Silverstone Special

As the only racetrack i’ve actually been too Silverstone will always hold a special place in my motorsport addiction and hopefully the capacity crowd that experienced this years British Grand Prix will now be able to share that experience.

This year’s British Grand Prix seems to have been a race of firsts on several levels, it’s one of the first sporting events to be held under the UK’s COVID-free pilot scheme and the first of the Sprint format weekends that we’ve heard about for so long.

Truthfully I was slightly worried going into the weekend that the format, like those that have come before it (i’m looking at you elimination qualifying), would be an idea that works on paper, but not manage merge well with the complexity of an F1 weekend.

Thankfully my fears were put to rest early on, having only one Free Practice Session before Qualifying meant drivers and their engineers were on the back foot going into qualifying; which made an excellent addition to my Friday evening.

The Sprint race proved to be an interesting endeavour with several drivers taking a gamble and going for the soft tyres. Something F1 was keen to let us remember, alongside an abundance of new tv graphics.

Fernando Alonso earned his yearly paycheque by the end of the first lap making up 5 places and jumping the majority of medium runners ahead of him. The McLaren’s put on a good show as well fighting to get back ahead of the Alpine and putting themselves in a great position for the feature race.

The race itself was a mixed bag of emotions and I think it took a long time for the dust to settle on that first lap incident before everyone started to get a clearer picture of what had occurred between Hamilton and Verstappen.

Personally, I think that the copse incident was so incredibly borderline between penalty and racing incident that it must have been a hard job for the stewards to decide what to do.

In the end I do agree with the 10 second penalty because Hamilton did have room on the inside which he had the chance to take to avoid the incident but in the heat of the moment decided not to take it. Ergo, a 10 second penalty is justified if borderline.

As always its fantastic to see that the safety changes made by F1 and the FIA continue to protect drivers and seeing Max walk away shaken but unharmed after a 51G impact is an incredible feat. Especially considering one of his wheels bounced off the Halo we all hates so much.

Moving forward there’s a few things that F1 needs to address if it wants to continue using the Sprint format. Like I tweeted after the race; FP2 needs to have a new purpose. Either as a tyre test for Pirelli or some kind of limited track development time. Because having a random FP2 session before the Sprint made little sense.

Drivers statistics need to show the difference between Qualifying on pole position through standard qualifying and being on pole position for the race thanks to the result of the Sprint race especially when the solution seems fairly simple.

If a driver is the fastest over one lap in Qualifying then they should be given the accolade of having achieved Pole Position. They will start the next race from the front.

The driver who finishes the Sprint race in 1st place should be awarded the title of Sprint Pole, and that will mean they start in 1st place for the Grand Prix on Sunday.

That way the qualifying sessions statistics remain unblemished and Sprint races get recognised for what they are. Races.

It goes without saying that the racist abuse Hamilton was subjected to after the Grand Prix is unacceptable and the teams showed their best colours by uniting against the loud few that sprouted such nonsense.