In the round-up: McLaren have set their cars up with the expectation that it will rain during today’s British Grand Prix
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In brief
McLaren set up cars for wet – Stella
Despite Lando Norris losing out in qualifying to the Mercedes drivers, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insists that McLaren feel confident about his team’s prospects for victory in today’s British Grand Prix due to their decision to run higher wing levels for the wet weather.
“We are still in a good position for the race,” Stella told media including RaceFans.
“It will be potentially affected by the weather, so many variables will be at play. The fact that there are these variables is also one of the reasons why you will have seen everyone playing with downforce levels.
“Ultimately we went for a solution that was slightly more than yesterday, because we saw that [Saturday] morning on the intermediate tyre, it was pretty slippery. So we wanted to be in a good position for qualifying – which we expected to be wet, actually less wet than we expected – and because of the possible rain tomorrow.”
Stroll reprimanded for red light breach
Lance Stroll has received his second reprimand of the season for exiting the pit lane under a red light in Q1.The Aston Martin driver left his pit garage, located at the end of the pit lane at Silverstone this weekend, on slick soft tyres moments after Sergio Perez spun into the gravel at Copse. When the red flag flew, the pit lane exit light turned red, but Stroll crossed the pit exit line to join the circuit eight tenths of a second after the light came on.
Despite recognising the limited time Stroll had to react, the stewards determined that he had still committed an offence and handed him a reprimand, the minimum penalty outlined under the regulations.
Hulkenberg “cracked the tyre” after flying first sector
“In turn 13 I ran out of road,” he told media including RaceFans after qualifying. “I picked up a lot of understeer and didn’t stay on the line that I wanted to.
“I feel somehow I really, with that understeer I had, cracked the tyre and didn’t have nothing left for turn 15 and lost all the time that I had, unfortunately.”
The Haas driver was relieved to make it into Q3 after coming close to elimination in the first round. “It was too close for comfort,” he said.
“I was about to go out and the red flag came out [for Perez]. Then at the end of the rain also came into it. So a very spicy situation.
“I had one lap, which was just about good enough to get us through otherwise that would have been quite disastrous.”
Bortoleto loses sprint race podium
McLaren junior driver Gabriel Bortoleto lost his podium finish in yesterday’s sprint race to Invicta team mate Kush Maini after he received a five second time penalty for passing off track at the finish.
The stewards determined that Bortoleto ran off the circuit without justifiable reason attempting to pass Maini around the outside of the final corner, Club, and therefore gained the position illegally. A five second penalty dropped Bortoleto only behind Maini in fourth.
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Links
People don't back me because F1 is full of Brits, Max Verstappen tells Jonathan McEvoy (Daily Mail)
''Eighty to 85 per cent of the press in F1 is English. So you have quite a dominant force with that. In the back of their minds, most would prefer their national driver to do well or in the case of an incident naturally pick the side of their countryman. Ex-drivers, most of them are British so it’s a bit of a one-sided affair.''
David Richards: ‘There’s not a single driver I haven’t fallen out with’ (Guardian)
'You can imagine, Colin McRae crashing the cars and I didn’t have the budget for repairs. Then Jenson Button taking us to court twice to try and get out of his contract, and Jacques Villeneuve behaving like a petulant child because Craig Pollock was winding him up, the fights between Carlos Sainz (Snr) and Colin... having to manage those relationships.''
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Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
The top three qualifiers were asked in the press conference 'why are British driver so good at Formula 1'?@LewisHamilton: "Because of roast dinners."@LandoNorris: "It can't be. I don't have roast dinners… Maybe that's why I'm not on pole."#F1 #BritishGP #RaceFans pic.twitter.com/aQH9b7I2kq
— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) July 6, 2024
Yesterday @McLarenF1 laid on an ice cream van for the paddock to thank everyone who helped them after a fire hit their hospitality unit during the #SpanishGP weekend.
(The only thing I braved was the British summer.)#F1 #BritishGP #RaceFans pic.twitter.com/AAqbXgNyoU
— Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) July 6, 2024
Where did those five years go? One of my favourite photos from British GP 2019. Lovely former boss Frank Williams and one of my favourite drivers Juan Pablo Montoya aka Monster pic.twitter.com/n8qFsmTXpn
— Ann Bradshaw (@AnnieBWansford) July 6, 2024
Got to love English weather. Don’t forget your trunks and goggles today Silverstone
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri) July 6, 2024
12 miles away from @SilverstoneUK and this is the queue on qualifying day at 09:35. #BritishGP pic.twitter.com/W7xNY6OWaQ
— Dave Nelson (@f1broadcasting) July 6, 2024
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Comment of the day
The importance of three home drivers locking out the top three places on the grid is over-stated, reckons AlanD:
I suspect it matters more to the press than it does to the fans.
Yes, people do tend to pay more attention to drivers from their own country, just because they’ll speak the same language and have more local press coverage – so there’ll be more Lando Norris fans at Silverstone than you’d expect to find at most tracks. But I’d be surprised if there were that many race fans at Silverstone who would be cheering on the top three on the basis of waving the Union Jack.
There’ll be plenty of British people there who are fans of non-British drivers. If the commentators hadn’t been banging on about it, I doubt I’d have noticed that the top three were all English.
AlanD
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Ddonovan1993!
Gusm.ai
7th July 2024, 0:56
Sincerely, what makes me not to back some drivers is the lack of competition F1 generally presents.
Hamilton needed little backing when he got a car that made Bottas 2nd on WDC.
Verstappen needed no backing when RB was lapping have the field by mid race.
I somehow like Vestappen a bit more as I see he really having do defend a leading position.
I am not British and Norris is possibly my favorite driver mostly because, even when Mclaren s%cked, he seemed to be the only driver having fun.
I also like Leclerc as everyday he is more at peace with being a Ferrari driver is the best worst seat in F1 – one is paid millions to look great in red and to race for a team that should have a competitive car and sensible raceday strategy while having none, so risking spendind half a decade with no real chance of consistently winning.
Aquila_GD
7th July 2024, 12:14
I dont understand the race fans X post.
Lewis is vegetarian and does not eat roast dinners so it almost sounds like talking about roast dinners is something Lando would say. Were the comments misattributed?
Jere (@jerejj)
7th July 2024, 5:30
McLaren might be in the best position for the race among the top teams.
Good thing the stewards only resorted to a reprimand, given Lance only had 0.8 seconds to stop in time for the line, which is way too little at 60-70 km/h (he probably hadn’t got near 80 yet, given the pit box closeness).
Boomerang
7th July 2024, 11:07
Some weather forecasts suggest dry after 15:00. That means, possibly, inters to start with and get rid of them as soon as possible. We’ve seen that movie in Canada. Three Brits might end up with one Dutchman winning the race.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
8th July 2024, 0:11
Having only opened this article after seeing the race, dare I say the wet setup looked like it helped early on in the race: when there was only little water and those who pitted for intermediates lost a lot of time (leclerc and perez) and drivers were doing 1.36s, which was only 6 sec per lap slower than on a dry track, mclaren was definitely the best car, both cars overtook both mercedes and verstappen and went into the lead, they would’ve got better results if they had made better calls with the tyres later on.