“Procedural error.”
Welcome back to another edition of Dre’s Race Review and this time, we’re heading for arguably the biggest, blue-ribbon F1 race of the year, the British Grand Prix. And with it, a huge amount of people got to sit down and enjoy a bright yellow stand, Kimi Antonelli trying and failing to win, and Charles Leclerc shutting down some rather nasty narratives. Just. Let’s get into it.
Copium Magnet
First F1 weekend covering things as a fan again. Weird feeling. But you could tell the British hope was coming on strong on Friday evening when Lewis Hamilton came through with a Sprint pole position, narrowly beating Kimi Antonelli by just 11 thousandths of a second. What I found interesting about it was where Ferrari and Mercedes were making their lap time. In Austria, Mercedes deployment was so good that they were half a second clear on the straights. Here, the more low speed corners meant Ferrari could convert their traction zones into more exit speed, and that in turn, mitigated their weaker battery deployment. And according to Jon Noble at The Race, better prep-time given just the one practice session, with Mercedes saying they weren’t quite there on the day, ala Miami.
But on Saturday, the differences were clear as day – Ferrari still aren’t great in terms of tyre wear over an entire stint. Hamilton kept his early holeshot, but as the Sprint wore on, it was obvious that Antonelli was in the faster Mercedes, eventually passed Lewis when he had battery to deploy and Lewis couldn’t stay with him. And with Norris, Leclerc, Verstappen and Russell all in-fighting with some intense alternate deployment paths, we had a very fun sprint for the first 10 laps or so until the teams figured it out.
First blood to Kimi, but enough on the table to keep you sweet for Sunday. Although, not ideal that Antonelli came back to take pole position after the now traditional re-opening of Parc Ferme. Antonelli came back strong to take pole position for the Grand Prix, and Charles Leclerc did well enough to take second place alongside him, with Hamilton slightly off the boil in third. Russell could only manage fourth, with Isack Hadjar becoming the first teammate to outqualify Max Verstappen at Silverstone since 2016. Max turns out, had engine deployment issues. Shocker, Ford reliability again.
A Bitter Defeat
Charles Leclerc took the holeshot for the race after another poor Kimi Antonelli start (I thought Mercedes had fixed this, come on?!), and he took the early lead, pulling away from Hamilton. Leclerc’s lead peaked at around four and a half seconds as we entered the pit window. Now, not going to lie, I thought this was going to be a dreadful strategy race because Pirelli brought the classic C1-C3 range and a 1-stopper was expected to be the winning and only viable strategy.
Leclerc came in around what Pirelli thought as “par” on Lap 24, and Antonelli stayed out to build up a tyre delta. There were some nerves when Leclerc got the gap back to within 12 seconds, but it really didn’t matter. Once Antonelli got the hard tyres on 10 laps later, he was butchering the Ferrari. It was like watching a reverse Barcelona from a month back. He peaked at 1.6 seconds a lap faster than the Ferrari, and the seven and a half-second deficit he had to make up was being butchered, until…
The wheel cover breaks on Kimi’s car just as he’s within seconds of Charles’s Ferrari. It completely cripples Kimi’s Mercedes. He has to slow, he has to come in for a full front-wing change, but the car is virtually uncontrollable due to the damage. He had to cling on to 10th place after two stops to fix the damage, and was actually holding off Franco Colapinto for that last point but he then took a five-second penalty for track limits.
It’s a really shitty deal for Kimi, who absolutely didn’t gain an advantage in going offline, but that doesn’t matter, out of bounds, is out of bounds.
It’s worth saying here, it’s hard not to be increasingly impressed with Antonelli. He’s like a learning computer who gets better weekend to weekend. He’s picked up tyre management at the highest level pretty much straight away and he showed again here that his resource management in the middle of his stint (A 38-lap medium stint at Silverstone let’s not forget), was incredible. Leclerc got beaten into the middle of Spa on this one, and Kimi had this race in the bag.
Still, Antonelli’s still faster than Franco, so he should hold onto a precious point in tenth as long as nothing funky happens, right?
Something Funky Happens
Shit.
Max Verstappen has another startling crash at Stowe. It’s a repeat of Austria qualifying where his rear wing doesn’t fully close under braking, and with airflow still re-adjusting in the most vulnerable part of the corner for a high downforce car, Max couldn’t save it. It’s the second time it’s happened in a fortnight and now Red Bull are considering dumping their “macarena” wing to avoid a repeat. Wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall during that debrief.
It calls out a Safety Car, with five laps to go. Both Ferrari’s box for used Soft tyres, Russell stays out, a clear difference in philosophies. Mercedes thinks the race is ending under yellow, Ferrari doesn’t, as Hamilton drops to third behind Russell. It takes a rather long time to clear Verstappen’s car from Stowe and make sure the track’s clear. Then the restart procedure starts. Lapped cars overtake, and they’re off to catchup. It seems like on Lap 51 of 52, that the Safety Car is coming in for a one-lap shootout. But for an eight-second window, the Safety Car says its coming in, only to change its mind.
Annoyingly, it’s the right decision. It’s part of the regulation changes for this season – When the lapped cars are free to overtake, you cannot restart the race that same lap, you have to wait for the end of the next lap, so we were meant to start at the end of Lap 52. Whoops, race over.
The FIA put this down to a software glitch. Let’s be frank, people didn’t believe them. The average fan doesn’t look at the FIA website, read stewards documents unless they follow one of the bot pages on social media or track the regulations regularly. Throw in a fanbase that still quotes Abu Dhabi 2021 verbatim and you could start a barbeque with the amount of tinfoil in the vicinity.
