Stunning Horner ‘integrity’ swipe as title war set to explode; giant’s ‘sanity check’: Burning Qs

The lead-up to the British Grand Prix started with race organisers lamenting that Max Verstappen domination was killing Formula 1.

Having enjoyed sellout post-pandemic crowds, ticket tales had been sluggish.

“If there is a strong likelihood of the same winner and the jeopardy is taken out of sport, it does take the edge off it,” Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle told Autosport. “Last year was very repetitive in terms of one team dominated and they set off this season in the same vein.”

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Less was said about the circuit’s prohibitive ticket prices, with four-day general admission passes selling for an eye-watering £429 ($813), three times as much as the same ticket to the Australian Grand Prix.

A Sunday ticket will set British punters back $586, roughly 400 per cent up on the same in Melbourne.

“I don’t think it’s my fault,” Verstappen hit back. “I mean, the F1 season is very exciting. There are a lot of teams fighting for wins now.”

Certainly on-track action has come up to a rolling boil in the last month.

Three different teams have won the last four grands prix. Four have won the last six.

The constructors championship is in doubt, and now Verstappen has ignited a feud with home hero and regular victory contender Lando Norris.

Suddenly Silverstone has reported a surge in interest — though tickets were still available ahead of gates opening on Thursday.

“If a promoter can’t fill the seats and they blame it on someone, then I think they first have to look at themselves, what they’re doing wrong,” Verstappen added. “Other places it’s quite easy to fill.”

We’ll find out who was right by Sunday night, because right now there’s plenty of intrigue in Formula 1.

‘IT SPEAKS TO HIS INTEGRITY’: CAN NORRIS RENEW VERSTAPPEN RIVALRY?

Formula 1’s newest rivalry has skipped the simmering tension and cut straight to the verbal barbs.

Verstappen and Norris’s crash while battling for the lead was the climax of last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix and opened a new chapter of the 2024 season.

The underlying angst over the situation extends beyond the crash itself, with the teams now engaged in a war of words over the rights and wrongs of the incident.

The stewards declared Verstappen predominantly at fault for the crash, caused by him tagging the McLaren under brakes and giving both cars a puncture. He was slapped with a 10-second penalty that made no difference to his fifth-place finish.

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner told SiriusXM that Norris was “getting his elbow out” and was “trying to make up for” having lost the sprint to Verstappen the day before.

“I would say it was a racing incident,” he subsequently told reporters.

Of course Horner is going to defend his driver, but it’s become something of a running joke that he cannot admit to Verstappen being more than 50 per cent to blame for any incident.

Even his airborne crash with Lewis Hamilton at the Italian Grand Prix — which the stewards judged worthy of a grid drop and penalty points at the height of the hands-off ‘let them race era’ — was only a “racing incident”, according to his team boss.

Horner’s predictable absolution of Verstappen wasn’t cutting it with McLaren principal Andrea Stella, however.

“I think this kind of statement is pretty irreceivable,” he told Sirius XM. “To some extent I think it speaks for the integrity of the person that said that.

“It was a tough battle — up to a certain point within the rules — but at some stage we started to have manoeuvres that would have needed to be addressed right away.

“I think in particular Max should have been informed that some movements during the braking manoeuvres were not possible.

“There is no need to defend like this. Sometimes you just have to accept that the car behind needs to have an opportunity, and I think that what would have happened if Lando had passed.

“Then the next lap, with the DRS, Max would have gone for it, and it would have been an incredible spectacle, which we missed but hopefully we will be able to see in the future, with regulations that are enforced and both drivers fighting within the regulations.”

The good news for Stella’s hopes for a renewed battle is that Verstappen and Norris are almost certain to have a chance to duel again this weekend.

They’re the season’s two best qualifiers, so by rights should line up on the front row of the grid.

Silverstone is another circuit that should perfectly suit Red Bull Racing, but McLaren has consistently proved that it’s built a match for the RB20. Norris’s final stint in Austria demonstrates that the two teams are very close in race pace.

Norris will surely be fired up to avenge his lost Austria victory. Verstappen needs no motivation to race at 100 per cent aggression.

The teams are raring for a fight. At Norris’s home race and the home event for both teams, fireworks are predicted.

CAN HAMILTON REVERSE HIS ‘SHIT’ FORM?

Lewis Hamilton, by his own admission, was “pretty shit” all last weekend in Spielberg.

A good start got him one place up on Carlos Sainz, but he severely damaged his floor on the way in an incident that cost him an estimated 0.25 seconds per lap.

He was then ordered to hand the position back to Sainz for passing off the track, losing a place to the Ferrari driver he’d never get back.

That was compounded by a slide over the white pit entry lines at his first pit stop, for which he was penalised five seconds.

On an afternoon teammate George Russell cruised to an inherited victory, Hamilton finished 23 seconds adrift of the lead.

“Pretty shocking,” Hamilton summed up to Sky Sports. “It’s just me.

I’ve been pretty shit all weekend. It’s not for the lack of trying, but [I’m] just generally slow, and it’s just not acceptable.”

