Racing
© fuji.tim
Lewis Hamilton crashed in the closing moments of final practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, badly damaging the rear of his Ferrari and leaving the team in a race against time to rebuild the SF-26 before qualifying.
The accident came on Hamilton’s final flying lap in FP3. Exiting the Fagnes chicane at Turn 13, he ran wide, skipped across the gravel and hit the barrier with the right-rear corner of the car. The impact tore the rear wheel away, leaving it hanging on the tethers, and caused heavy damage to the rear wing and rear end of the Ferrari.
Hamilton initially kept moving after the contact, raising brief hope that he might limp back to the pits, but the damage quickly made that impossible and he had to stop on track. When his engineer checked that he was okay over team radio, Hamilton immediately accepted blame for the mistake. “I’ve destroyed the car! Sorry!” he said.
What made the crash especially damaging for Ferrari was not just the force of the hit, but the timing. Qualifying was due to start in less than two and a half hours, at 3pm BST and 4pm CET, turning a late practice error into an urgent rebuild job for the mechanics with almost no margin.
The incident was widely described as a near copy of Pierre Gasly’s crash in Friday’s FP2 session at the same corner. In both cases, the driver lost control on the exit of Fagnes, ran through the short gravel trap and struck the barrier with the rear of the car. Gasly’s Alpine crew at least had overnight to put their car back together. Ferrari had only the short gap between sessions.
That compressed turnaround changed Ferrari’s priorities immediately. Instead of using the final pre-qualifying window to refine setup, the team had to focus on replacing damaged components and making sure the car was structurally ready to run again. With the right-rear corner taking the main impact, the scale of the work was obvious as soon as the car came to a halt.
The pressure on the Ferrari garage was heightened by the extent of the visible damage. Reports from Spa described major harm to the rear of the car, with the wheel assembly affected and the rear wing heavily broken. A crash in that area can quickly turn into a much larger repair if adjoining components also need attention, which is why every minute before qualifying mattered.
Ferrari did get the job done in time. Hamilton was cleared to continue in qualifying after the team completed the repairs, with reports saying a new floor, rear wing and gearbox were fitted to the SF-26. The gearbox change, according to Sky F1, was precautionary, but it underlined how serious the rebuild had become after a single mistake at Fagnes turned Ferrari’s preparation for the grid-setting session into a full-scale pre-qualifying crisis.