Verstappen pips Piastri to Silverstone pole

British Grand Prix

Venue: Silverstone Date: 6 July Race start: 15:00 BST on Sunday

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen pipped McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to pole position at the British Grand Prix with the very last lap of qualifying.

Verstappen beat Piastri by 0. 103 seconds, with McLaren’s Lando Norris just 0. 015secs behind in third and Mercedes’ George Russell a further 0. 019secs adrift in fourth.

Lewis Hamilton, second quickest behind Piastri after the first runs in final qualifying, slipped back to fifth at the end, just ahead of his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc.

Briton Oliver Bearman was an excellent eighth for Haas, but will be demoted to 18th on the grid because of a 10-place penalty for going too fast under red-flag conditions in practice, when he crashed in the pit lane.

In the other Mercedes, Kimi Antonelli was seventh but he has a three-place grid penalty from his crash with Verstappen in Austria.

Verstappen had had a low-key lead up to qualifying but ended up fastest, on a track that on paper should suit the Red Bull, which is at its strongest in comparison to the rest of the field in the sort of high-speed corners that abound at Silverstone.

The Dutchman said: “It was tricky with the wind throughout all qualifying. It was shifting around a bit. And around here with these cars it is extremely sensitive to it.

“The final lap was good enough. This is a proper track, you have to be really committed in the high-speed corners. “

Verstappen said he “had to commit a lot” in the high-speed corners because of the low-downforce set-up the team had chosen, which made the car on edge in the demanding corners.

The low wing levels come with pros and cons – it gives faster speed on the straight but makes the car more difficult through the corners and potentially increases tyre wear.

Piastri was quickest after the first laps of qualifying but he failed to improve on his second lap, at least partly because of a couple of slides of the rear out of the final corner, Club.

The championship leader said: “I was happy with the first lap. It was mega, to be honest. I was trying to think of how I would go faster and I didn’t.

“The second lap was a bit messy but it has been tight all weekend; a little on the table, but we’ll never know if it’s enough. “

Piastri said he was “not that surprised Max is quick here, it’s quite similar speed and conditions to Suzuka”, where Verstappen won from pole.

Norris, who trails Piastri by 15 points going into the race, which marks the halfway point of the season, said: “Good qualifying. I am not going to be unhappy with third, would love to be pole but Max did a good job, a fun qualifying today. Not the top but still a good day.

Russell and Mercedes had not looked competitive for much of qualifying, but a typically strong lap from the Briton on his final run vaulted him ahead of the Ferraris, whose promising pace through the weekend faded when it mattered.

He said a change in weather conditions had helped him improve. “We arranged for those clouds to come in and that made us go about 0. 5secs faster so that was nice,” Russell said.

Hamilton, who topped the second session of qualifying, ended up just 0. 203secs from pole.

The seven-time champion said: “The lap was pretty decent at the end and then I lost a bit of time in the last corner, which probably would have put me on the front row or at least third.

“We’re right on a knife-edge, other than that squeezed everything I could out of the car.

“I definitely feel a lot better in the car this weekend, this track is incredible and the crowd is amazing. But we needed just a little more from the car, another 0. 1secs of performance to nudge us a little bit closer to the front guys. “

Leclerc also said he had made a mistake at the end of his lap.

“Horrible,” he said. “The pace was there for the front row but I didn’t do the job when I needed to. I lost the car in the last two corners and lost a lot of lap time.

1. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)

2. Oscar Piastri (McLaren)

3. Lando Norris (McLaren)

4. George Russell (Mercedes)

5. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari)

6. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)

7. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes, three-place grid penalty)

8. Oliver Bearman (Haas, 10-place grid penalty)

9. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)

10. Pierre Gasly (Alpine)