The Friday in F1 British GP saw overcast conditions in display as rain didn’t hurt as much, with McLaren showing better pace against Red Bull.
It was overcast all-through Friday in F1 British GP at Silverstone with slight drizzle early on bit of rain to end the FP2 session. It was cooler conditions for teams and McLaren seemingly came out quick out of blocks with Lando Norris on top in both FP1 and FP2.
He had some moments but showed good pace especially against Red Bull and Max Verstappen. Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri backed him up in FP2 by making it a McLaren 1-2, after he faced late hydraulic issue at the end of FP1.
Verstappen showed decent pace and tried an unusual strategy with an early qualifying run in FP2. Teammate Sergio Perez only had FP2 to run and was decent enough albeit behind the McLaren F1 pair. Red Bull is slightly on the backfoot against McLaren as of now.
The likes of Ferrari and Mercedes were closely matched with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz opting for different spec to understand which is better. Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell felt good with the car, but rued lack of pace.
But all the four drivers conceded that they won’t be able to give much of a fight against McLaren and Red Bull. On the back of the Top 4 teams, Aston Martin showed slightly better pace at Silverstone than the last few races that we have seen.
Norris: “A good start to the weekend. It wasn’t like the cleanest, or it was cleanest, but didn’t feel that comfortable this morning. But through the sessions, we made some tweaks and I got in a much nicer window, which is important around here, because it’s quite on the nose and quite sketchy and pretty high-speed. Yeah, tricky but I’m happy. I think we made some good progress. I think we’re pretty tight and even with probably Mercedes, they seem probably just as quick as us. They just didn’t turn up the engine and do as much in the final runs. I think we’re in a good place, but we definitely have a little bit more to find. Getting a good amount of energy from fans.
“It’s lovely, I wish the weather was a little bit better than it is at the minute, especially now. But at least the rain held off for most of the day. I love it, honestly – it’s great, it’s busy, it’s chaotic, but [I’ll] try and do my part and give back a little bit to them, and it’s been a good start to the weekend from that side of it, so we’ll just try keep it up. I always enjoy both conditions. I would prefer if it was one or the other. Honestly on a home race, you would prefer if it was just dry because we seem like we’re in a good place and I wouldn’t want to go too far away from that. But it’s Silverstone and it’s England. I’m kind of ready for everything, but my preference would probably be to stay dry.”
Verstappen: “It was okay. It was just a little slide, so I aborted the lap there. On the softs it didn’t go so well, in FP2 the medium looked a bit better. So yeah, a bit of work to do. We tried of course a few things as well on the car from FP1 to FP2, and we just have to analyse a bit what to do better for tomorrow. Yeah, we tried a few things so we now just need to analyse all of that and then that will give us a direction for tomorrow, where of course naturally I think the weather will rain a bit, so we’ll all have to take that into account.”
Leclerc: “It’s been a tricky day, but we’ve learnt a lot and I hope… I mean now, it’s going to be all about analysing the data of both cars and taking the best decision for tomorrow. Obviously there’s a lot of data to look at, and everybody is flat-out to try and take the best decision for tomorrow. But it’s been a very productive day, not particularly fast unfortunately, but a very productive one. Now we are in the process of looking at everything, so I cannot really give you the direction we’ll go into yet, but we’re on it and I’m confident that we will take the best decision for us tomorrow. I don’t feel like it’s the case personally. Unfortunately, it felt like Red Bull and McLaren are a long way ahead this weekend, but let’s wait and see. I hope I’m wrong.”
Hamilton: “It felt fine. It generally felt good, just not as fast as the guys ahead, like the McLarens. We have some small tweaks to things [this weekend], but not necessarily upgrades. Every time we add something to the car we are going in the right direction, but the others bring upgrades at the same time. We were six-and-a-half tenths off in that one. I don’t know if it’s truly, exactly six-tenths, but we’ve got some work to do.”
Alonso: “It’s difficult to read too much into the practice times today with the mixed conditions. The wet weather conditions have been a bit more friendly to us this season, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
Among the top runners, some of the midfield drivers showed good pace, especially Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg who was inside the Top 10 in FP2. The team ran Oliver Bearman in FP1 which left Kevin Magnussen with little time to adjust to be slightly behind.
Also in the mix was Stake F1 Team’s Valtteri Bottas, who showed good pace too with Zhou Guanyu slightly behind. Williams’ Alexander Albon felt good too on the long runs, as Logan Sargeant also had just FP2 to run after Franco Colapinto’s FP1 outing.
