McLaren’s Lando Norris began the British Grand Prix weekend in strong form, finishing fastest in both practice sessions on Friday.
Though rain fell at various points throughout the day, both FP1 and FP2 were largely run on slick tyres and at the end of the second session it was a McLaren one-two, with Oscar Piastri around a third of a second adrift of his team-mate.
Max Verstappen, who finished fourth in FP1, did not make the most of his qualifying simulation in the afternoon session, however, so likely has more to deliver from his Red Bull. He ended up seventh in FP2, nearly 0.7sec slower than Norris. Sergio Perez was the lead Red Bull, 0.434sec off Norris and the fastest non-McLaren driver.
Norris, who has been Verstappen’s closest challenger since the Miami Grand Prix at the start of May, is likely to again be Verstappen’s biggest rival at Silverstone this weekend, in a boost to the home fans.
Mercedes, who have two British drivers, have been in improved in the last few rounds, however Lewis Hamilton only managed sixth and George Russell – last week’s winner in Austria – 10th, albeit less than a tenth slower than Hamilton.
We will be back from Silverstone tomorrow for qualifying from around 2pm, with the session beginning at 3pm BST. Could be a few showers around and we could have a British pole-sitter so it will not be one to miss.
0.434sec to the fastest non-McLaren runner. Max Verstappen failed to get the most from his qualifying simulation though so will likely be in the mix and is out of position today. That said, stringing it together is part of getting pole and winning the race and he didn’t really manage that today.
Indeed, a few of them are still circulating as they return to the pits. I think it is most likely because these conditions could return tomorrow or on Sunday and it’s hardly torrential.
“The track is fine, I’m just slow,” he says. Just under five minutes on the clock as the Mercedes is wheeled back into the garage.
So the order as it is will be how it ends.
Not sure if any of them are going for quick laps. Verstappen has just lined himself up to launch across the line to start his next lap, so perhaps he is... though he is on the medium tyres.
Having said that, he is nearly four seconds off after two sectors... so no is the answer.
A small tankslapper, if such a thing exists. He carries on and is currently in fifth place.
Gaps opening up a bit more than FP1, though that can partly be attributed to McLaren and Norris in particular being so far ahead.
Apparently in 12 minutes, so just before the end of the session.
He is in 20th but that said, he has yet to set a proper lap on the soft tyres. He does not improve his position when he crosses the line, mostly due to running very wide at Stowe.
He retains his place in third, 0.441sec off Norris. Trying to work out how good some of these laps are. I think Norris’s is pretty handy. Perez pops up into third to become the lead Red Bull, 0.434sec off Norris.
And indeed he does, a 1:26.549 with the fastest first, second and final sectors. That puts him 0.331sec ahead of team-mate Piastri. Verstappen, meanwhile, gets a bit out of shape heading onto the Hangar Straight whilst giving it full gas. That ruins his attempt and he is down in sixth now as he comes into the pits, nearly 0.7sec slower than Norris.
Piastri is fastest with a 1:26.880 and Nico Hulkenberg in the Haas is second, just 0.110sec slower. Leclerc third, 0.270sec off Piastri. Perez still lingering down in 16th though this is his first run on the softs.
Roughly on the pace of Verstappen, though Bottas has just gone fastest in S1.
Alonso crosses the line 0.153sec down on the Red Bull driver and in second. A little more encouragement for Aston Martin? Perhaps.
Not many other drivers of significance have put on the soft tyres yet. Fernando Alonso is the highest runner below Verstappen to do so and he is in 10th. Let’s see what he can do now...
He’s 0.108sec up on Verstappen after one sector, so that is promising but the key is holding it together for the final two...
Well, he moves himself further ahead, I should say. He is now 0.851sec ahead of second-placed Leclerc, but Verstappen is the first of any driver to bolt on the soft tyres.
Sainz is on a decent lap and should improve, albeit on the mediums. He goes second, but half a second down on Verstappen.
So here is the current top 10:
He gets a bit of oversteer at the Loop and then spends the Wellington Straight weaving to get some heat into his tyres.
He runs wide but carries on without any issue. Hamilton has popped up into second, 0.270sec off Verstappen’s early pace.
Though he is then beaten by Norris and then Verstappen before Russell gets in there. All of those on the medium tyres so far, as are most of the field.
All but two of the cars on track at the moment, Perez and Magnussen. Piastri’s hydraulic issue appears to have been solved.
As usual, it’s an hour long and we should see plenty of running.
As is usually the case on the conventional weekends. A reminder that Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen, Pierre Gasly and Logan Sargeant taking part this weekend for the first time as the “junior” drivers step back for the rest of the weekend. The session starts in less than a minute.
It is currently overcast but dry at Silverstone, having been pretty wet for the F3 session earlier in the day. There is likely to be rain not long after the session finishes and showers are still possible for qualifying and the race, more likely for the latter currently, according to the Met Office.
