Max Verstappen takes victory at the British Grand Prix to secure his SIXTH win in a row after surviving Lando Norris’s initial scare, with Brit holding off Lewis Hamilton to claim second place.
- Norris knocked Verstappen off the line but the world champion regained the place
- Hamilton put soft tires under the safety car while Norris put hard tires
- The Briton stopped Hamilton, but Verstappen scored another dominating victory.
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For five laps here there was a race for Max Verstappen.
Beaten on the line by Lando Norris and soon finding himself wheel-to-wheel with another McLaren in Oscar Piastri, the runaway championship leader had to grit his teeth, go leather-crazy and spoil the British party many a papaya-clad man hoped Norris could offer.
And Verstappen did what he usually does and won, opening up a 99-point lead at the top of the championship.
That’s six in a row now and his eighth win of the season so far. Red Bull’s invincibility, with Sergio Pérez winning the other two in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, will reverberate in Hungary next. Eleven consecutive victories for Red Bull too, to equal McLaren’s record. Records keep falling.
With a 0.3 faster reaction time off the line, Norris was gone and a roar, one of the loudest of the entire weekend, went up from the grandstand.
Max Verstappen won the British Grand Prix on Sunday to secure his sixth consecutive victory.
He survived an early scare after being outplayed by home favorite Lando Norris off the line.
Norris finished second, with Lewis Hamilton third after pushing his fellow Briton in the race.
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Not since Hamilton in 2012 has McLaren had a leading British driver here at Silverstone. Fans wanted to savor it, even if Verstappen would eventually play the killjoy role many anticipated as 160,000 people passed through the turnstiles.
In the end, the move he needed to make with Norris was too easy and was a sign that McLaren had no real interest in fighting for victory.
Going down Wellington Straight, he found himself ahead at Turn 6 and Norris offered no defense. His race would be for second place, and he didn’t know that it would be Hamilton he would have to put up with.
It’s been a tough weekend for Mercedes with more questions than answers after a qualifying session that Hamilton said was a “wake-up call” for the entire team.
But few drivers benefited more than he did when Kevin Magnussen’s Haas caught fire on lap 31 following an engine failure. Stopped on track with nowhere to go, Magnussen jumped out and the safety car soon gave the drivers the equivalent of a free pit stop.
Hamilton, now up from seventh to third, took it and put on a used set of soft tires, following the opposite strategy to Norris, who made the pit stop to put on a fresh set of hard compound, which take longer to warm up but are more durable in the long term.
“This is going to be an interesting sprint right to the end,” McLaren team boss Zak Brown said when asked about the call. It would continue to pay off.
As the safety car ended on lap 38, Hamilton was ducking and diving, testing the rear of Norris’s McLaren. But in the end, the younger Brit was ready for the dance and stopped it impressively.
Norris’s early lead, the first time a McLaren Brit has led at Silverstone since 2012, was a hit with British fans.
Norris stopped Hamilton despite expressing his frustration that he had put on the hard tire
That McLaren is a rocket ship! Hamilton said.
It is the first time since 1999 that two British drivers have finished on the podium here at Silverstone.
The headline, again, is Verstappen with this 43rd career win, his sixth in a row, his 11th consecutive podium finish and the 87th of his career.
But the Battle of Britain that many longed for came true. At the moment, it is McLaren advantage.
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