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.
“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,” the Dutchman said.
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.
“We looked a bit slow on the other wing plus it was understeering to the moon, and I needed to get rid of that understeer. It was light on downforce but it seemed to work.”
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.
Those penalties promote Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin from ninth. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly completed the top 10.
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.
