Schumacher Unsure Race will Take Place

After first practice took place on a damp track, no driver set a time in the second hour after a downpour hit the Spa circuit.

The crowd, turning out in far greater numbers for what turned out to be a more meaningless Friday practice than at last weekend's Italian Grand Prix at Monza, saw just three cars in the afternoon hour.

Even Ferrari's seven times world champion Schumacher, who said he was praying for rain to make conditions unpredictable as his team's only hope of a good result on Sunday, remained in the garage.

The German has warned the race could not take place in the weather does not improve.

"It is difficult to tell you how difficult it is driving in these conditions," said Schumacher. "We probably needed a propeller to make it through this amount of water. It is too much rain. In these conditions nobody can drive except maybe the safety car.

"Obviously we don't know yet [if the race will be cancelled], maybe we would do a race under the safety car, but a normal race in these conditions is not possible. It is not me to ask if there will be a race, but if conditions are like this then it is not possible apart from behind the safety car. But maybe it can get better.

"In the end, you can only do things that are possible. If it is impossible to drive we will have to find another way."

The second session was halted when Red Bull's Italian reserve driver Vitantonio Liuzzi spun backwards into the metal guardrail, sending sparks flying, after four minutes with only him and Minardi's Robert Doornbos venturing out.

When the green light came on again, Renault's Fernando Alonso drove carefully round for one lap to give the bedraggled fans sheltering under umbrellas something to watch.

"You could see when the drivers that went out were on track that they couldn't really drive," Schumacher added. "With Liuzzi, when the rain was really heavy, he could do nothing. Fernando just did an installation lap and when Doornbos came back he was very, very slow because it is just too much.

"As far as we know now it is predicted to get worse and at the moment they are predicting heavy rain on Sunday. Today was supposed to be the best in terms of rain, so we still have to find out what that means for the weekend."