George ends a rain-dampened Friday practice in P8 ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.

Early rainfall dampened the track ahead of FP1 and George began the session on the Intermediate Pirelli tyres but only quickly switched to the Mediums.

Putting in a 1.51.495 lap time, George quickly improved into P5 with a 1.49.131 before returning to the pits.

Taking to the track for his Soft tyre run, George moved into P3 on his first flying lap with a 1.47.396 but was quickly pushed down into P4.

A stoppage for the Haas of Kevin Magnussen brought out a red flag with 25 minutes left on the clock, sending all cars back to the pits.

With only nine minutes remaining, the session resumed but as the rain began falling across the track, no one was able to improve, and George ended FP1 in P4.

Heading out for FP2, George opted for some Hard tyre running in the early stages of the session.

With the temperature dropping, George struggled with tyre warm-up as he only managed to slot into P16 on the Hard compound.

Swapping onto the Soft tyres, George put in 1.47.852 lap time to briefly take him into P3 before being pushed back down the timings.

George continued to improve through the session, setting his best lap time of 1.47.042 to take him into P8.

As the rain returned for the final 20 minutes of the session, George returned to the pits, venturing out in the final minute of the session for a practice start.

The Brit ended the damp Friday proceedings in P8.

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George Russell – Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One™ Team Driver

Tyre temperature is something we've struggled with this season and I struggled quite a lot on every compound today. In these conditions, it's definitely something we need to work on. But we know that once you get temperatures in the right window, you can find a huge amount of performance, so there's a little optimism there. We're pretty used to having bad Fridays so let's see if we can turn it around. I don't think there's any guarantee we can find the performance that we had in the last race but we'll be working flat out tonight to try and get on top of it. Totally different day tomorrow, conditions will be very different, hopefully warmer and drier so let's see what it brings. There's not much to compare here to Budapest - a low downforce track, cold and wet conditions, not many comparable settings you can carry over - but that's the unique thing about F1, every single time you go out you have different conditions and limitations to work around.

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