Feel-good stories at British GP but drama off track

On the surface, the British Grand Prix was all about the ongoing fight for the drivers' world championship between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, as McLaren's extraordinary domination of Formula One continued round the very fast track in Northamptonshire.

- David Tremayne

They had been upstaged in qualifying by Red Bull's Max Verstappen, partly thanks to a low-drag rear wing last used in Suzuka earlier in the season, and partly due to the world champion's extraordinary skill. But when the rain came at the start, Verstappen was pretty quickly doomed.

After early virtual safety car interventions, when things finally got going, Piastri slipped ahead and opened a 14.4-second lead until race director Rui Marques deemed that the actual safety car should be deployed to slow the cars down as there was too much standing water. The fact that Isack Hadjar crashed his RB into the back of Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes as soon as the track went green again suggested that Marques had done the right thing initially, since visibility was still poor.

The big deal, however, was whether Piastri had broken the rules with his restart. He was adamant that he had not, but had done exactly what he had done after an earlier safety car intervention. But the stewards disagreed, gave him a 10-second penalty and thus handed the advantage to Norris, who became the 13th British driver to win his home race and narrowed Piastri's points lead from 15 to just eight.