2025 British GP: Lando Norris’ first Silverstone win, Nico Hülkenberg finally secures podium finish, Max Verstappen struggles amid Mercedes speculation, and more
For the 75th time in the sport’s history, F1 came home to Silverstone on Sunday, July 6, for the 2025 British Grand Prix.
A first home victory for Lando Norris, a 15-year wait for the podium coming to an end for Nico Hülkenberg, and chaotic wet-dry weather conditions meant nobody will forget this one in a hurry.
Sports News Blitz’s F1 writer Henry Eccles takes a look at the five big talking points to come out of this season’s British GP.
Lando Norris’ first home race win makes massive championship statement
In the build-up to the Grand Prix, Lando Norris said that if he had to swap all of his race wins for just one, it would be for a win at Silverstone.
Starting in P3 behind team-mate Oscar Piastri and pole-sitter Max Verstappen, with weather conditions changing throughout the race, Norris had a lot of work to do if he was to reach the top step.
Luckily for the Bristol-born racer, a crucial Safety Car incident involving Piastri and Verstappen helped him out.
With visibility so low in the rain, Isack Hadjar’s heavy shunt into the back of Andrea Kimi Antonelli brought out the Safety Car on Lap 18.
Three laps later, racing was about to get back underway - Piastri was leading the pack after an impressive overtake on Verstappen, but made a critical error of judgement as the Safety Car came in.
Braking suddenly from 218 km/h to 52 km/h on the Hangar Straight, Piastri caused a concertina effect as an unsuspecting Verstappen went ahead of the Aussie, while the rest of the grid bunched up rather dangerously.
After getting caught out on cold tyres, Verstappen then spun out when Piastri got away under the green flag - the Dutchman dropped to P10, and could only recover a P5 finish.
Piastri was in trouble. The 24-year-old received a controversial 10-second time penalty for the infringement and served it during his next pit stop.
This saw Norris take the lead, and proved to be the race-deciding incident, as the Briton only finished 6.812s ahead of his McLaren team-mate.
Piastri, known for his cool and calm demeanour, was furious at the decision, saying post-race that ‘apparently you can’t brake behind the Safety Car anymore.’
He later told the media that he thought the penalty was ‘pretty bad’ and that his P2 finish was not what he deserved.
His team-mate Norris will not care one bit - his ability to stay out of danger under changing conditions and incidents all throughout the race should be praised, especially for a driver who has historically struggled under pressure.
“In terms of being a stressful race, this is as stressful as you can get,” Norris said post-race.
“The last few laps I was just looking into the crowd. I was just trying to take it all in, enjoy the moment, because it might never happen again.
“I hope it does, but these are memories that I'll bring with me forever.”
Norris’ victory at the weekend, coupled with his commanding win in Austria in the last round, has made a huge championship statement - the Briton is not going anywhere.
The gap between Norris and leader Piastri in the Drivers’ standings is now just down to eight points, marking a remarkable turnaround from Norris since his collision with Piastri at Round 10 in Canada.
Nico Hülkenberg scores his F1 first podium
After 239 race starts in F1, Nico Hülkenberg has finally done it.
Despite qualifying in P19, the 37-year-old pulled off a special drive to take his first-ever podium finish in F1 since his debut in 2010.
The Sauber driver has come close on several occasions, painfully scoring P4 three times throughout his career.
Before the British GP weekend he had held the record for having the most appearances in F1 without a podium finish.
In 2019, having been P2 at his home race at Hockenheim, the then Renault driver had dropped to P4 and famously crashed out in wet conditions with 23 laps left.
The most painful of his missed opportunities came when driving for Force India at Interlagos in 2012, also under changing weather conditions.
There, Hülkenberg was leading the race from McLaren’s Jenson Button, the pair had been 50 seconds clear before a Safety Car restart brought the grid back together.
After the restart, he lost control in the wet and Lewis Hamilton, after passing team-mate Button, took the lead, only for Hülkenberg to crash into him when trying to reclaim P1 and end both drivers’ hopes of a positive result.
13 years on at Silverstone, it was yet again Hülkenberg against Hamilton, this time for the final podium spot.
Hamilton had been hunting down the German’s place throughout the second half of the race, storming past Pierre Gasly and Lance Stroll to get within 1.5s of the Sauber before the final round of pit stops onto slick tyres.
The stops proved crucial - while Hülkenberg’s was slow, and came a lap later, Hamilton momentarily slid off the track when trying to warm up his new soft tyres and lost crucial time.
Hülkenberg stayed ahead for the remainder of the race, to take what Sauber Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley called ‘the most overdue podium in F1 history.’
For Hülkenberg and Sauber, it was all about the right calls at the right time, and some brilliant racing from the veteran.
The timing of their decision to take on fresh intermediate tyres just as the rain started to pour again mid-race, Hülkenberg’s tyre management, and impressive passing of Lance Stroll, proved the result was by no means a fluke.
The veteran was understandably delighted post-race: “It's been a long time coming, hasn't it? I always knew we have it in us, and I have it in me somewhere.
“I mean what a race, coming from virtually last, and doing it all over again from last weekend, was pretty surreal to be honest.
“Not sure how it all happened, but obviously crazy conditions, mixed conditions - it was a survival fight for a lot of the race.
“I think we were just really on it - the right calls, the right tyres in the right moment. We made no mistakes and it's quite incredible.”
The result is Hülkenberg’s fourth consecutive points finish for Sauber, which leapfrogs them up to P6 in the Constructors’ standings, now five ahead of Racing Bulls and Aston Martin.
