10 things we learned from the 2022 F1 British Grand Prix

The 2022 British Grand Prix may have started with horrifying scenes, but it ended with surely the best period of racing so far this season – and to the eyes of many, the best in years.

What’s interesting is that in the modern era a good Silverstone race isn’t guaranteed as the high-speed track layout used to practically guarantee the higher-downforce and therefore faster cars were very hard to catch and pass. That scenario may indeed have come to pass had Max Verstappen not been unfortunate when running over a piece of AlphaTauri bodywork once he’d got ahead of Carlos Sainz after throwing away pole with a poor final sector. That was a bigger factor than lifting for the yellow flag following Charles Leclerc’s brief spin…

Once again, Red Bull’s package looked the class of the field before fate intervened, but Ferrari made a fight of it and came away with victory, although not without making very heavy weather of things and denying Leclerc a near certain win he’d worked brilliantly to be eying. The Scuderia’s impenetrable safety car call for the then race leader set up the thrilling battles to the flag, which confirmed the rule changes for this year are working as Formula 1 intended, along with tyre developments from Pirelli.

But there were plenty more takeaways from the season’s 10th race, which we present here.

1. Ferrari still hasn’t improved in one key area (AK)

While Carlos Sainz scored a popular victory – he was applauded into the post-race press conference by the assembled journalists, where he spoke as eloquently and thoughtfully as ever – Ferrari’s triumph came with a cloud darker than the ones that had sprinkled Silverstone with rain 20 minutes before the first start.

This was down to the team orders saga in which the Scuderia found itself entangled once Verstappen had dropped out of contention. Leclerc, despite a damaged front wing, was lapping on average 0.3s quicker than Sainz at this phase of the race and wanted to be allowed through. Ferrari’s choice to wait before pitting Sainz helped Lewis Hamilton close in and then when the Mercedes was leading, the red team again opted to give Sainz a chance to up his pace with Leclerc back to running close behind on his hards.

To his credit, Sainz let Leclerc through when ordered and displayed his typical nous to recommend establishing a DRS train to try…