Mercedes and McLaren gains raise prospect of closest qualifying yet

At last year’s British Grand Prix, as part of the first-ever running of Formula 1’s new sprint race structure, drivers only got a single hour of practice on Friday before a second hour on Saturday morning.

In 2022, the British Grand Prix is not a sprint event (next weekend’s race in Austria will be). However, due to the rain falling at the worst possible time, teams effectively only enjoyed a single hour of practice again on Friday with the first practice session amounting to little more than a sodden shakedown.

Thankfully, teams managed to make up for lost time in the evening’s second practice session and it was an hour that provided plenty of intrigue for the rest of the weekend – especially towards the front of the field.

The only dry session of the day may not have seen any of the 20 drivers end up in the gravel or worse, but the wind and the jagged kerbs on the exit of the many fast corners around the Silverstone circuit did catch out many. Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton all ran off the circuit as they searched for grip around the blustery Buckinghamshire course.

At the end of the day, Ferrari and Carlos Sainz Jnr took the honours as the fastest on Friday, the driver topping an official practice session for the first time since the opening hour at the Miami Grand Prix in early May. Sainz’s 1’28.942 was almost half a second quicker than team mate Charles Leclerc, fifth, but despite being clearly ahead of Leclerc, Sainz remained cautious after what he described as “quite a challenging session.”

“The wind made it tricky to get the right balance for the high-speed sections and the correct compromise for tyres in the low-speed ones,” said Sainz. “Overall we were quick, but it felt like there is margin to improve.”

Leclerc has held the clear advantage over his team mate at the vast majority of rounds so far this year, so it was unusual to see him unable to match Sainz’s pace even on a Friday. However, Leclerc explained that it had not been smooth sailing for him during the evening session, due to some power unit problems that disrupted his running.

“I don’t know if there were radio messages on the coverage but overall, just some power unit things that were making it very difficult to drive,” said Leclerc. “But it’s fine. I mean, it’s small set ups more than problems, so we will modify it for tomorrow.”

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