Max Verstappen snatches F1 British GP pole for Red Bull from McLarens

Max Verstappen claimed pole for the British Grand Prix for Red Bull, a blistering run beating the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris into second and third. Mercedes’s George Russell was fourth, with Lewis Hamilton very much in the mix, taking fifth for Ferrari.

The pole was somewhat against odds for Verstappen, who absolutely wrung the neck of the Red Bull to beat a very strong assault from both McLaren and an improved Ferrari. The world champion has not been particularly happy with his car all weekend, having struggled with its balance all season. With the team using a trimmed back low-downforce configuration at Silverstone, it required every bit of his considerable skill to wrangle across the old airfield. As he has demonstrated previously this season, sometimes he can be the ultimate differentiator.

Max Verstappen during qualifying at Silverstone, where he took his first pole since Miami, six races ago. Photograph: Andrej Isaković/AFP/Getty Images

It was a salutary reminder of quite why there is so much interest in his future, with Mercedes considering him again and Red Bull just as anxious to hang on to their prized asset.

With Red Bull having brought what is likely to be their last major upgrade of the season to the last race in Austria, with a revision to the floor of the car aimed at helping address the balance issues that have plagued it all year, they will be buoyed that this time they had the advantage over McLaren, at least in Verstappen’s mercurial hands.

The team have been honest in that no quick fix was expected to the problems, with a disconnect between wind-tunnel predictions and real-world performance at the heart of their inability to solve the problems, but Verstappen enjoyed his lap at Silverstone perhaps more than many of late to take his fourth pole of the year and his first since Miami, six races ago.

Verstappen opened the running in Q3, taking the top spot, but was swiftly eclipsed by Piastri, who set a time of 1min 24.995sec. Norris followed but could not quite hook it up and was just under two-tenths back, while Hamilton was enjoying his best qualifying of the season to grab second place just over one-tenth back from Piastri, with Verstappen fourth.

The final laps would prove decisive and were a suitably tense affair. Norris went out first and pushed hard but did not improve enough over Piastri, while Hamilton set a superb first sector but was unable to quite make the difference. However, behind them Verstappen was flying, putting together his best lap of the session when it really mattered. Hammering it to the very limit, he took the top spot with a time of 1:24.892, a full tenth up on Piastri and Norris.

Ollie Bearman was in eighth place for Haas but has a 10-place grid penalty for failing to slow under a red flag in third practice. Kimi Antonelli was seventh but has a three-place penalty for his crash with Verstappen in Austria.