Last but not least, here’s the report from today’s race. Thanks for reading!
And here’s Sergio Perez: “Yes, it was a great comeback! We didn’t give up and we kept pushing and then the opportunity came there at the end and we just went for it. It was a great fight with Charles first of all, then with Lewis. I felt like I had the position and Lewis was there. It was just an epic final lap but it was a good fight.”
I’m ok, all clear. Halo saved me today. Thanks everyone for your kind messages! pic.twitter.com/OylxoJC4M0
— 周冠宇 | Zhou Guanyu 🇨🇳 (@ZhouGuanyu24) July 3, 2022
And here’s Lewis Hamilton: “I gave it everything today trying to chase down those Ferraris. Congratulations to Carlos – in the end I was in that battle but those guys were just too quick on the straights for us today. We lost a bit of time in the pit stops, and then I was chasing and chasing, but the pace was good. I’m glad everyone was safe from the big crash at the beginning. We are going to continue to push, try and give it everything we can.”
Carlos Sainz on his first ever GP win: “I don’t know what to say – it’s amazing. My first race win, 150 races later, with Ferrari and in Silverstone. Thanks everyone. Lewis was on it I heard, but I managed to hold on. It was not easy, I struggled a lot with the balance on the first stint. All of a sudden the safety car gave us a chance to get back in it and we did it.”
That late drama:
OMG this racing!!!!! 🤯
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) July 3, 2022
Perez and Leclerc go wheel to wheel in the final sector and that allows Hamilton to DOUBLE overtake! 😮 pic.twitter.com/lSChualR4X
How they finished:
1 Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
2 Sergio Perez, Red Bul
3 Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
4 Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
5 Fernando Alonso, Alpine
6 Lando Norris, McLaren
7 Max Verstappen, Red Bull
8 Mick Schumacher, Haas
9 Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin
10 Kevin Magnussen, Haas
11 Lance Stroll, Aston Martin
12 Nicholas Latifi, Williams
13 Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren
14 Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri
Carlos Sainz wins British GP for his first F1 victory
Sainz crosses the line for a hard-earned career first. Behind him comes Perez and then Hamilton, whose podium finish gets a deafening roar. What a race!
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Lap 52/52: Carlos Sainz is cruising towards what will surely be his first grand prix triumph. Schumacher attacks Verstappen and for a moment it looks like he’s got him – but Verstappen shuts the door and eyes the finish line.
Lap 51/52: Alonso is on Leclerc’s heels in fourth while Schumacher is in the points, looking at Verstappen in seventh. The stewards have noted Perez potentially gaining an advantage when going off track – might he be penalised?
Lap 50/52: Hamilton eyes Perez, 1.7secs ahead of him. Two laps to go. Sainz 3secs clear up top.
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Lap 48/52: Hamilton inches ahead of Leclerc, who snatches back P3 two corners later. But back comes Hamilton, this time with DRS, to steam past the Monegasque on Hangar Straight and this time he defends it! He’s on the podium!
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Lap 46/52: Perez and Leclerc go wheel to wheel only for Hamilton to zip past the both of them! But Perez rallies and recovers second by attacking Hamilton on the inside at the start of lap 46. Then Leclerc reclaims his place - and Alonso arrives on the scene to leave five cars you could throw a sheet over. Astonishing. Sainz leads, then Perez, Leclerc, Hamilton and Alonso.
Lap 44/52: Hamilton had a nightmare on the first few corners after the restart but he looks at ease again now and must hunt down Perez, 0.4secs ahead of him. Two seconds separate the top four.
Lap 43/52: We’re racing again and Leclerc goes off the track to gift the lead to Sainz while Perez passes Hamilton for third! Helluva restart. Could Sainz win his first grand prix?
Lap 42/52: “This is going to be hard,” says Leclerc, who is tailed by Sainz, Hamilton, Perez and then Alonso. Sounds like it was a fuel pump issue that caused Ocon to retire.
Lap 40/52: Mercedes’ tactics have left Hamilton unconvinced. “Are sure this is the right tyre?” he asks. We’ll soon find out - we’re still under the safety car but lapped cars are now being told to overtake.
