F1: Max Verstappen takes pole at British GP

SILVERSTONE, England –

Lando Norris almost delighted the British Grand Prix crowd with pole position. There was only one problem: Max Verstappen.

“It’s always Max. He always ruins everything for everyone,” Norris joked after the Dutch driver improved his time for his fifth pole position in a row on Saturday.

The British crowd roared with celebration as Norris briefly took over first place late in the qualifying session, before Verstappen went even faster to take it back by 0.241 seconds.

The result may be routine in Formula 1 — Red Bull has taken pole in nine of the ten races — but it followed a tense session, another failure for Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez and a moment of danger for the Dutch driver himself.

Verstappen made contact with the pit wall and broke his front wing leaving his garage during a red flag stoppage in the first part of qualifying. “I was just understeering and he just had no grip,” he told the team over the radio.

Red Bull replaced the wing and checked for other damage before Verstappen continued, but he was at the back of a line of cars and made his way through the field to set up for a fast lap, side-by-side with old rival Lewis Hamilton on the road.

Perez qualified 16th, out of the top 10 for the fifth race in a row and sixth time this season.

He moved up one place when 15th-placed Valtteri Bottas was disqualified because his car did not have enough fuel to provide a sample for analysis. The Alfa Romeo driver will start last.

Montreal’s Lance Stroll qualified 12th for Aston Martin, which is based at Silverstone.

“I think more could have been done in qualifying today,” said Stroll.

“The red flag forced us to use a third set of tires in Q1, which meant we didn’t have a new set in Q2 and that put us behind compared to others.

“I will do my best to fight through the pack and put on a good show for the home fans.”

Perez lost in a frantic end to the first part of qualifying as the drivers had three minutes to set times on a drying and increasingly fast track following an earlier red flag for Kevin Magnussen’s Haas which broke down.

Perez set what appeared to be a competitive time, but it was then surpassed by almost all other drivers before the first session was ended by Bottas stopping on track.

McLaren was the star of qualifying with Norris second and rookie Oscar Piastri third, prompting chief executive Zak Brown to high-five crew members in the garage.

Norris said he watched track TV screens during his slowdown lap to see if Verstappen would improve his time, and expected he would need the champion to make a mistake to clinch first place hold.

Despite missing out on what would have been McLaren’s first pole position since 2021, Norris and Piastri were full of praise for the team’s much-improved car after a poor start to the season.

“It’s a huge step in the right direction,” said Piastri, who said the car felt like a “rocket ship” and that the damp conditions suited McLaren.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were fourth and fifth respectively, followed by the two Mercedes of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

Seven-time champion Hamilton, who has won the British GP a record eight times, survived a dramatic spin in the gravel early in qualifying to continue.

Alexander Albon was eighth for Williams, Fernando Alonso ninth for Aston Martin and Pierre Gasly tenth for Alpine.

Security for Sunday’s race is tight as organizers and local police want to prevent a repeat of last year’s protest, which saw environmentalists gain access to the circuit.