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The wind picked up at Silverstone Circuit as the Formula 1 British Grand Prix weekend headed into Saturday’s Qualifying. The unpredictable British weather added a challenge; rain drizzled throughout the session while the drivers tried to secure the best position possible for the race tomorrow. It was Max Verstappen who took pole, with Oscar Piastri alongside him on the front row.
Q1
Before Qualifying even started, the home crowd was met with disappointment. Oliver Bearman, one of four drivers racing in F1 under the British flag, was slammed with a 10-place grid penalty and four penalty points on his Super License for crashing under a red flag during FP3 earlier today. This is one the biggest penalties we have seen in recent times, and will surely put a damper on the rookie’s first home Grand Prix.
Troubles, however, were far from over for our newest crop of drivers. The session was red-flagged with 6:49 left, after Franco Colapinto had a massive spin at the end of a lap and collided with the barriers. He was able to get the car moving and back on track, but was too damaged to drive back to the pit, putting the session to a halt.
Once things got back underway, the early drizzle from the very beginning of Q1 picked up, making the track all the more slippery. But this was no problem for the three fastest cars of the session: Verstappen, Piastri, and Bearman, the latter being certainly glad to see his placement, given the penalty he is facing for tomorrow.
At the end of the session, Colapinto, Nico Hulkenberg, Lance Stroll, Gabriel Bortoleto, and Liam Lawson were in the bottom five.
Q2
Early in Q2, Verstappen set the leading time only to be matched down to the thousandth by Piastri. Moments later, Lando Norris got ahead of them by less than one hundredth, making this one of the tightest competitions we have seen in a while.
Ferrari backed themselves into a high-pressure corner at the end of Q2. After the first set of hot laps, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were sitting in the drop zone at P11 and P14, respectively. But a fresh set of soft tires were the solution, and after the second run around the track, both Ferraris were on top of the time sheet.
Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon, Isack Hadjar, Yuki Tsunoda, and Carlos Sainz were the bottom five, and did not advance to Q3.
Q3
The top ten took to the track for one final push to set the order for the front half of the grid. Piastri and Norris lead the way in the first half of Q3, looking absolutely dominant as usual, before Hamilton split the two McLarens and put some serious pressure on Piastri to maintain provisional pole.
But in the end, it was the defending World Champion who set down a lap he himself described as “Simply lovely,” to grab P1 for tomorrow.
Despite two small fumbles for both of them, Piastri and Norris rounded out the top three. George Russell will be second Brit from the top, in P4. Hamilton beat out Leclerc for just the second time this year. The two Ferraris will start P5 and P6, a disappointing result for a team that looked strong throughout practice earlier in the weekend.
Bearman ended the session in P8, meaning he will start Sunday from P18. His former F2 Prema teammate, Kimi Antonelli, also faces a grid penalty tomorrow for the contact with Verstappen in Austria last week that will see him dropping from P7 to P10.
Fernando Alonso and Pierre Gasly–making his seventh Q3 appearance of the year–round out the top 10.
British Grand Prix Qualifying Results
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