Max Verstappen won his sixth Formula 1 race in a row but he didn’t have it all his own way after Lando Norris took the lead at the first corner to send fans at the 2023 British Grand Prix into raptures.
Lewis Hamilton earned a come-from-behind third place to complete the podium, while further back Ferrari struggled and Williams soared.
There’s a few entrants lucky to miss out on the losers – Aston Martin had a disappointing weekend all-round with Lance Stroll never looking like troubling the points before earning a penalty for his touch with Pierre Gasly. And this time Fernando Alonso couldn’t pick up the slack, qualifying ninth and finishing seventh.
The team entered the weekend three points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ championship and ended it 22 behind, so they’ll hope to bounce back either in Hungary or after the summer break.
Loser: Oscar Piastri
A reminder that winners and losers is outcome-based, not always a judge of performance.
Piastri barely put a foot wrong all weekend, he was second in Q2 and followed that up with a fantastic lap at the death in the final session of the afternoon to secure third.
From there he got a lightning start and went wheel-to-wheel with Verstappen, before settling into third with a good margin to Ferrari and Mercedes.
That all changed in the pit-stop phase though, as he switched to hard tyres before Kevin Magnussen brought out the safety car, leaving Piastri stranded behind Norris and Lewis Hamilton who hadn’t pitted.
Yes, fourth place is still a fantastic result for the rookie but Piastri looked like he had that podium in his grasp before factors outside his control ripped it away. Hopefully it’s a short wait until he can rectify that.
Winner: Lando Norris
Will we look back on this race as the passing of the British home favourite baton from Hamilton to Norris? Maybe, maybe not, but few fans in attendance at Silverstone will forget the moment he slid up the inside of Verstappen to take a stunning lead.
Arguably just as impressive was the way he kept within DRS range of the Dutchman for such a big chunk of that first stint, allowing both McLarens to pull away from the rest of the chasing pack.
It looked as if all that hard work might go up in smoke after McLaren fitted the hard tyre during the safety car with Hamilton on softs behind, but after weathering the early storm after the restart Norris always looked comfortable in second.
Loser: Sergio Perez
How do you miss Q3 five times in a row in by far the fastest car on the grid? What’s strange is there’s not been one common theme conspiring against Perez aside from circumstance – something’s just always got in the way.
But maybe even more disappointing was the way Perez was unable to make headway in the race. He earned one place before the end of Saturday thanks to Valtteri Bottas‘ disqualification, but made tentative progress in the opening laps of the race and never really accelerated that charge up the order.
He then lost out in the safety car window but with the pack so bunched up, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Verstappen win from the same situation.
Winner: Alex Albon
Inside the top three of every free practice session, Albon followed that up by just about breaking into the frontrunners in qualifying as he was over a tenth ahead of Fernando Alonso in Q3.
He initially dropped back in the race but recovered some of that ground under the safety car, before his scintillating on Carlos Sainz pushed him well into the points.
He continued to fight for that eighth-place as Charles Leclerc came back right at the death but held the Monegasque driver off to record is second-best finish for Williams.
In keeping with the heavy police presence at Silverstone to deter Just Stop Oil, Albon‘s teammate Logan Sargeant had a strong weekend too and recorded the best finish of his short F1 career; eleventh.
Loser: Ferrari
After FP3 things looked up for Ferrari, Leclerc‘s car was back on track and topped the session after Sainz was just 0.022 seconds behind Verstappen on Friday afternoon.
They may have been slightly disappointed to be eclipsed by McLaren in qualifying but both drivers spoke optimistically about designs on the podium in the grand prix.
And that was as good as it got.
Sainz was seventh after the safety car, but finished tenth and was lucky to get points at all considering the pressure Gasly put him under before his race ended early.
Winner: British GP
Yet again, Silverstone delivered. It’s now over five years since the last bad British GP, and the event increasingly feels like the centre of the F1 season.
It’s incredible how a circuit drawn out of an old airfield in 1948 somehow provides some of the best conditions for racing 75 years later, but the mix of straights and high-speed corners provided plenty of opportunity for side-by-side action once more.
This wasn’t an absolute Silverstone classic – it set up several intriguing battles that never really materialised – but it still provided an entertaining couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon and sent attending fans home happy as always.
Long may that continue.
Loser: AlphaTauri
Different car, same result for AlphaTauri. Unbelievably, this is the first time they’ve been in the losers all season – though that perhaps shows how far expectations have shrunk since the race-winning days of their debut season following the rebrand.
After bringing a raft of upgrades to Silverstone, there were tricky practice conditions to bed them in and they might take a step forward in Hungary, but really they just didn’t seem to work.
That hypothesis is backed up by their performance: AlphaTauri were the slowest of the regular qualifiers on Saturday and finished last and second-last in the grand prix.
Helmut Marko was also critical of Nyck de Vries who was once again comfortably beaten Yuki Tsunoda, and the chances of the Dutchman making it to his home race are seemingly growing slimmer by the second.
Winner: Lewis Hamilton
Hamilton looked really downbeat on Saturday after qualifying a distant seventh, but that frown was turned upside down by the end of the grand prix.
After a torrid first lap he was able to rise up the grid benefitting from the safety car timing, though he said he’s planned his strategy around that eventuality.
From there it looked like he’d be able to take second from Norris on hard tyres, but the McLaren‘s straight-line speed denied him on multiple occasions.
Still, from the struggles of Mercedes‘ qualifying to a 14th Silverstone podium, Hamilton will be over the moon with third.
Loser: Kevin Magnussen
More a judgement on his luck than performances really. Magnussen was last in Q1 when his Haas decided to take the afternoon off with a few minutes left in the session, and his Sunday ended in similar – if more fiery – fashion.
Where is the next F1 2023 race?
With the F1 circus finished at Silverstone, we move on to the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix which will be held at the Hungaroring, Budapest over the weekend of July 21-23.