This followed a “disastrous” sprint qualifying session featuring “very bad laps, every single one of them” and an anonymous sixth at the end of the short race.

His self-assessed form slump comes just as Mercedes finally comes good. While Russell’s victory needed Verstappen and Norris to crash, he was a comfortable third and ready to pick up the pieces.

It’s been the story of Hamilton’s year.

He’s been outqualified 2-9 so far, including 1-4 in the last five grands prix, with an average deficit of 2.82 places for the season, though the margin is a super fine 0.086 seconds, the third closest in the sport.

Race performances are similarly one sided. He’s been beaten 3-7 in grands prix both have finished.

Is it a slow adjustment to Mercedes’s 2024 car? A general downcast attitude about the final chapter of his Mercedes career? Surely it’s too early for the seven-time champion to have checked out ahead of his Ferrari switch.

Whatever the case, if we don’t see Hamilton at his best this weekend, we may never do.

His eight Silverstone wins makes him the most successful driver at the British Grand Prix by a long way, and while he’s unlikely to have a chance to build on that tally this weekend, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff isn’t ruling it out completely either, with the team boss saying an update worth even just 0.1 seconds could propel the German marque into the lead battle.

“I think we are bringing upgrades now almost to every race,” he said, per Racer. “The factory is running on full steam.

“We’ve never had this in 12 years — that we were able to develop, design, manufacturer, bring to the track and have the quality in the pieces. I’ve seriously never seen that pace.

“Every single race we have brought upgrades, every single race we will bring upgrades, and I hope by the summer break we can make another step.

“Everyone else is working hard, but if we can eat a bit away at that gap — I think it was 15 seconds in 70 laps, so 0.2 seconds [a lap], and that’s play, that’s a P3 — and hopefully if we can half it, we can race in front.”

There’s never been a better time to start turning it around.

WILL FERRARI’S ‘SANITY CHECK’ BACK UP VASSEUR’S OPTIMISM?

Red Bull Racing and McLaren are hoping to fight for victory. Mercedes is optimistic it’s on the right path.

But what’s going on with Ferrari?

Having started the year as Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger, the team has slumped to fourth fastest and 0.4 seconds off the pace on average over the last five rounds, a negative trajectory of 0.05 seconds per weekend.

Charles Leclerc has lost second in the drivers championship, and in the last five races he and teammate Carlos Sainz have been outscored by every frontrunning driver other than Sergio Pérez.

Upgrades in Spain were supposed to take the team significantly forward, but they appear to have cornered the car into the bouncing zone, where it can’t fully load itself with downforce without proposing.

It was particularly evident in Barcelona, but the chance to hone the package were hampered by the sprint format in Austria, leaving the team with just an hour of practice.

It gave team boss Fred Vasseur cover to deny he was worried about slipping backwards in the pecking order.

“The word ‘issue’ is a big one,” he dodged on Sunday night, per Autosport.

“For sure even when you get pole position and even when you win the race you have issues on the car. If you don’t have an issue, you are at the beginning of the end.

“We changed the car massively between Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon and I think it was better.

“I think overall we are there.”

The French boss has worked hard to shield his team from criticism, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to deny Ferrari’s downwards trajectory — so much so that even he’s expecting this weekend to reveal some definitive answers.

“I think it will be helpful for us to have FP1 and FP2 in Silverstone — also if the weather is good — to do a sanity check on everything,” he said.

“But strangely I’m not negative on the performance — strangely because we were in the race, we are far away from Max, but I had the feeling that we were able to get more.”

IS IT TOO LATE FOR JACK DOOHAN?

The British Grand Prix weekend started with the first confirmation of a 2025 debutant, with Oliver Bearman set to get his full-time seat with Haas.

He’ll be one of what could be as many as four rookies on the grid.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli is almost nailed on at Mercedes. Liam Lawson is hoping Daniel Ricciardo’s career peters out.

Jack Doohan should be the natural successor to the outbound Esteban Ocon, yet things aren’t proving so simple.

Alpine, under new management of executive adviser Flavio Briatore — whose remit includes many responsibilities traditionally belonging to the team principal — is aggressively pursuing Carlos Sainz, and the chase is holding up the entire driver market.

Sainz is the market’s most highly rated free agent. It’s understandable that a team down on its luck like Alpine — whose manufacturer status should see it compete regularly at the front — would covet such a morale-boosting signing.

But it’s bad news for Doohan, who can’t compete with the Spaniard’s experience.

Fortunately he has a chance this weekend to state his case again, with his second of two mandatory free practice appearance with the team. We’ll have to wait and see whether it comes too late to make a difference.

Alongside him in FP1 will be fellow juniors Oliver Bearman at Haas, Franco Colapinto at Williams and, intriguingly Isack Hadjar at Red Bull Racing in place of the under-pressure Pérez.

Hadjar is a title contender in his second season of Formula 2 and is Red Bull’s most senior driver on the junior ladder.

While there would appear to be no room for him on next year’s grid, he’s being taken seriously by the team hierarchy and is one to watch.