Verstappen recovers to second as Hamilton wins British Grand Prix

World champion Max Verstappen recovered to finish second in a historic British Grand Prix.

While Lewis Hamilton ended his 900+ day winless streak with a ninth win at Silverstone, Verstappen made him sweat for it as he closed on the home-crowd favourite in the latter stages of the race.

It had been an off-colour weekend for Red Bull Racing by their recent standards at the circuit 20 miles from their Tilbrook base. While Sergio Perez’s woes continued with a spin in qualifying, meaning he would start from the pits, Verstappen was only quick enough for fourth place on the grid as the British trio of George Russell, Hamilton and Lando Norris started ahead.

Running third early on, Verstappen dropped to fifth when the first rain fell, and was falling into the clutches of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz before the circuit dried.

Verstappen was amongst the first drivers to switch to dry tyres and capitalised as he climbed to third, but he had a pace advantage over Norris and leader Hamilton as the laps ticked down. Passing the McLaren ace with four laps to go, Verstappen tried to bridge the gap to Hamilton, but the Mercedes man had enough in reserve to take the chequered flag.

“At one point it was looking like we might finish P5 or P6,” said the championship leader. “But we made all of the right calls, especially with pitstops, and that put us back into contention.

“When it started to rain we didn’t want to take too much risk as I was already struggling with grip, and the team also put the hard tyre on at the end and that definitely saved my race as I was the only one on the hard tyre and was able to really push.

“Out of a tough situation we still finished second, and extended our Championship leads, and that of course is a very strong result for us.”

Perez’s race was hindered by his qualifying spin, which only intensified rumours about his future in the team, but an early call for intermediate tyres also compromised his race as he could only circulate to finish 17th.

He said: “This is a day to forget, nothing really worked for us, we gambled initially to try and go for it and unfortunately, we didn’t have what we needed today.

“We took a risk on the intermediate tyre early on, thinking there was going to be more rain, more quickly and it was just too early, we lost a lot of ground and the tyre was completely gone.

“We need a clean weekend now, a weekend of progression to get back to our rhythm. Hungary and Belgium are weekends where we have to get back to our form.”