Lap 39/52: Sainz is told to save fuel by his team and lets out an exasperated roar in response. Then Ocon stops on the pit straight - and we get a safety car. This will play right into Hamilton hands! Sainz and Hamilton immediately pit for soft tyres, Leclerc stays out.
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Lap 37/52: A tetchy Verstappen is plugging away to fend off the attentions of Ocon, who after a laps-long duel hotfoots it around the Dutchman into eighth. Hamilton clocks up a fastest lap: his tyres are ready for the finale.
Lap 36/52: Hamilton gets to work warming his tyres up, the gap to Sainz jut over four seconds. Perez has slinked into fourth, with Norris having pitted.
Lap 34/52: Hamilton pits and it’s not an ideal stop – a touch slow, four seconds, and he emerges behind Sainz in third. He has the hard tyres, so it’s game on.
Lap 31/52: Hamilton still hasn’t pitted – but he’s 18secs out in front.He could conceivably go into the pits and come out as leader. Further back, Schumacher moves into the points. “I can’t maintain this pace forever mate,” says Hamilton.
Lap 30/52: Leclerc sets a new fastest lap - he means business - and under instructions passes his teammate into second. Good news: Zhou has been declared fit and released from the medical centre.
Top five
1 Lewis Hamilton
2 Carlos Sainz
3 Charles Leclerc
4 Lando Norris
5 Fernando Alonso
Updated
Gasly retires
Another one bites the dust: Gasly’s car is damaged. Just the 15 cars still out there. This is the first time Hamilton has led a GP since Abu Dhabi last season.
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Lap 27/52: Verstappen the grump: part 2,314: “I don’t know why you’ve put me on these tyres with damage on the car, I’m driving on ice.” Leclerc, on the other hand, is happier with his hards, zipping around the course and making up ground on the two cars ahead of him.
Lap 25/52: Hamilton cuts the gap at the front to less than a second, the crowd buzzing. But Leclerc ducks the duel to head into the pits, so Hamilton now leads. Verstappen toils back in eighth.
Lap 24/52: That gap is now a second and a half, with Hamilton by far the fastest driver on the track, telling his team his tyres are strong. Verstappen zooms back into the pits and back out again after a flurry of activity, now with hard tyres. “Ahhh, no grip,” he gripes.
Lap 23/52: Hamilton closes in on Leclerc, narrowing the lead from 2.7secs to 2.1secs in the last lap. He couldn’t, could he? Sainz, now in third, has swapped to hard tyres.
Bottas retires
Lap 21/52: Sainz pits to leave Leclerc to inherit the lead, while a despondent Valtteri Bottas follows him in and calls it a day: mechanical problems. A bad afternoon for Alfa Romeo.
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Lap 20/52: Hamilton is creeping to within undercut range of the Ferrari drivers. Sainz is told to push.
Edwin Imoesi writes in: “Does it make me a bad person, that I am happy that Max may not win this race?” Of course not Edwin, petty armchair hostility is the very lifeblood of sports fandom!
Lap 17/52: So then, we have the two Ferrari drivers in first and second, with Leclerc not happy about being stuck behind his teammate. Meanwhile Hamilton, in third, sets another fastest lap. He’s up for this one.
Lap 15/52: More from the Red Bull radio: “You have less rear aerodynamic load, but there’s nothing we can do about it.” At the top, Leclerc has DRS on Sainz and is not letting up. is Hamilton sets fastest lap.
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Lap 14/52: And it looks like the issue with Verstappen’s car hasn’t been entirely fixed. He’s told over the radio that isn’t bodywork damage: “Not critical, but you will suffer performance loss”. “This car is 100% broken,” yelps Verstappen. Well well well.
Updated
Lap 14/52: The top six: Sainz, Leclerc, Hamilton, Norris, Alonso, Verstappen
Lap 12/52: Sainz regains the lead! Verstappen, coasting in the lead, is in big trouble - it looks like a puncture - and, smoke billowing from under his car, is overtaken by Sainz, who can’t believe his luck. Verstappen trundles into the pits and emerges in sixth. Drama!
Lap 11/52: The two Alpha Tauris of Tsunoda and Gasly step on each other’s toes and go spinning into oblivion, both tumbling down the order. What happened there?
