In what was perhaps the most conclusive F1 Driver of the Day decision of the 2025 Formula 1 season, Sauber‘s Nico Hulkenberg takes the award for the 2025 British Grand Prix after securing his first ever podium.
Not only did Hulkenberg get to stand on the podium for the first time, he did it after starting the race from P19. The German is one of the elder statesmen of the grid and on his 239th race, he finally secured that elusive podium which has plagued him for years.
It was chaotic weather conditions at Silverstone and constant safety cars which opened the door for a driver like Hulkenberg to secure a lot more points than they normally would, and for a while it seemed that Aston Martin‘s Lance Stroll was the man who would profit best.
He was running in P3 after some well-timed pit stops, but Hulkenberg was right behind him and eventually made it past the Canadian.
Even then, it seemed fanciful that Hulkenberg would hold onto the podium given he had Lewis Hamilton behind in a Ferrari which appeared to come alive on the drying track. The British driver ran out of steam, though, and his move onto the soft tyre did not come with the sort of pace that put Hulkenberg under any real pressure.
Incidentally, Sauber has now won Driver of the Day for two races in a row after Gabriel Bortoleto won it in Austria.
More from the Azerbaijan GP
Catch up with Total Motorsport’s latest Azerbaijan GP coverage, including George Russell’s dramatic Baku victory, the full race classification, the fastest lap result, and the Driver of the Day from the 2026 race.
It takes a huge amount of patience and experience to get onto the podium in a race like this one, where the weather kept changing and there was no chance to develop any rhythm with constant safety cars and pit stops.
A potentially costly mistake for Piastri
The man who will come away from the British GP wondering what might have been is McLaren‘s Oscar Piastri. After showing that he was much quicker than Max Verstappen and taking the lead of the race, one action meant that his chances of a win went from almost inevitable to extremely unlikely.
The Australian is currently in the box seat when it comes to the Drivers’ Championship, and it looked like he was going to extend his lead and repair some of the damage done in Austria where Lando Norris took P1.
When the safety car had headed to the pits and Piastri became the pace dictator on the hangar straight, he was adjudged to have slowed down unnecessarily and it caused Verstappen to fly past him from P2. They soon restored the proper order, but the stewards did not take very long to hand Piastri a 10-second penalty.
Both the driver and the McLaren pit wall have suggested that the telemetry shows Piastri in a more favourable light than the television pictures, but a penalty as severe as that meant that Norris was always going to be the race winner barring a crash.
With Norris winning back-to-back races now, there are just eight points between the two McLaren‘s in the standings and Piastri will know that he had this race in the palm of his hand.
