The 2023 British Grand Prix was a historic weekend on several counts.
Red Bull Racing equalled a 35-year-old record for dominance and has taken another step towards what could be an unprecedented season clean sweep.
Verstappen became only the fifth drivers in F1 history to win six straight races.
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Awkard exchange in snubbed grid chat | 00:39
It was also the first time in more than 20 years that two home drivers shared a podium at the British Grand Prix.
But the weekend may well be best remembered for history not yet apparent.
After two strong weekends in a row, is McLaren really at the apex of its mission to reverse its long form slump?
The high-speed Silverstone Circuit, one of the sternest tests of aerodynamics and tyres on the calendar, certainly suggests there’s much to like about this upgraded MCL60.
RED BULL RACING MATCHES FOREBODING RECORD
Max Verstappen said his eighth grand prix victory of the season wasn’t straightforward, and there was a kernel of truth — a small one — in his modesty.
He was jumped off the start, and his RB19’s well-known reluctance to warm its tyres left him unable to strike back until lap 5, though by then DRS made breaking back against Norris a formality, after which he was able to eke open a gap as required.
The safety car bunched the field again, and while he had no difficulty acing his restart, he struggled to push on the soft tyre around this high-energy circuit.
But there was also never any real sense that anyone was up to the task of taking victory off him, even if his victory margin was less than four seconds at the flag. He was the class of the field again in a car that continues to run rings around the competition — at least in his hands.
Now the team’s incredible run of form has lodged it at the top of a new ranking for domination.
This was Red Bull Racing’s 11th straight victory dating back to last year’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
That matches the record set by McLaren in its legendary 1988 season, the year it won all but one of the scheduled 16 grands prix to set the still-standing benchmark for percentage wins in a single campaign.
The difficulty of winning 11 wins is obvious when you consider how many dominant teams have failed to get there.
Red Bull Racing got to nine straight in 2013 and 2022. Ferrari cracked 10 in 2002, and Mercedes did likewise three times in the last decade.
But no team until today has been able to match that magic 11.
RBR now has a chance to set the record outright at 12 and beyond. On the journey to a possible unprecedented clean sweep of the season — a mission which is approaching its halfway points — this is a major milestone.
LANDO NORRIS RISES TO THE OCCASION OF McLAREN’S TURNAROUND
Despite — or because of — another race dominated by Verstappen, McLaren was free to steal the show with a sensational two-three in qualifying that Lando Norris was able to convert into his first podium appearance of the season.
This is comfortably McLaren’s most meaningful result since Daniel Ricciardo’s victory at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix. If the team continues to perform at this high level, we’ll reflect on the British Grand Prix as even more meaningful than that wild weekend in Monza.
While victory in Italy was also meritorious — everything just clicked to put the McLaren in its sweet spot — the result in Britain feels more sustainable, more indicative of long-running form. It feels like the start of a turnaround.
That will still be true even if the team drops a few places in the pecking order at less favourable circuits, but there’s a hint that actually McLaren could have a swing at being consistently in the mix at the front with its massive upgrade package — and there are still new parts to come later this month.
But this was also a validating weekend for Norris.
He’s had podiums before, and we’ve seen some big performances from him in the past, but it’s been frustratingly rare that we’ve seen him in a genuine frontrunning battle with the sport’s leaders given the quality of his machinery.
For so long he’s been talked about as having the capacity to be in the same league as the likes of Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.
This weekend he proved it with a gutsy battle with Verstappen in the opening laps and a centimetre-perfect defence against the faster Hamilton on quicker tyres in the final stint — a defence so good that it cornered the seven-time champion into burning through his tyres, almost costing him a place to Oscar Piastri.
It would’ve been so easy to trip up, especially with hard tyres at the safety car restart, but Norris was flawless when the opportunity came to him.
Norris has been criticised for being too comfortable, even complacent, with his place at McLaren. Perhaps patience is a better way to describe it — and perhaps that patience is starting to pay off.
