If you picked the top three qualifying results for the British Grand Prix, you’re lying.
Max Verstappen, sure. The Dutchman taking his fifth successive pole and seventh for the season is no great shock.
But you’ll be hard-pressed to convince that you forecast Verstappen having to set two Q3 laps to take top spot after losing provision pole to Lando Norris.
And are you really going to try to argue that you foresaw that Oscar Piastri, in a car not quite up to the latest specification, leading the second row from third place?
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It’s all very unlikely. Which is of course what makes it so interesting.
With McLaren apparently in the podium mix with the rest of the regular frontrunners, with Alex Albon steering an unexpectedly punchy Williams and with Sergio Pérez yet again needing to recover from a poor qualifying performance, the British Grand Prix is beautifully set up to be a cracker.
McLAREN DELIVERS SOMETHING TANGIBLE
It’s not just with its partially chrome livery that McLaren is attempting to recapture the glory of the 2000s. This weekend its on-track performances are doing a good job of banishing years of bad memories.
Norris qualified second and just 0.241 seconds of pole. Piastri was third and only 0.131 seconds further back.
This is the same McLaren that fielded the slowest car at the opening race of the year.
The route to the team’s sensational two-there qualification goes via two major stops.
The first is the upgrade package, the talk of the paddock for the last week.
The concept-changing update is significant enough the team has likened it to a “B-spec” car, and it’s big enough that it’s coming over three grands prix.
Norris got half of it in Austria and another 25 per cent of it this weekend. Piastri got the first 50 per cent for Silverstone and will catch up on the rest in the coming races.
Fourth in Austria for Norris was promising, but he’s always fast there. A more aerodynamically demanding circuit like Silverstone would be a sterner test.
So far it’s passing the exam with flying colours.
It’s particularly flattering for Piastri, who’s barely behind Norris despite lacking the newest front wing and nose.
A look at the telemetry shows the MCL60 is losing time to the RB19 really only in two key areas: at the end of the straights, where Red Bull Racing’s trick DRS has its biggest advantage, and at the slowest part of the track, namely the Vale chicane.
The summary of the data is that the car has become much more efficient — that is, it’s carrying plenty of downforce without the drag that used to weigh it down. That’s massively promising.
But it’s important to keep expectations in check.
Austria and Britain still form a small sample size. They’re also both circuits at which McLaren, or at least Norris, overperformed last season.
The weather also played into McLaren’s hands.
We’ve seen already this season in places like Barcelona and Montreal that the MCL60, which fires up its tyres rapidly, loves qualifying in cool and damp conditions — every other summer day in Britain, much like we saw on Saturday.
Both drivers got into Q3 in Spain and Canada but at neither race did either score points. Tyre wear cruelled their race pace.
Given Friday’s race simulations were unclear as to where McLaren stood, that could yet happen again Sunday.
But there’s obviously a step change between a couple of chance Q3 outings and a strong two-three on the grid. The team will surely be targeting double points this time around. A double top five or even double podium would be a remarkable statement result.
And for those who insist that they saw this strong result coming, here’s some help with today’s bold prediction.
The last time McLaren drivers started second and third on the grid, Daniel Ricciardo led Norris to a one-two finish at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
SERGIO PÉREZ FLOPS AGAIN
Red Bull Racing’s RB19 has taken every pole bar one so far this season.
Sergio Pérez has failed to make the top 10 six times this season. Three times he’s been eliminated in the bottom five of the grid.
We’re well past the point of considering what effect this is having on his long-faded championship aspirations. The damage is now all reputational.
There were several crucial factors behind Pérez’s latest failure, and while not all of them are owned directly by him, responsibility is overwhelmingly sheeted home to the Mexican.
His first mistake came in the damp opening phase of Q1, when he failed to set a competitive lap time.
When the red flag was called with three minutes on the clock, Pérez was 1.4 seconds slower than the then session-leading Verstappen.
That put him under pressure to deliver with just a single flying lap to make the cut.
Here’s where the team’s influence on the result comes in.
Pérez was sent to the end of the pit lane to ensure he didn’t get caught in traffic, but this had two negative effects. The first was it allowed his tyres cool significantly ahead of that crucial lap. The second was that it put him on the track at the worst time, when the circuit was slowest.
The track was drying rapidly as the sun broke through the clouds at this point. The ideal time to set a lap was at the very last moment, not the first.
But it would be an exaggeration to say this set him up to fail.
Directly behind him on the track was Alex Albon, who was therefore dealing with very similar conditions. The Thai driver set a time 0.502 seconds quicker.
“I’m struggling in these conditions in the car lately,” Pérez told Sky Sports. “I think my problems with the car become more apparent in these conditions.
“I think it’s something we’ve got to understand as a group to try and figure out and try to get to the bottom of it.”
Can he salvage a result from here?
He has the car to do it, and Silverstone certainly facilitates overtaking. The two DRS zones will also play to his strengths.
And he showed in Austria that he’s capable of a big recovery, having risen from 15th to third.
“I think we had a very good Friday in terms of pace, so hopefully we are able to find that,” he said hopefully, noting that in the dry he was much more confident.
But that confidence looks so fleeting these days.
BRITAIN PROMISES UNPREDICTABLE BATTLE FOR THE PODIUM
Behind McLaren you can still see the usual signs we’ve become used to this season after a qualifying session.
Ferrari headed the rest of the pack on single lap pace, and Charles Leclerc probably could’ve pipped Norris had he not made a single mistake at Stowe, where he ran wide onto the wet kerbs and lost a bundle of time. He’d been neck and neck with Verstappen through Maggotts and Becketts.
But that mistake having been made, Ferrari ended up at the head of a tight battle with Mercedes, which showed up better than expected after a very difficult Friday.
On paper both teams are quicker than McLaren on race pace — notwithstanding the opaque Friday data — and Mercedes is probably faster than Ferrari.
“We’re going to be chasing McLaren, and Mercedes is going to be chasing McLaren and us, so think it’s going to be quite an exciting race,” Carlos Sainz told Sky Sports.
Combined with the prospect of Pérez slicing through the field, it should be a fascinating podium battle behind Verstappen.
But there’s also the added element of Aston Martin, which struggled to its most underwhelming qualifying result of the year. Ninth is Fernando Alonso’s equal worst qualifying position and will give him his outright worst grid spot for 2023.
He’s not just back behind the factory Mercedes team, he’s also behind the superb Alex Albon too, and we’ve learnt from so many races that the Thai driver is a ferocious defender.
“It was not a good day obviously,” Alonso told Sky Sports. “Nothing we can do now. Let’s hope for a better race tomorrow and to score some good points.
“It seems like we have to have to be on a defensive strategy this weekend.”
It’s not the first substandard weekend Aston Martin has had this year, but it certainly feels like the team has lost a little bit of the initiative it burst from the blocks with. Just a tiny bit of air has escaped the balloon — certainly if McLaren has made a genuine jump forward.
It’s come as Ferrari, Mercedes and now McLaren have all brought big upgrades.
“Some of our competition really improved the car and brought a lot of new parts. That’s one reason,” Alonso said. “The second reason is track specific.
“We didn’t perform in Barcelona, Austria and Silverstone. All three of them are a little bit similar in terms of track characteristics.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
Pre-race coverage starts at 10:30pm Sunday, with lights out for the British Grand Prix at midnight Monday morning.