He has taken a host of new elements which warrants something like a 50-place grid penalty. Not impossible that he doesn’t start last but realistically he will do, unless we see any pit-lane starters.
Earlier in the season it would not have been much of a penalty because of how slow Alpine were. They have, in the past couple of months, got their act together and Gasly had four top-10 finishes in a row before now.
Particularly in their response to the Norris/Verstappen clash in Austria last weekend, as you might expect. It repeats what team principal Andrea Stella said immediately after the race. My colleague Tom Cary will have more on that later today but here’s a brief snippet.
Disappointed in such a great team like Red Bull that the leadership almost encourages it because you listen on the radio what was said, we all have a responsibility on the pit wall to tell our drivers the dos and don’ts and what’s going on in the race.
I think we’re going to be very competitive this weekend, so we just want to be laser-focused on that [and not Verstappen vs Norris]. Of course, everyone loves a good battle but it wasn’t long ago that Mercedes and Red Bull were having an epic battle. At the end of the day we want Lando and Oscar but to [focus] on the job at hand.
McLaren’s Lando Norris was fastest in first practice for this weekend’s British Grand Prix ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
Norris has been Max Verstappen’s closest competitor in recent races and underlined McLaren’s potential this weekend with a time of 1:27.420sec on the soft tyre.
Verstappen, the championship leader, was fourth although he did not set a time of the faster compound of tyres. Norris’s team-mate Oscar Piastri was third, just over two-tenths off the pace.
RB’s Yuki Tsunoda spun out earlier in the session on a cold track and finished last.
That starts at 4pm. Fingers crossed that McLaren can get Piastri’s car up and running again.
Jack Doohan is looking at improving from his 17th place in the Alpine. Actually he isn’t as he is on a long-run on the hard tyres.
They don’t in the end, thankfully, but this is a high-speed track and in these busy sessions there is always the risk of that with cars on different programs and in/hot/out/recharge laps.
Norris still leads the way from Stroll and I very much doubt that the order will change in the final few minutes.
“I think I have a hydraulic problem,” he says as he goes down the final sector. He crawls back to the pit lane and there are seven minutes remaining in the session. Not a disaster for track time but he will be crossing is fingers that McLaren can get this sorted for FP2 later in the day.
It is a little darker than it was at the start of the session. 10 minutes remain.
Norris leads Stroll, Piastri, Verstappen, Russell and Alonso. Some encouragement for Aston Martin in a difficult season? Or just unrepresentative glory runs in their home race? We will have to wait and find out.
Stroll on a good lap, too and could threaten it with a good final sector. Both on soft tyres. Stroll cannot quite put in a lap fast enough to dislodge him, 0.134sec off the McLaren man.
He goes fourth, just over two-tenths slower than team-mate Piastri. Piastri could be an outside bet for the win here this weekend.
And Oscar Piastri moves fastest in the McLaren by just under a tenth of a second. A second separates the top 12 now. That is the way things have been going in F1 recently and that is good. Hopefully that can be carried through until qualifying though the times do tend to diverge as we progress through the sessions.
Here’s the top 10:
Piastri on the soft tyre, though when most others in the top 10 were on the medium tyres.
It’s pretty close at the top with under two-tenths separating leader Verstappen from fourth-placed man Sainz in the Ferrari and Hamilton just over a tenth behind him – in fifth.
A 1:27.764sec, just 0.161sec ahead of Sainz, albeit on the medium tyres as plenty of the field are switching to a softer compound. Momentarily after, Russell goes just a hundredth of a second slower than Verstappen and into second.
Good lap from Sainz and it puts him first overall, just over a tenth faster than Hamilton. A particularly good first sector.
Here’s the top six:
Not much in it between him and team-mate Russell: just 0.003sec.
0.423sec off Russell’s currently best time of 1:28.046. Most of these times were set on the hard tyres, with a few on the medium and just one (Bearman) on the softs.
But he crosses the line in fifth, half a second down on Russell, who just improved further with a 1:28.046.
Three seconds down on Russell in the lead. He had a moment in turn five on his previous lap. Grip is still pretty low out there. Bearman goes fastest in the first sector, albeit on a set of soft tyres.
Fastest first sector and a good middle sector before he crosses the line... 0.214sec down on Russell. Not sure if he bailed out on the final sector but he lost a lot of time there. Still good enough for second, though.
Here we go again...
So I think we will get a restart promptly with a little under 45 minutes left on the clock.
Nobody else has set a proper lap time. Mind you, neither has Hadjar with that. 47 mins remain on the clock.
Tsunoda lost it in the mid-corner, the rear steps out and straight into the gravel he goes. The car is beached and that is the end of his session.