It was same case at Alpine after Jack Doohan ran in FP1 in Pierre Gasly’s place who will start from last after new power unit. But both he and Esteban Ocon lacked a bit of a pace overall especially to make it inside the Top 10.
The pair of Visa Cash App RB too ran towards the backend in the hybrid car they have with a mix of new and old updates. Yuki Tsunoda had less of a chance to trial them after spinning off in FP1, with Daniel Ricciardo in the lower order mostly.
Hulkenberg: “It was a good Friday. In the morning we ran the previous spec car and during the break, the team put the update on ahead of FP2. There are certainly some differences, it felt positive from the get-go, but there’s obviously still more to look at and optimize around it, but the first impression is positive and that’s important and valuable. It may well be a challenging weekend with the weather, rain will probably happen and we need to be prepared for it. I like this track in the dry a lot, it’s fascinating the speeds we run around here, but I’ll take it as it comes.”
Bottas: “Based on what we saw today, we seem to be in a better place compared to the previous weeks, but in the end it’s the next two days that really matter. The feeling with the car was better and we didn’t have any issues troubling the balance: we made some improvements on last weekend; the car is more balanced in the high-speed corners, and we took small steps forward to make the stability better. We tried different things with the two cars, so we have plenty of data, and of course we will still need to find something overnight, as everyone will – it’s the name of the game. We’re one tenth away from the top ten, though, and this gives us a lot of motivation to keep pushing.”
Albon: “A mixed day overall. Long runs are looking promising, and the car feels good to drive relative to last year. As a Qualifying car, there’s some work to do. We experimented quite a lot with set-up and tyres between the two sessions, and we haven’t quite got the right balance yet. We’ll look at the data tonight and come back stronger. With a bit of British weather and some fine-tuning, I think we’re in with a chance of Q3 tomorrow.”
Ocon: “The car felt good this morning straight out of the box, with good performance and good balance. But we went a bit backwards in the afternoon and went slightly in the wrong direction in terms of parts and set-up, so we will probably revert back to what we had in FP1 in the morning session. We cycled through a few parts to try and understand and analyse a few things across both cars, and it has given us some good learnings for tomorrow. It was great to see so many fans trackside and in the grandstands on a Friday, which is always the case here at Silverstone! We will put our heads down and work hard to make some changes overnight and give it our all in Qualifying tomorrow.”
Tsunoda: “I didn’t have the ideal start to the race weekend with FP1 and lost some valuable track time, but we managed to collect plenty of data in FP2. I think we know where we’re at now. We didn’t expect to struggle as much as we did in FP2, but there’s more time to come from us and I’m sure we can find a couple more tenths for tomorrow and fight for Q3. It doesn’t seem our car quite suits these track characteristics with the long high-speed corners, but others just seem to be stepping it up. They’re doing a good job, so we’ll continue working and fighting for more.”
Hadjar: “It was unbelievable to drive in FP1 today. It honestly felt like the first time in the car again and the braking and the high speed in the RB20 are just on another level. My last FP1 was in Abu Dhabi and it was quite limited mileage, so it was unbelievable to drive around this iconic and fast track here at Silverstone. The conditions were pretty good and fully dry, we expected some wet spots but the grip was actually very good which was surprising. It’s been a while since I’ve been in this car, but it is always great to be back with the Team and to know the procedures.”
Doohan: “Happy to get out on track today and have some more extensive running after the last outing was hindered by rain in Canada. When I was coming to track in the morning and saw it was raining, I wondered whether the same would happen again here, but thankfully it cleared up and the rain stayed at bay! The track conditions were slightly strange with the surface being a bit greasy. We ended up completing most of our run plan and tried some things across both cars, so hopefully it helped build a solid foundation for the rest of the weekend. It was good to get the dry running in and get that feedback and feeling inside the car, which can also translate to the work I do in the sim for the rest of the season.”
Bearman: “It was a good session back in the car, especially at my home race, plus it’s one of my favorite tracks. There are lots of positives to take from today and we got the new package on our car so we got to check it out and get a first read on it for the guys. I’m glad the session went well, and I wish the team the best of luck for this weekend.”
Colapinto: “My first FP1 done! I enjoyed every lap, every corner of it, and I did the best I could. It was an amazing experience. There was much more on the table, and I couldn’t maximise some corners, which I was getting better at on the long runs, but of course it’s difficult on old tyres. I’m delighted that Williams has given me this opportunity, the support that I’ve received from the team has been on another level. I’m super proud of what we’ve achieved, but now I need to keep working so I can get back here one day.”
Here’s how FP1 panned in F1 British GP
Here’s how FP2 panned in F1 British GP
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