’s aggressive but under control and he keeps the minimum speed up. It works for him, although later on older rubber he does have a big moment and goes extremely deep on entry, kicking up the dirt on the edge of the track where nobody else has previously been.

Vandoorne squares off the first part of the corner a little more. That means he’s able to get more decisively onto the power for the left-hander but the exit speed isn’t noticeably different.

There are differences in set-up, which play a part in the variation in style, but Norris hasn’t done his chances of a race seat any harm.