AWelcome to our coverage of the 2022 British Grand Prix qualifying from Silverstone. The British Grand Prix always feels like a special event, and Silverstone is usually a track that produces decent action. Expect the same thing this weekend. What is really needed for the championship is Max Verstappen having a bad weekend. He leads his teammate Sergio Perez by 46 points, but perhaps a more realistic title challenger is Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, a 49-point drift. It seems that Leclerc had a big lead not so long ago. Well, a month or two after Ferrari’s failure, he has a huge job this weekend.
Does the final practice give us hope that this may be the case? It might have looked like that for a while during the practice time, but it didn’t end there. Mercedes certainly seemed to take a considerable step towards the front, close to Ferrari, but at the end of the session Max Verstappen’s Red Bull pace seemed amazing and was four laps 1: I pulled out the 27.901 wrap. It’s one tenth faster than teammate Sergio Perez, nearly 0.5 seconds faster than Reed’s Ferrari Oblekrail, and a little faster than both Mercedes cars.
How representative is it? I don’t know yet, so I need to find out in qualifying. Or, at least, if it stays dry throughout the session. This is by no means guaranteed, given that there are some showers around. Did some teams run in a wet-optimized setup? It’s hard to say again. In any case, Red Bull seems to have performed quite well and lap times since yesterday.
And what about Mercedes? There are certainly some encouraging signs, and it looks like the pace of the second fastest team, if not close to the real front line. George Russell reported that there was “no bounce” in one of his early runs, but later in the session Hamilton complained about the problem that had plagued him throughout the season. In any case, Russell and Hamilton’s 4th and 5th places aren’t too bad given the split Ferrari. Lando Norris was 7th and the best of the rest. It should give some hope for a strong show from home drivers.
But what if it’s a wet-dry session than anyone knows?