Five Winners, Five Losers: British Grand Prix
- Peter Johnson
- 1 hour ago
- 10 min read
There were certainly plenty disappointed by the outcome of the British Grand Prix, but which teams and drivers had something to celebrate?
Winner — Charles Leclerc
Charles Leclerc has taken a fair amount of flak lately, but at Silverstone, he responded to his critics in the best way possible.
The Monégasque found himself lagging way behind teammate Lewis Hamilton in the championship after a series of driver and team errors in Monaco and Barcelona, before a hugely underwhelming weekend in Austria.
Throughout practice and the sprint sessions, the British Grand Prix looked to be more of the same for Leclerc, with Hamilton once again the lead Ferrari around a configuration he excels in.
For Leclerc to appear almost from nowhere to pip his teammate to second in qualifying was a statement of intent in itself, but the drive that followed on Sunday afternoon was his best performance for many a Grand Prix weekend.
Jumping a slow-starting Kimi Antonelli off the line, Leclerc built a five-second lead by his first pit stop, helped by some resolute defending against the Italian by Hamilton, who had himself got into second place.
This was really where the race was won and lost, because ultimately Antonelli, who was almost certain to overtake Leclerc on much fresher hard tyres during the second stint, succumbed to an unusual front wheel shield failure and finished the race well outside the points.
By this point, Hamilton, who became Leclerc’s closest challenger, was 21 seconds down, following his prior battle with Antonelli, a five-second penalty, and ensuing battles with George Russell and Max Verstappen.
The late safety car following Verstappen’s crash threatened to derail Leclerc’s charge right at the last, but if anybody deserved the fortune of not having one final racing lap to hold his position, it was surely the man who never seems to get any luck.
This was the first time since the Japanese Grand Prix in March that Leclerc has beaten his teammate in a Grand Prix, and the first time in almost as long that he has managed to put together a clean weekend. Both he and Ferrari will hope that this marks the start of a serious resurgence.
Winner — George Russell
When Marcus Dudley came on the team radio on Lap 34 to tell George Russell that he was suffering from a slow puncture, it seemed it was going to be yet another one of those weekends for the Brit.
Russell has hitherto experienced a bleak series of results at his home Grand Prix, and coupled with his general bad luck throughout 2026 thus far, it seemed he was destined to lose another handful of points to Antonelli. In any event, the Italian had been much quicker across the weekend, winning the sprint and taking pole for the Grand Prix.
It is hard to argue that the Brit’s second-placed finish was a true reflection of his performance across the weekend, but given his accumulated misfortune across the season to date, he was due a break.
Re-emerging from his enforced stop, Russell soon passed an ailing Antonelli, and his redemption arc did not stop there. He did not have to pit for fresh rubber on Lap 48 when Verstappen’s crash brought out the safety car, and he duly climbed three places ahead of the stricken Dutchman and his compatriots Hamilton and Lando Norris, who both made a tyre change.
Now just 25 points behind Antonelli in the Drivers’ Championship, having been 68 points down just three races ago, both luck and momentum are back on Russell’s side — for now.
Winner — Isack Hadjar
While Red Bull now face the very real possibility of losing Max Verstappen, it will at least be a small consolation to the team that they finally have a genuinely competitive second driver.
It was far from a spectacular weekend for the Frenchman, who failed to score in the sprint race and spent most of his Sunday in a lonely seventh place before inheriting a couple of positions from Verstappen and Antonelli.
However, the real takeaway from Hadjar’s British Grand Prix performance was his ability to compete with Verstappen over one lap. The Parisian was quicker than his four-time world champion teammate in all three sessions of Saturday’s qualifying hour, lining up ahead of him on the grid for the third time this season.
That matches the combined efforts of Sergio Pérez, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda over the last three seasons.
His fifth place also gave him his fifth consecutive points finish, the first time that has been achieved by a Red Bull second driver in over two years.
At a time when Verstappen’s future at Red Bull is now of grave concern, Hadjar’s quiet but confident work will surely be well appreciated in Milton Keynes.
Winner — Racing Bulls
There is not much to say about Racing Bulls that has not already been said over the last few races, other than to congratulate the team for what is now a fourth consecutive double points finish.
Liam Lawson finished Sunday’s Grand Prix in sixth to build on his eighth-placed finish in the sprint, while Arvid Lindblad came home seventh to become the youngest Brit to score points in his home race.
The team has never enjoyed such a points-scoring run in its history, with three double points finishes in four races in 2015 the closest they have come to matching this current form.
With Alpine now just one point ahead in the constructors’ standings, the “best of the rest” moniker is now firmly in the sights of Racing Bulls.
Winner — Audi
Audi may not have been able to repeat the podium heroics of 12 months ago under the guise of Sauber, but the British Grand Prix marked a breakthrough for the team nonetheless.
Nico Hülkenberg’s bad luck in 2026 continued when he became the Grand Prix’s first retiree with a gearbox issue on Lap 36, but Gabriel Bortoleto was on hand to capitalise on the misfortunes of those ahead of him to claim an eighth-placed finish.
Those four points are the first scored by the team since Bortoleto’s ninth place at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. It was a deserved outcome for a team that has had eight 11th and 12th-placed finishes since then.
Loser — Kimi Antonelli
The last few race weekends have been nothing if not a reality check for Kimi Antonelli, who has seen his 66-point championship lead after the Monaco Grand Prix cut to 25 just three races later.
Similar to the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix when he suffered an engine failure five laps from home, the Italian was on for at least a second-placed finish, and on this occasion an almost certain victory.
Passing Lewis Hamilton for second on Lap 11, Antonelli closed to within two seconds of race leader Leclerc before the Monégasque pitted for hard tyres. Going ten laps longer and emerging from his own stop just 7.5 seconds down, the Mercedes man was poised to swoop for his sixth win of the year.
