Red Bull and Max Verstappen show off their competition, either with the stopwatch in hand or with the design program, a pencil in the case of the red buffalo team and Adrian Newey, the aerodynamics guru who sets the pace in contemporary Formula 1. The Dutchman crushes Sunday yes and Sunday too, to the same extent as the car that he and Checo Pérez drive is on its way to destroying all records.
At Silverstone, the current champion claimed his sixth consecutive win and his eighth so far this year, uploaded to his RB19, the total fireball. Between his victories and those of Pérez (two) he accumulates a total of ten, and is one away from the absolute record of eleven that was chained by the legendary McLaren MP4/4, with which Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost starred, in 1988, in one of the most famous brawls in history. The record could be broken in Belgium, the last weekend of July, in the last appointment before the summer break.
Verstappen’s numbers are the envy of the grid and those of his car of the other engineers, to the point of having generated a stream of admirers who have based the updates implemented throughout the season with the Red Bull as a model. The triple somersault with pirouette given this year by Aston Martin was the first indication of this.
Lando Norris’s second place, McLaren’s first podium in 2023, is confirmation of a trend that compacts a bit more an already extremely crowded middle section of the table, in which Fernando Alonso (seventh) and Carlos Sainz (tenth), are having a worse time to get on the drawer. The party for the papaya structure would have been complete if it hadn’t been for the ‘safety’ caused by the breakdown of Kevin Magnussen (lap 33), which deprived Oscar Piastri (fourth) of serving the British team their first double podium in two years . Numbers aside, the most visual proof of this was the delicious defense that Norris was able to put up against the ferocious attack by Lewis Hamilton (third), despite having less suitable tires, when the safety car restarted the race ( 38th turn). “This McLaren is a rocket, guys. What speed they have! ”, Said Hamilton, on the radio, just after crossing the finish line, justifying himself for not having been able to get hold of his compatriot.
McLaren’s breakthrough was cemented in Austria last week and established in Britain. At the Red Bull Ring, Norris received a first package of aerodynamic improvements, in the image and likeness of the Red Bull profile. The redesign of the pontoons was joined by the flat bottom, the engine cover and even the little wings that protrude from the halo, the head protection. Those pieces weren’t ready at Spielberg for Piastri, who received them this weekend: On Saturday, the Australian rookie took third on the grid in his fastest time in F1, and on Sunday he would have popped the champagne but for the barbecue that Magnussen organized in the engine of his Haas. At Silverstone, Norris received a second batch of parts that his shop neighbor will most likely be able to fit in two weeks from now, in Hungary.
“I don’t know why they put the hard rubber bands on me, really. Maybe they wanted to make me a little more nervous”, acknowledged Norris, before a fan completely devoted to him. “Surely the (soft) compounds made a little more sense. We should have finished the second and third. It’s a shame because Oscar deserved it”, stressed the young man from Somerset, who has already traveled around the world several times despite being only 23 years old.
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