OSCAR PIASTRI’S STATEMENT RACE DESPITE SAFETY CAR CRUELLING PODIUM CHANCE
Piastri was one Ferrari engine failure away from his maiden podium just 10 grands prix into his Formula 1 career.
It’s an unconventional measure of time, but the difference for him was the Italian power unit bolted into Kevin Magnussen’s Haas car going up in smoke at the end of the Wellington straight on lap 32.
Piastri had made his sole pit stop two laps earlier, but his direct rivals — Verstappen, Norris and Hamilton in particular — were all yet to pit.
The subsequent safety car gifted them cheap pit stops. It took Piastri out of a possible battle with Norris for second and promoted Hamilton up to third.
But the lack of a trophy doesn’t take away from a performance eminently worthy of silverware, from the battle with Verstappen on the first lap to his defence ahead of George Russell and his late but fruitless assault on Hamilton as the Briton’s tyres expired.
It was a statement race from one of the most highly decorated F1 rookies in a generation that he can live up to the hype when he has the machinery beneath him to do the business.
All that, mind you, in a car that wasn’t up to spec with Norris’s car this weekend given the rush to bring upgrades to the track. Not too bad at all.
There were also the less-obvious signs of a great drive in the way Piastri was patient in his execution of race strategy, and his result also owes some credit to some astute decision-making from the team.
Both he and Norris were ordered not to race each other while they were running third and second respectively in the opening stint after Verstappen had retaken the lead.
McLaren’s race pace was still uncertain, and the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers were directly behind.
Piastri shines with career best qualy | 01:21
By keeping Norris and Piastri in line, both benefited from sticking in Verstappen’s DRS train to create a buffer to the cars behind.
Once the Dutchman extended his advantage beyond a second, the McLaren drivers had around 3.5 seconds in hand to the rest of the field.
That stretched to almost five seconds by the time the pit stop window opened, which prevented Leclerc and Russell from attempting to undercut their way onto the podium.
It may not have sounded like it at the time, but it was to Piastri’s benefit to stay behind Norris, notwithstanding the safety car.
Piastri’s ability to understand the team game and the broader picture of the race speaks to that cerebral racer quality that made him such an impressive prospect as a junior driver. It what helps him to get the most out of his opportunities.
Unfortunately fourth was the most on offer thanks to that expired Haas car. But next time there’s more to be had you can be sure he won’t miss a beat in grabbing it.
ALPINE WILL START COUNTING THE COST OF LOST CHANCES
There was a lot of good news for McLaren at Silverstone, which means there was a lot of bad news at Alpine.
The French team started the year targeting fourth in the constructors championship. Realistically that’s been downgraded to fifth by Aston Martin’s leap forward.
But McLaren has punted the team down to sixth with its massive points haul, taking a 59-47 advantage on the title table.
That’s a bitter sting for Alpine on so many levels.
The first is that it’ll force the team to start counting the points lost through mistakes on the pit wall, from the cockpit, via reliability and in needless on-track clashes.
In Britain Ocon retired after nine laps with a hydraulics problem. Gasly was put out of the race in a battle on the fringes of the points with Lance Stroll.
The former speaks to the team’s long-running reliability problems. The latter speaks to the car’s lack of pace. Were it more competitive, it wouldn’t be stuck in the shrapnel zone of the mid grid where these sorts of accidents tend to happen.
Given how difficult it is for midfield teams to score this year, a 12-point gap won’t be the work of a moment to close too.
But the deeper cut is that it looks like yet another midfield team could be set to jump Enstone in terms of pure performance.
Alpine has lofty targets to win championships in the middle of the decade, but progress has become harder and harder to come by in the last two seasons with its current approach. Meanwhile other teams are periodically finding massive gains.
If McLaren’s gains prove permanent, there’ll be some serious soul searching at Enstone over yet another paradigm shift about what’s possible to achieve in a single season of development.