Gaining the best part of a second a lap, disaster struck on Lap 41 when his front left wheel shield was dislodged by the harsh, serrated kerb on the exit of Copse. Following two trips through the pit lane for new tyres and to remove the offending piece of carbon fibre, Antonelli was back on his way in search of a couple of points.
However, a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits, which would have been inconsequential at normal racing speed, dropped the Italian out of the points as the field bunched up during the race-ending safety car.
The fact that those track limits infringements were actually committed while Antonell slowly returned his ailing car to the pits, rather than being triggered by over-zealous attacking driving, was just another layer of misfortune.
Hopefully now the racing gods have had their fun and reliability will play no further part for either Mercedes driver in this year’s title battle.
Loser — Red Bull
Max Verstappen looked set for a last-lap showdown with Lewis Hamilton for third place on Sunday afternoon, before his Red Bull car’s rear wing had other ideas.
The actual detail of how Verstappen ended up in the position to challenge for a podium is almost irrelevant, even if his battles with Russell and Hamilton earlier in the race were thoroughly entertaining.
The truth is that his race-ending crash on Lap 46 will have far worse consequences for the team than it will for the driver, with Verstappen’s future at Red Bull already under scrutiny since rumours emerged over the Austrian Grand Prix weekend.
As Verstappen turned into Stowe, his rear wing failed to close quickly enough, sending the car on a one-way trip to the wall in an incident remarkably similar to his crash during Qualifying in Austria a week prior.
Speaking after the race, the Dutchman said: “One time, okay, but two times, it’s becoming dangerous.
“I’m honestly just looking forward to going home and not thinking about Formula One.”
Verstappen had complained throughout the weekend about his car’s balance, and felt the team should have made some setup changes overnight and committed to a pitlane start on Sunday.
His public displeasure could not come at a worse time for Red Bull, with the sharks now surely circling to poach their star man away.
Loser — McLaren
The post-race investigation into Lewis Hamilton’s potential speeding under yellow flags almost offered McLaren and Lando Norris a huge reprieve after a difficult weekend for the constructors’ champions.
Hamilton himself admitted a penalty was likely, an outcome which would have bumped Norris up into the podium places. The seven-time world champion was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, and McLaren are now left to reflect on another underwhelming weekend.
Norris did well to reach third in Saturday’s sprint, almost ten seconds down on Antonelli and Hamilton ahead, but both he and Oscar Piastri struggled on Sunday.
The Australian was given almost no chance of a good result, suffering contact from Liam Lawson at Turn 1, which consigned him to an early stop and a race in the midfield.
Norris, meanwhile, ran a distant sixth until Antonelli and Verstappen hit late trouble.
Fourth place is a decent points return for the world champion based on his results this season. However, his team appeared once again to bring the fourth-fastest car and does not look anywhere near capable of competing with Mercedes, Ferrari or Verstappen’s Red Bull.
Loser — Williams
The British Grand Prix was a third successive point-less race for Williams, and there is unfortunately no way to sugarcoat what was a very poor weekend.
Both Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon were anonymous in the lower reaches of the midfield throughout the sprint race, although the Thai driver was compromised by a pitlane start.
The pair then went their separate ways during Sunday’s race, having rather different afternoons but arriving at a similarly disappointing outcome.
Sainz jumped from 14th to tenth at lights out and ran briefly in the points positions, before swiftly being re-overtaken by both Alpines and Gabriel Bortoleto. By his stop on Lap 20, he was 13th and almost three seconds off the pace of the race leaders.
Crossing the finish line in what was officially 12th, the Spaniard received a highly unusual one-lap penalty for unlapping himself during the safety car despite not being a lap down.
Albon, meanwhile, ruined his own race on Lap 1 by scything into Ollie Bearman’s Haas at Brooklands and receiving a ten-second penalty.
He made five trips through the pitlane in an impromptu testing session for Williams and was two laps down when his team finally called it a day on Lap 43.
Sainz summed the team’s situation up by saying they have a “long, long road ahead”. That does indeed look to be the case.
Loser — The fans
It would be far too obvious on another weekend of abject misery for Aston Martin to include them among this weekend’s losers.
Instead, following the safety car shambles at the end of the race, a word for the 170,000 fans packed into Silverstone on Sunday afternoon.
F1 proudly revealed that the weekend attendance was the largest ever in the sport’s history, which did unfortunately mean a record number of disappointed fans when the race failed to get going again following the late safety car.
The truth is that, although the mere mention of it sets claxons and alarm bells off in the heads of F1 fans, it was the long shadow of Abu Dhabi 2021 that sent the British Grand Prix to its anti-climactic conclusion.
The main controversy on that day was the race director’s treatment of the safety car in relation to unlapped cars. According to the regulations, Bernd Mayländer was supposed to stay out for another lap after the selected few lapped cars were asked to get out of the way.
However, he was summoned back to the pit lane early to allow for one final racing lap. We know how that went.
At Silverstone, the lapped cars were told they could unlap themselves at the start of Lap 51 — the penultimate lap. Therefore, by the letter of the law, the safety car had to stay out another full lap after that, which brought us to the end of Lap 52 and the chequered flag.
In that regard, due process was followed, but the track could have gone green on the final lap if the call to the unlapped cars had been made even just a couple of corners prior at the end of Lap 50. Verstappen’s car had long been removed from the gravel, and there were no obstacles on the track.
It seems that a blinding fear to repeat the failures of that December night four and a half years ago does, from time to time, send the race director into a state of paralysis. It does not make what happened then right, but it does only add to the frustration that a solution has still not been found to allow for legitimate racing action to resume following a late safety car.
Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
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