This regulation change was almost certainly inspired by the events of that race, to partially avoid it from happening again. A more rigid process, automaton added and the subjective nature of optional backmarker clearance being taken away. But we’re also in a sport that secretly hates a race finishing under yellow (Despite it only happening 13 times ever), with a sport whose teams admitted back in 2021, they wanted races to end under green whenever they could.
Yeah, in an ideal world, we’d be paying marshals, and we’d have clearer communication from the FIA, but you can’t reasonably expect them to investigate and tell the key stakeholders like TV or via race control what’s happened, within seconds of said glitch happening because it was seconds before the final lap of the race – Unless, like I said earlier, you just don’t believe the FIA in bad faith and assume the worst.
I do genuinely feel empathy towards the fans who are understandably upset that we got denied a cool finish, but this is the unfortunate nature of computers going wrong and errors occurring. They happen in other sports all the time, but in F1’s world, if something’s less than perfect, we’re going to get mad about it, especially when we’re in a world that hasn’t moved on from five years ago.
TL:DR – The FIA not messing up their messaging would’ve changed precisely nothing about the result, just the optics of it. And well, I’m not sure the FIA’s ever getting that benefit of the doubt again, rightly or wrongly. Let’s wrap this shit up.
The Lightning Round
And no, the world isn’t out to get the most popular F1 driver who has ever lived. I hate that even needs to be said.
Barely even spoke about Charles Leclerc, the actual winner of the friggin’ race. Yeah, he probably loses to Kimi under normal circumstances, but he absolutely kicked Hamilton’s ass in his own backyard this weekend. He was always really unfortunate that Ferrari’s rise into genuine challenger, Hamilton’s return to form and his own three crashes across Monaco and Barcelona all happened at the same time, but I hope the message comes through that this is still a world class racing driver and bad patches happen to the best drivers. Think about the last 680 or so days since Leclerc’s last win back in 2024 – You wouldn’t call that timezone pristine Lewis now, would you?
564,000 people through the gates at Silverstone. 72,000 on THURSDAY with no racing. 175,000 on race day. The most ever at an F1 race. With tickets north of £1,000 for grandstand sets. Man, captialism’s great huh?
Liam Lawson is giving Racing Bulls a real headache here. He’s been driving very well all season, definitely better than Arvid Lindblad right now, and despite having no future with the senior Red Bull team, you’d be hard pushed to find a valid reason to sack him, even with Nikola Tsolov racking up wins in Formula 2. Good problem to have for Alan Permane.
George Russell has been comfortably the second best Mercedes for going on eight straight weekends now – He’s only 22 points off the top now. If Kimi Antonelli doesn’t win the title, I strongly suspect it won’t be by the 43 points he’s probably lost since Barcelona.
Really glad we got the LEGO go-karts back at Silverstone for a race, really entertaining as per usual. Hated the fact that Mohammed Ben Sulayem had his own FIA branded kart, because that man has more main character energy than Ben Stokes retirement bollocks last week. Loved the fact he buried his kart in a gravel trap trying to cheat (As did half the field.)
Aston Martin, given the level of resources, and money spent, might be the worst F1 team of the decade. The clips of Lance Stroll having to turn full lock into Copse and Village are just saddening to watch. Newey said there’s an update due to land in Hungary that should add… two seconds a lap to their performance. I’m not sure what’s sadder, the fact that an upgrade package has to add two seconds to a car’s shitty speed, or the fact that it still wouldn’t get Aston Martin out of Q1 on current form. Cadillac have built a team from scratch and are now genuinely competitive amongst the field. It’s pathetic. Surprised Alonso didn’t race his LEGO go-kart instead.
McLaren were weirdly anonymous. Sprint podium for Lando, Piastri off the boil heading into Sunday and then a clash with Lawson on the opening lap off camera ruining his race. Man was lapped on the day. Yikes.
Audi points for the first time since opening day! Relief for the Germans after being dangerously just one point above Aston Martin…
Carlos Sainz with the funniest penalty of the year – A lap added to his classification. Turns out he wasn’t eligible to overtake the Safety Car and gain his lap back, but he accidentally did due to a late pitstop and the unique Silverstone pitlane that actually takes a shortcut to the start finish line, even at Safety Car speed. It’s why if you’ve ever watched eSports or online races in older F1 games, you’d take the pitlane during the final lap as the shorter path to the line was worth multiple seconds. Sainz gained a lap when he wasn’t supposed to, and that was a rule break. Whoops.
Watched the grid walk on Sky Sports: I have a massive crush on Hannah Waddingham and I know I’m not the only one. Like, Number 2 behind WWE’s Stephanie Vaquer.
Reason why I hate society #56: Stefano Domenicalli admitting that either Bahrain or Saudi Arabia could return to the calendar on October 6th’s weekend, turning Azerbaijan, X, Singapore into a triple header. Which means we’d get 9 races in the final 11 weeks to close out 2026. Look, I get that it was inevitable that F1 would squeeze a race back in – the hosting fees are worth tens of millions, but when I expressed empathy towards F1’s travelling circus at having so much time away from home at the end of the year, I got called out because it’s the “pinnacle of motorsport” and that it’s a privilege and someone else would take that job instead. Fuck me for caring I guess.
The Verdict: 6.5/10 (Decent) – Not a bad British GP. There was some good fights and action between the second group of Russell, Hamilton, Verstappen and Norris, and the strategy did make things a little more interesting before the chaos of the ending. Overall, this was a fine race and I’m sorry if you don’t like battery passing – You survived 15 years of artificial DRS passes, you’ll live. See you in Belgium.
