Max Verstappen and Red Bull will be out for revenge at Silverstone

The drops of champagne had barely dried in Montreal before Red Bull’s attention turned firmly to the British Grand Prix.

With six victories in succession, 2022 has rapidly become that sort of season for Red Bull and the races cannot come quickly enough as Max Verstappen continues to march towards a second consecutive World Championship.

With memories of last year’s event – and the first-lap collision at Copse between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton – still fresh in the mind, though, it is clear Silverstone is not just another race in the minds of Red Bull.

“We’re going there fired up and trying to put right what happened last year,” team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports underneath the podium in Canada.

They may have elevated themselves to a whole new level in 2022, but Red Bull have never quite been able to let go of the bitterness and resentment that followed the sudden and violent ignition of the Verstappen-Hamilton rivalry a year ago.

Their displeasure has covered all bases from the nature of the incident itself, the punishment Hamilton received (a 10-second time penalty didn’t stop him winning the race) and the Mercedes driver’s celebrations afterwards as Verstappen sat in a hospital bed.

Even as Verstappen celebrated his maiden title triumph in Abu Dhabi last December, chief technical officer Adrian Newey – completely unprompted – brought up his lingering annoyance over the British GP, admitting it “still really grinds with me.”

Be in no doubt that this is a team and driver searching for a form of revenge at Silverstone.

It has seemingly been of little consolation to Red Bull that Mercedes have been taken out of title contention this year, with Verstappen and Hamilton sharing the podium in Canada for the first time since the highly controversial 2021 season finale.

After appearing to finally crack the code of the porpoising-prone W13 car in last month’s Spanish GP, where the team felt Hamilton could have challenged for victory were it not for a first-lap puncture, the Monaco-Baku-Montreal portion of the calendar arguably came at a bad time in Mercedes’ recovery from a troubled start to the season.

Emerging from those three races on circuits with wildly different setup demands with two podium finishes exceeded expectations for Mercedes, who are hopeful that a return to a more conventional track will allow them to access the level of their Barcelona performance on a more consistent basis.

If the Silver…