He moves into P12 with a 1:32.0. Hamilton currently atop the timesheets 0.8sec ahead of Tsunoda in the RB. Hopefully Mercedes can maintain their competitiveness this weekend. Not sure it’ll be enough to put him in contention for victory. But that would be something.
Yellow flags in sector two and we have Yuki Tsunoda in the gravel trap on the outside of Luffield which is a bit of an odd place. It’s before the throttle goes down on exit so not sure what happened.
It’s a Red Flag.
A 1:41.245 though that is comfortably beaten by Hamilton and then Leclerc and Bottas. Not a representative time for Bearman, that.
Yellow flags in sector two - not sure why. Cannot see that anyone has stopped on the track but Isack Hadjar is going slowly, though that appears to be to let traffic through.
The Aston Martin driver complains of a long brake pedal and then says he has a brake-by-wire failure as he returns to the pits.
Not for his driving but by his race engineer who says him to be wary about the grip, or lack of it. Norris has a couple of aero rakes on the front of his car.
As predicted, on the slicks. A chance of rain during this session, however. Bottas and Stroll out on the medium tyres.
He will drive the Haas in this FP1 session. A few other young/up-and-coming junior drivers taking part too including Jack Doohan for Alpine, Isack Hadjar for Red Bull and Franco Colapinto for Williams.
No rain and whilst not exactly warm, it’s not too bad out there given what we experienced earlier this morning.
It has more red on it. Why? A bit of publicity and marketing, I guess – like plenty of things in this sport.
Oliver Bearman, who made a debut for Ferrari in Saudi Arabia as a stand-in for Carlos Sainz. Bearman has now signed for Haas for 2025 and Tom Cary sat down with him earlier this week to talk through his thoughts and ambitions for his F1 career.
Haas will be a decent place for him to start as it stands. They are more competitive this season than they have been at various points in the last five years.
I think we will be running on slicks, the track looks pretty dry from where I can see from just above the pitlane and I do not think the rain has continued.
Max Verstappen says he is unfazed about the prospect of being booed at this weekend’s British Grand Prix as he and Lando Norris have “cleared” the air following their collision in Austria last Sunday and that is the “only thing he is concerned about”.
Red Bull’s three-time world champion has been on the receiving end of booing from the Silverstone crowds in the past, mostly stemming from his fierce 2021 title battle with Lewis Hamilton.
There has been a narrative building over the last couple of seasons that Verstappen has changed. That ‘Mad Max’ has somehow been retired, and a new, mature version – Verstappen 2.0 if you will – has taken his place. The truth is, Verstappen is the same as he always was. He is an aggressive, highly-skilled racing driver, who takes absolutely no prisoners on track. He has been known to step over the line, although to be honest the ‘Mad Max’ moniker and certainly the ‘Crashtappen’ nickname, have been redundant for a while.
Aston Martin, whose HQ is only just across the road from this track, are having a difficult season after an excellent one last year. Haas in impressive form, really. They will be hunting down RB.
Verstappen leads the way by 81 points which is a pretty healthy lead at any stage of the season. Would have been fewer had Norris finished the Austrian Grand Prix last week. Tsunoda having a good season so far.
FP1 12.30pm BST
FP2 4pm
FP3 11.30am
Qualifying 3pm
British Grand Prix 3pm
The weather was never torrential, but the fine rain that soaks you right through. Heavy drizzle? Something like that...
...but it has since cleared up a little, though it is still fairly grey.
Welcome to our live coverage for Friday practice at the 2024 British Grand Prix. This is my first race back since April’s Chinese Grand Prix, a race which Max Verstappen won in his Red Bull by 13.7sec over Lando Norris. Since then Verstappen has “only” won three of the six rounds, with wins by Norris in Miami, Charles Leclerc in Monaco and, last week, George Russell in Austria.
Of course, Verstappen still has a vice-like grip on the championship, leading Norris by more than 80 points but given the dominance we experienced in the couple of years before that, this is a welcome change. We turn up to every race weekend with the possibility that not only will Verstappen be challenged, he might not win the race. At last some competition.
McLaren have emerged as the main challengers to Red Bull (well, at least to one of them) whilst Ferrari have dropped back. Mercedes, though, have found some pace and optimism that has put them in the mix somewhere, too. This is all very welcome.
And what about his chances at Silverstone this weekend? Well, pretty good you would say but remember this is the track last year that McLaren confirmed that their mid-season upgrades were working superbly with Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri giving the Dutchman a run for his money. McLaren are even stronger this year and you’d say Norris has a pretty good chance of becoming another British winner of the British Grand Prix.
That said, the weather could play a role in the outcome of the weekend. Today so far has generally been pretty soggy. Although conditions will be drier tomorrow and Sunday, there is still the opportunity for some showers during qualifying and the race
In any case, we will take you through first practice at 12.30pm and then FP2 which begins at 4pm BST.
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