McLaren dominated the Austrian Grand Prix but one week later the team faces much stiffer competition at Silverstone.
Max Verstappen beat the McLaren drivers to pole position for the British Grand Prix and the championship leaders believe another three cars are in contention for victory.
The picture is made more complicated by the possibility of rain during the race. A wet morning is expected at Silverstone, though the risk of rain during the grand prix itself is relatively low.
The top six cars on the grid were covered by just 0.229 seconds over an 85-second lap. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said practice had indicated as many as four teams could be fast enough to win.
“In terms of dry conditions, it’s very difficult to say which is the best team,” he told media including RaceFans. “The lap times that Ferrari were able to produce in practice were quite impressive.
“There are some lap times they did in high fuel which we were not in a condition to repeat. So definitely we thought that they were the favourites for the race and even for the qualifying.”
However the Ferrari drivers claimed the third row of the grid behind Verstappen, the McLarens and George Russell’s Mercedes – which was no higher than ninth in the first two stages of qualifying.
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“We ended up seeing that the situation is very tight,” Stella continued, “so I don’t think we will see a big difference between Max, the two McLarens, the two Ferraris and potentially even George. We’ll have to see if their lap in qualifying was a one-off because up until that point in Q3 it seemed like they were not as competitive as the others for the top positions of the grid.”
The forecast indicates a repeat of last year’s weather conditions, where a brief rain shower hit during the race, is possible. “If there’s [rainy] weather around, we have seen last year, then here it can be quite entertaining because I don’t expect that it will be strong, persistent rain,” said Stella.
“If there is [rain], it will possibly be more like last year with various conditions throughout the race and definitely one more reason for an eventful and entertaining British Grand Prix.”
Ferrari likely have the fastest car in dry conditions, Stella believes. “Looking at the lap times that Ferrari have been able to pull off in every single session, Ferrari seem to be the strongest team. Probably they still are the strongest team. I think the gaps are very small.
“Max also got out for the final lap in Q3 a few minutes later or a minute later and here I think a slight variation in wind that can affect one tenth here and there.
“So everything is very tight. It’s difficult to say which one was the strongest team, but Ferrari definitely appeared like the most competitive. If you look at Q2, they were [first and second] quite convincingly at the time.”
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Verstappen achieved his pole position running a slimmer rear wing on his Red Bull than his rivals used. Lower downforce levels can lead to higher tyre wear in some conditions but Stella does not foresee that problem for Verstappen in the race.
“When you have the tyre wear that we expect to have at this circuit and in these conditions our belief is that there is not a great relationship between the downforce level or the way you produce lap time and the tyre wear,” he said, “because you will be fast in the straights which means actually you have to push if anything a little bit less in the corners.
“If you rely on lap time generated in the corners then you do have to push the corners, you may stress your tyres even more. So it’s not clear that the rear wing solution that Red Bull adopted will necessarily cause a worse situation from a tyre point of view.”
Red Bull also introduced a new floor for this weekend’s race. Stella said the fact the team is able to run a lower rear wing level shows their car is generating sufficient downforce elsewhere.
“They might have chosen that wing because of front-end limitations and to make the life a little bit easier for the front wing, but you still have to have a car that remains very efficient at this low level of rear wing,” he said.
“Red Bull seem to have done a good job of retaining overall efficiency, which is the ratio between downforce and drag despite running such a small rear wing. So well done to Red Bull, we will see whether this was a good choice for the race-ability and tyre wear or it wasn’t.”
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