2021 F1 Round 10, British Grand Prix FP1: Verstappen leads by a commanding 0.779s, Norris second on home soil

On the evening of 16 July (China Standard Time, UTC+8), the British Grand Prix—the 10th round of the 2021 F1 World Championship—got under way at Silverstone, the birthplace of F1. First practice began at 21:30 and lasted one hour. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen topped the event’s opening session with a 1m27.035s lap, a commanding 0.779 seconds clear, as the RB16B’s strength left his rivals unable to keep up.

This event features the first sprint qualifying race in F1 history, giving the weekend a very different format from the usual one: first practice and qualifying on Friday, second practice and the sprint on Saturday, and the Grand Prix on Sunday. This was therefore the only—and final—practice session before qualifying.

The cars’ set-ups will be frozen from the moment qualifying begins until the start of Sunday’s Grand Prix (parc fermé rules). To make their final checks on set-ups that will shape the entire weekend, the teams worked flat out within the limited window of just 60 minutes.

It was Verstappen, unbeaten since the French Grand Prix in round seven, who set the fastest time in this only and final practice session before qualifying. His team-mate Sergio Perez, however, was only eighth.

McLaren’s Lando Norris was second on home soil. The 21-year-old, still affected by last weekend’s robbery at Wembley Stadium, set a time that put him ahead of Mercedes and Ferrari on medium tyres, one step harder than the compound used by Verstappen.

How much faster could the MCL35M go on the softest compound? Reviewing the session, team principal Andreas Seidl said of the set-up: “It’s a good start. Now we need to make the right decisions.”

British-based powerhouse Mercedes, with a British seven-time world champion in its ranks, sees Silverstone as a chance to reassert itself. In a bid to end its losing streak, it has brought several upgrades to the W12, including a revised floor and sidepod deflectors. But the initial set-up, at least, did not appear to work well: even on soft tyres, Lewis Hamilton was 0.001 seconds slower than Norris and had to settle for third.

The gap to title rival Verstappen seemed larger than expected. When engineer Bono told him over the radio, “You’re third, Verstappen is fastest, and the gap is 0.7 seconds,” Hamilton could not hide his surprise: “0.7 seconds!? Where on earth did we lose that much?”

Team-mate Valtteri Bottas was fifth, sandwiched between the Ferraris, with Charles Leclerc one place ahead in fourth. The two Silver Arrows each completed a session-high 30 laps to gather data and fine-tune their set-ups before qualifying. With two and a half hours remaining until qualifying, the question for Mercedes is how much of the upgrades’ potential it can unlock.

Silverstone basked in warm sunshine on Friday afternoon, with the session beginning in dry conditions at an air temperature of 24.5°C and a track temperature of 42°C. Official tyre supplier Pirelli has brought new rear tyres with a reinforced construction and its three hardest compounds, C1 to C3, to this event. Each car has only 12 sets, one fewer than on a conventional weekend.

With parc fermé looming, the focus was on how to use the limited 60 minutes: some teams, such as McLaren, did not use a single set of soft tyres; others, such as Alpine, split their programme by running different compounds on the two cars; and Williams made the puzzling choice to complete the entire session using only hard and soft tyres.

The AlphaTauri-Honda pair used two sets of medium tyres but failed to break into the top 10: Pierre Gasly was 11th and Yuki Tsunoda 12th.

The 2021 British Grand Prix, round 10 of the F1 season, has a special format because of sprint qualifying. On a conventional weekend, the next session would be second practice; here, the next session is qualifying, which will determine the sprint’s starting grid and begins at 01:00 on 17 July, China Standard Time (UTC+8).