Lap 10/52: Bad mistake from Sainz, who for no apparent reason goes way off track going round a simple corner. The ice-cold Verstappen pounces, zipping around the Spaniard and into first place, with Leclerc hungrily eyeing second.
Lap 8/52: Verstappen too is battling hard to keep the gap at the front at around the half-second mark. Hamilton, meanwhile, is on the tail of Leclerc.
Lap 6/52: Leclerc is doing his best to hunt down Verstappen, the gap between them a tight half a second. Perez comes out of the pits, but emerges back in 16th. Is the his race run?
Lap 5/52: Perez pits to fix the damage on his car. Hamilton roars past Norris to claim fourth.
Lap 4/52: Norris did well to overtake Hamilton, who remains hard on his tail. Sainz is a second ahead of Verstappen at the front.
Updated
Lap 3/52: Sainz holds off immense pressure from Verstappen going into corner one and keeps his nerve to eek out some daylight between him and the chasing pack. There’s contact between Perez and Leclerc, with the former’s front wing looking damaged. Hamilton has dropped to sixth.
Right then, let’s try this again. It will be a standing start. And Sainz, happily reinstated to pole, begins with a brand new set of medium compounds.
George Russell is annoyed he can’t join the restart - his car is fine bar a tyre puncture but official rules state that once you have received assistance you’re out of the race.
Updated
The grid for the restart
1 Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
2 Max Verstappen, Red Bull
3 Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
4 Sergio Perez, Red Bull
5 Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
6 Lando Norris, McLaren
7 Fernando Alonso, Alpine
8 Nicholas Latifi, Williams
9 Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri
10 Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo
11 Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri
12 Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren
13 Esteban Ocon, Alpine
14 Kevin Magnussen, Haas
15 Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin
16 Mick Schumacher, Haas
17 Lance Stroll, Aston Martin
Updated
Controversially, it looks like the drivers will restart in grid order, which puts Verstappen – who had moved past Sainz in the early moments – back to second and Hamilton, who was third when the red flag came out, back to fifth. Russell’s retirement has been confirmed. The race will resume in 10 minutes.
It looks like the protesters were from Just Stop Oil, and a group of them were sat down in the middle of the Silverstone track at the point the red flag came out.
Protesters removed from track
FIA: “We also confirm that after the red flag, several people attempted to enter the track. These people were immediately removed and the matter is now being dealt with by the local authorities.”
Updated
An official statement has said: “The FIA advises that following the start of the race, emergency crews were immediately in attendance and the drivers of Car 23 (Albon) and Car 24 (Zhou) have been taken to the medical centre. Both drivers were conscious and will be evaluated at the medical centre. Further updates will be given in due course.”
We’re finally seeing replays of the incident and it was a truly terrifying crash: Russell – who had made a poor start – moved left trying to cut off Gasly, who ducked back to leave the Mercedes driver to veer into the side of Zhou. The impact flipped Zhou’s car, which was sent skittering, upside down, all the way to the catch fencing, which the car bounced up and smashed into. Thankfully he is OK (which is why we’re now being given the replays). Vettel, trying to swerve the crash, went into the back of Albon, who in turn hit Ocon. Mayhem.
Updated
The Mercedes team are now scuttling around George Russell’s car, with apparent hope of getting it fixed before the restart. Surely not…? Alex Albon has joined Zhou in the medical centre; both drivers are conscious.
It’s hard to know what happened there, but it was certainly major crash going into the high-speed first Abbey corner involving Albon, Ocon, Russell, Tsunoda and Zhou, whose car rolled over. Hamilton, by the way, got away brilliantly and had moved up to third and Latifi up to eighth. All drivers are now in the pits, awaiting the restart.
Updated
Word from the track is that Zhou Guanyu is OK. He has been stretchered out of his car and into an ambulance, but he is conscious and moving. Good news.
Updated
Lap 1/52: Albon is also out, while Tsunoda and Ocon look to have damage. The concern at the moment is for Zhou, with the recovery team attending to the driver.
Russell, Zhao and Albon all out
Lap 1/52: We’re under way – and the cars have barely left the grid before we see a huge crash. George Russell hits Zhou and spins out out going into turn one. Zhou’s car turns over. Red flag.
Updated
Verstappen has opted to start on soft tyres, in contrast with most other drivers who have gone with mediums. It looks like he wants to start aggressively and make early headway.
