In the round-up: McLaren have set their cars up with the expectation that it will rain during today’s British Grand Prix
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In brief
McLaren set up cars for wet – Stella
Despite Lando Norris losing out in qualifying to the Mercedes drivers, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insists that McLaren feel confident about his team’s prospects for victory in today’s British Grand Prix due to their decision to run higher wing levels for the wet weather.
“We are still in a good position for the race,” Stella told media including RaceFans.
“It will be potentially affected by the weather, so many variables will be at play. The fact that there are these variables is also one of the reasons why you will have seen everyone playing with downforce levels.
“Ultimately we went for a solution that was slightly more than yesterday, because we saw that [Saturday] morning on the intermediate tyre, it was pretty slippery. So we wanted to be in a good position for qualifying – which we expected to be wet, actually less wet than we expected – and because of the possible rain tomorrow.”
Stroll reprimanded for red light breach
Lance Stroll has received his second reprimand of the season for exiting the pit lane under a red light in Q1.
The Aston Martin driver left his pit garage, located at the end of the pit lane at Silverstone this weekend, on slick soft tyres moments after Sergio Perez spun into the gravel at Copse. When the red flag flew, the pit lane exit light turned red, but Stroll crossed the pit exit line to join the circuit eight tenths of a second after the light came on.
Despite recognising the limited time Stroll had to react, the stewards determined that he had still committed an offence and handed him a reprimand, the minimum penalty outlined under the regulations.
Hulkenberg “cracked the tyre” after flying first sector
Nico Hulkenberg was quickest of all through the first sector at the end of qualifying but fell to sixth on the grid as his tyres gave up at the end of the lap.
“In turn 13 I ran out of road,” he told media including RaceFans after qualifying. “I picked up a lot of understeer and didn’t stay on the line that I wanted to.
“I feel somehow I really, with that understeer I had, cracked the tyre and didn’t have nothing left for turn 15 and lost all the time that I had, unfortunately.”
The Haas driver was relieved to make it into Q3 after coming close to elimination in the first round. “It was too close for comfort,” he said.
“I was about to go out and the red flag came out [for Perez]. Then at the end of the rain also came into it. So a very spicy situation.
“I had one lap, which was just about good enough to get us through otherwise that would have been quite disastrous.”
Bortoleto loses sprint race podium
McLaren junior driver Gabriel Bortoleto lost his podium finish in yesterday’s sprint race to Invicta team mate Kush Maini after he received a five second time penalty for passing off track at the finish.
The stewards determined that Bortoleto ran off the circuit without justifiable reason attempting to pass Maini around the outside of the final corner, Club, and therefore gained the position illegally. A five second penalty dropped Bortoleto only behind Maini in fourth.
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