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Strategy errors prove costly for both Ferrari and Mercedes at British GP
After heavy showers in the hours prior to the race, all the teams would have been weighing up every possible tyre option come the start.
For both Ferrari and Mercedes, gambles to move over to slick tyres during the formation lap doomed Charles Leclerc and George Russell’s races from the very beginning.
While slicks might have gone a long way in recovering Russell and Leclerc’s respective P14 and P15 post-pit positions, Liam Lawson’s opening lap crash with Esteban Ocon brought out the Virtual Safety Car at the wrong time for the pair.
By the time the VSC ended after several laps, slick tyres were far below optimal temperature and took too long to warm up, and even when they did, significant damage had been done.
George Russell explained post-race:
“It's always difficult making the right calls in conditions like today. But sadly, we didn't manage to do that.
“We opted to go to the hard tyre after the formation lap and we then had a
25-minute window of dry weather, which should have enabled us to put them to good use but 15 minutes of that was under the VSC.
“Once we were running, we were seconds a lap quicker than others but just had too much time to make up.”
While he did recover to P7, another poor strategy call on Lap 38 ruined Russell’s race, as he pitted a few laps too early onto hard tyres again and spun on Lap 40.
He finished with just one point in P10.
Leclerc’s race was even worse. The Monegasque driver found himself on the grass and into the gravel on more than one occasion, and finished P14.
The Ferrari driver called it one of the most difficult races in his F1 career.
One of his off-track excursions saw him clip former Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz’s front wing while they battled for P7. The Spaniard dropped to P12 and failed to recover.
While Leclerc’s team-mate Hamilton finished in a stronger P4, it was clear that Ferrari have real problems in the wet, with the seven-time world champion calling his SF-25 “the most difficult car” he had ever driven in mixed conditions.
Pierre Gasly battles with the best for Alpine
If it was not for Hülkenberg’s historic podium, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was a very strong contender for the Driver of the Day award after his P6 finish at Silverstone.
On Saturday, Alpine, dead last in the standings, were slowest in the final practice session, and driver Franco Colapinto crashed out in Q1.
It was all down to Gasly, who not only got his A525 out of Q1, but managed a sensational P10 finish in Q3.
Grid penalties for Antonelli and Oliver Bearman saw that bumped up to P8.
And after opting to stay on the inters after the Formation Lap, Gasly got himself up into P5 after passing Fernando Alonso on the opening lap.
During the middle part of the race, Gasly’s defensive prowess was on show.
The Frenchman impressively held up Hamilton in a multi-lap battle for P5 before being passed on Lap 30.
On Lap 41, Gasly was then overtaken by Verstappen for P6, who was charging back up the field after his Safety Car spin.
But in the final stint, it was Gasly who was on the charge. On the last lap at Silverstone, he made an impressive move on the outside of Stowe to take back P6 from Aston Martin’s Stroll.
It was the cherry on top of a superb weekend for Gasly, who was overjoyed to be battling at the front: “I don't really know what to say, it's our best result of the year and to do it here at Silverstone in these conditions is just incredible.
"It was so much fun, I enjoyed so much this race from the first lap to the last one. Battling with Fernando, with Lewis, with Max, it just felt a bit unreal at times to be in that position. Especially knowing where we started the weekend.”
While his 8 points have not moved Alpine from their P10 position in the Constructors’, and with the future of team-mate Colapinto looking increasingly uncertain, the French outfit have once again seen that Gasly can be a real force for them on his day.
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Changing conditions ruin Max Verstappen’s heroic qualifying performance
Although his spin on the Safety Car restart was undoubtedly the key factor for why Verstappen did not end up on the podium, the Dutchman severely lacked pace during the Grand Prix.
On Saturday, Verstappen shocked fans with a sensational lap that put him on pole, sporting an extremely low-wing level that allowed him to fly down the straights and stay quick through Silverstone’s speedy corners.
With Parc fermé rules limiting changes to the cars between qualifying and the race, the set-up was a disaster for the four-time world champion on Sunday, as teams were caught out by the changing conditions.
Based on what turned out to be a far too optimistic forecast of just a 20% chance of rain during the race, Team Principal Christian Horner explained that Verstappen’s car had been trimmed to ‘Monza levels of downforce.’
With downforce crucial in a wet race, Verstappen admitted to being ‘no match’ for the McLarens, whose ability to avoid overheating on a drying track also proved key for their dominant performance.
“It was just a very difficult race for us, but even after that spin I had no pace," Verstappen said post-race.
“I was just stuck with that group and it was just very difficult to drive, and naturally of course we knew that it was going to be difficult in the wet with that rear wing that we had on the car.
“But even then I think we were still struggling a lot, and even also in the last few laps on the slick tyres were quite a handful to drive.”
While Verstappen was far from what could be described as furious post-race, further frustration in his RB21’s performance comes at quite an interesting time in his F1 career.
The British GP weekend was dominated by rumours of a potential 2026 move to Mercedes, with Verstappen refusing to comment any further on his future despite being completely surrounded by the press during media day on Thursday.
The media frenzy was kicked off in Austria by Russell, whose Mercedes contract renewal continues to go unsigned, after the Briton revealed that the Silver Arrows were having ‘conversations’ with Verstappen.
Team Principal Toto Wolff then admitted there was interest in Verstappen, and said he hopes a decision is sorted by the end of the summer break.
Wolff now has three weeks to further mull things over as the next race is not until the weekend of July 25-27 at the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit, home to the Belgian Grand Prix.
The race will start on Sunday, July 27 at 2pm UK time, with fans able to catch the action live on Sky Sports F1.
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