Britain Qualifying Reaction
Image: McLaren F1 Media
Saturday’s main event was pretty tense, with the top seven separated by under half a second. Despite Red Bull dominating yet again, many drivers including Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri surprised fans with McLaren’s best start at Silverstone in over a decade. With Qualifying wrapped up, let’s see how the grid will line up for the 73rd running of the British Grand Prix.
Q1
Nine drivers went out on soft-compound tyres despite scattered showers across the track, proving there’s always time to be found in evolving track conditions. The Aston Martin cars of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll topped the timing sheets in the early stages of the session, with showers forcing teams to rethink strategies, initially doing their outlaps on intermediates.
A powertrain failure for Kevin Magnussen with three minutes to go brought out the red flag, allowing the drivers to set a handful of hotlaps before the end of the session.
Due to the long queue after the race control gave the all-clear, many drivers had to push, including Pierre Gasly, who had only seconds to spare to set his final lap. Verstappen and Hamilton came wheel-to-wheel as they jostled for position to make the finish line in time to complete their final laps.
As the track temperatures improved, every driver improved on their previous laps. Lando Norris eventually topped the leaderboard, followed by Leclerc and Mercedes, with Verstappen in fifth. The frantic end to Q1 was heightened by the risk of many high-profile drivers becoming eliminated from the session.
Fernando Alonso managed to escape elimination by two-hundredths of a second with Sergio Perez missing out on Q2 for the third time this year - not the result the Mexican driver would have wanted.
The drivers knocked out in Q1 were:
P16 - Sergio Perez
P17 - Yuki Tsunoda
P18 - Zhou Guanyu
P19 - Nyck De Vries
P20 - Kevin Magnussen
Q2
As the Great British sunshine came out, the track dried up, allowing a drier racing line to form. Light drops still threatened lap times according to Red Bull but that didn’t stop Fernando Alonso, who set a scintillating opening lap on soft tyres and seemed to set the pace.
Yet again, Norris put in a fantastic lap, with just 78 milliseconds ahead of Verstappen, with Gasly only 0.044 seconds behind. The next set of laps saw Alonso set another amazing lap, with Albon, just a tenth behind. Piastri then set a barnstorming lap, with Hamilton and Norris swapping top positions. With just three minutes to go, Norris was half a second clear of his fellow compatriot Hamilton.
By the end of the session, Verstappen managed to get a great lap in, with just a tenth separating him and Oscar Piastri’s McLaren. A last-minute lap from Gasly pushed Hulkenberg and Stroll into the elimination zone, with Russell at risk.
A tangle with Lance Stroll meant that Esteban’s Ocon’s lap was compromised, meaning the Frenchman missed out on Q3 at Silverstone for the fourth consecutive time.
As quick as Williams were, it wasn’t enough to get Logan Sargeant his first Q3 appearance, following the deletion of his laptime for exceeding track limits. That being said, Williams’ electric pace in the dry bodes well for the American driver, so expect to see the rookie climb his way up into the points in tomorrow’s race.
The drivers knocked out in Q2 were:
P11 - Nico Hulkenberg
P12 - Lance Stroll
P13 - Esteban Ocon
P14 - Logan Sargeant
P15 - Valtteri Bottas
Q3
With DRS enabled, there was so much to extract from the ever-evolving track. Equipped with fresh soft tyres, Verstappen set an astonishing lap, six-tenths ahead of Lewis Hamilton, with Piastri in P3 and Albon in P7. With a gap of only 0.6 seconds, it seemed that Mercedes were much closer than expected this weekend, with all cars with Mercedes power units performing especially well. In his rookie season, Piastri did well to put his McLaren ahead of both Ferraris in the initial runs of the final qualifying session.
Despite the earlier success, Aston Martin has seen to be struggling with pace, with Fernando Alonso pushing his Aston Martin to just P6. Tensions seemed to boil over at Mercedes as Russell and Hamilton seemed reluctant to swap positions during their final few runs to allow both drivers to get some tow in the hope of a front-row start.
Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz put in a good performance to get P4 and P5 respectively, ahead of both Mercedes, who inevitably didn’t have the pace to challenge Red Bull of Max Verstappen, who took his fifth consecutive pole position this season.
“We couldn’t have had a better result today, apart from Max who ruins everything”
The stars of the session were arguably both McLaren drivers, with Lando Norris starting second and Piastri, in only his eleventh Formula One race, lining up third.
This result marks 15 years since McLaren’s last front-row start at Silverstone with Heikki Kovalainen in 2008, with Lewis Hamilton’s iconic victory, in a chrome McLaren following the next day. Will history repeat itself? Stay tuned for our Race Reaction for the 2023 British Grand Prix.