Panic over at Ferrari: the electronic control unit – without which the car wouldn’t start – has been successfully replaced. Leclerc breathes easy. And the drivers head off for the formation lap.
How they start
1 Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
2 Max Verstappen, Red Bull
3 Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
4 Sergio Perez, Red Bull
5 Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
6 Lando Norris, McLaren
7 Fernando Alonso, Alpine
8 George Russell, Mercedes
9 Guanyu Zhou, Alfa Romeo
10 Nicholas Latifi, Williams
11 Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri
12 Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo
13 Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri
14 Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren
15 Esteban Ocon, Alpine
16 Alexander Albon, Williams
17 Kevin Magnussen, Haas
18 Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin
19 Mick Schumacher, Haas
20 Lance Stroll, Aston Martin
Right, down to business. And it seems like Leclerc’s car has been undergoing some panicked last-minute work, with the mechanics seemingly changing an electronic box on the right side. Late issues for Ferrari? We’ll keep an eye on it.
Among the spectators at Silverstone is Tom Cruise. I’m sure he’d agree that there are a few good men on the grid today but Verstappen – a driver without limits – is far and away the favourite. Another victory for the Red Bull maverick would render Leclerc collateral damage, with his titles hopes facing oblivion. As for Hamilton – a legend here – first place looks near enough mission impossible but a podium finish could be within reach if he pulls out all the right moves, which could involve some risky business. Let’s just hope there’s no rain, man.
Updated
Carlos Sainz speaks: “I am enjoying it a lot, especially with the crowd. It’s really special, I’m trying to enjoy the moment. We’re all going to send it into turn one. Lap one is very tricky here, there are many fights all the way to turn nine as people know … I hope we get a clean one.”
And lastly, an in-depth interview with George Russell, who is out to best his teammate today:
… a full report on yesterday’s dramatic qualifying:
Next, a nice meaty profile of Checo Perez, who right now is Mexico’s greatest sporting hope:
Some pre-race reading. First, Giles Richards on the bleak events of the previous week – and Hamilton’s laudable response to them:
Preamble
The week that was: Nelson Piquet uses a racist slur about Lewis Hamilton. Former Lotus president Gerard Lopez – a friend of Vladimir Putin and major Tory donor – faces charges of forgery in Luxembourg criminal court. And Bernie Eccleston says he would “take a bullet” for Putin, that the war in Ukraine is “unintentional” and that Hamilton could have “brushed aside” Piquet’s remarks. Sport, eh?
After a deeply dismaying few days, then, it was nice to return to drama of a more pantomime variety yesterday at Silverstone, where the presence of Max Verstappen – arch-nemesis of local hero Hamilton – was met by a hearty chorus of jeers from a hostile crowd who are yet to forget Abu Dhabi. This sort of juvenile nonsense, I think we can all agree, is very much the upside of big sport.
Not that our Max saw it that way. “If they want to boo they do that, they all have their own opinions, I don’t care,” he huffed, not entirely convincingly, perhaps after being told by a minion that the crowd were actually shouting “Red Booooo-ull”.
But Verstappen had other reasons to sulk, not least the fact that pole position had been snatched from his grasp by the brilliant Carlos Sainz during a thrilling last lap in the Northamptonshire drizzle, doing the business by a tight 0.072secs. The Spaniard pushed Verstappen to the limit in Montreal last week and his place in the front row today represents another tricky hurdle for the title favourite, who currently sits a tidy 46 points clear in the drivers’ standings.
If that sounds like fair old distance, well, it is exactly how far ahead of Verstappen Charles Leclerc was after the season’s first three races. The Monégasque – now behind both Verstappen and Perez in the standings – will be desperate to reassert his title credentials today after enduring a hiding to nothing last week, when he finished fifth after starting from the back due to grid penalties.
As for the local golden boy, things are finally picking up after a testing start to the season. Hamilton was fighting for the front row throughout much of yesterday’s qualifying, with Mercedes’ recent upgrades seeming to have helped. “Oh man, I was having so much fun out there,” he beamed afterwards. Perhaps only the very most optimistic fans could hope for a Hamilton victory today – but a podium finish would certainly go down a treat at Silverstone. Either way, this should be fun.
Lights out 3pm BST.
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