RC2 Racing Team’s Santiago Concepción set the best time of the day in the second of four unofficial test sessions held at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit ahead of the second race weekend of the season, while three sessions were red-flagged and aborted, including a major crash for MM Motorspor’ts Marco Butti.

PMA Motorsport’s Nicolas Taylor, who is making his Spa-Francorchamps debut this weekend, topped the first collective test in the morning with a time of 2:29.031, just 33-thousandths of a second faster than last year’s pole-sitter Felipe Fernández.

The session was red-flagged and not restarted when Santiago Concepción spun his Honda Civic Type R FL5 off at Les Combes and became trapped in the gravel.

The Spanish driver bounced back from the off in the second test, setting a time well inside the qualifying lap record which has stood since 2018, with Concepción’s time of 2:28.174 just under a tenth of a second faster than the rival MM Motorsport Honda of Marco Butti, with Ruben Volt third quickest in his ALM Motorsport Honda.

The next 30-minute test was led by Butti before the Italian driver suffered an accident at Eau Rouge, and experienced severe damage to his car, with two of the four wheels taken off and the car landing on its roof. Butti was able to walk away unscathed from the accident, but the team will have its work cut out to repair the car for tomorrow’s qualifying session.

The final test session was led by Taylor again, with the Audi driver set to improve on his best time of 2:28.459 in the final moments before practice was stopped when Viktor Andersson’s Lynk & Co stopped with an oil pressure issue at Stavelot.

The next session is qualifying, which takes place at 12:55 CEST tomorrow afternoon.