Updated:
Jul 8, 2023 5:27 pm
Unbelevable scenes unfold themselves in Silverstone as McLaren shock the F1 world qualifying P2 and P3, in Austria it was known that McLaren were bringing serious upgrades in the following races. Lando was given the upgrades first which he used to achieve a significant P4 finish.
This weekend he claimed P2 in Quali, in addition to Oscar Piastri who received the upgrade package this week gets P3. A remarkable result in Qualifying for McLaren and hopefully with two cars up there, they might be able to fight for a podium tomorrow or even a win.
Zak Brown channelled his inner Jose Mourinho as both McLaren’s crossed the line, running around the pit-lane and garage giving everyone high-fives in his sight. You can’t blame him! Stunning from McLaren.
Replacement Rumours Lurking
The season of the seesaw! Sergio Perez this year has had a plethora of races that have been “damage limitation”. Within the last 5 races Sergio Perez hasn’t reached Q3. It’s no secret that Red Bull have the quickest car, throughout the entire season that hasn’t changed, understandably sometimes things don’t go your way in Formula 1 but for five races in a row? Things are starting to become concerning now.
Rumours have been flying around the media with Perez perhaps being replaced midway through the season but these died as Christian Horner dismissed them and said that “they will not replace a driver halfway though the season”. However, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of a driver change for the start of next season, we’re hearing more and more that Daniel is just getting better and better so potentially the door could be open to him, other opportunities are also becoming apparent for Daniel but Perez has a target on his back and his results this season in qualifying are not helping him.
As well as the Red Bull drama, AlphaTauri are also discussing the possibility of a driver change mid season with De Vries, he has simply not lived up to the standard people believed he could have, yes understandably the car that they have is a borderline tragedy, but Yuki is pulling his weight every week and pushing as far as he can and De Vries isn’t.
Helmut Mark was asked if Nyck De Vries will still be at Alpha Tauri during the Dutch Grand Prix:
He replied saying “When is Zandvoort? (Laughing)”
“I can tell you once we are in Zandvoort”
What he said leaves the door very wide open and up for interpretation, we haven’t seen a driver change halfway during the season in a while so it will be interesting to see what happens.
Williams Flying!
Williams were absolutely flying throughout Friday and Saturday’s practice sessions, it seemed virtually impossible for them to achieve anything under P5, however, as Qualifying came along they started to struggle more and unfortunately for them Alex Albon could only get P8, which is a very good result for Williams but even Albon was disappointed as they knew they could achieve more.
Points for Williams tomorrow would be the goal but everyone within the Top 10 seems very quick, points tomorrow would be tough to achieve but you never know what Silverstone throws at you! The race has been threatened with rain as well as protestors.
Williams are hoping that neither of those come about as the rain doesn’t suit their car this weekend and as for the other one… no one wants people to be running on the track, it ruins the racing and is very luni behaviour in these circumstances.
Qualifying Summary
With Max Verstappen claiming his fifth pole position in a row now it is starting to become apparent as to how dominant this Red Bull car is, it seems like no one can stop him but with his SIlverstone curse who knows what to expect.. with his Red Bull teammate, Sergio Perez down in P16, he will be fighting alone at the front with two bright chrome coloured McLaren’s chasing him down.
As McLaren rounded off the top 3, Ferrari finished P4 and P5 ahead of the Mercs, a slight incident between the Ferarri drivers as Charles Leclerc wasn’t happy with Carlos Sainz as he believed he was blocking him on one of his laps but fortunately this didn’t have a significant impact.
Mercedes looked quick in both wet and dry conditions but only managed to qualify P6 and P7, highly disappointing but perhaps during the race they could achieve more, they say that the home-crowd gives you more pace so lets see how the Merc pair really get on
Alpine and Aston Martin both had torrid times during qualifying finishing P10 (Gasly) and P13 (Ocon) and Aston Martin finishing P9 (Alonso) and P12 (Stroll), disappointing for both teams, especially Aston Martin who have had some superior results but today they struggled.
All to play for on Sunday and its brewing up to be a good race, more often then not we get entertaining races at Silverstone so hopes are high, McLaren could be the big standout point tomorrow, where are they going to finish?
