What a race we had at Silverstone, as is so often the case. We were breathless up in commentary even before half distance. So much happened it’s difficult to remember everything.

Let’s start with congratulations to Lando Norris on his spectacular home victory, and fellow podium stander, in third place, Nico Hulkenberg being up there for the first time in 239 races. He’s a far better driver than that suggests.

Commiserations to second-placed Oscar Piastri, it was his victory in many ways, but the Safety Car put paid to that for two reasons.

Firstly, his impressive 14-second lead was extinguished when the Safety Car was, sensibly, deployed due to very poor visibility in heavy rain. Secondly, when the race was restarting on lap 21, as the rooftop Safety Car lights went out signalling it was pitting at the end of that lap, Oscar – still leading – duly took over the mantle of controlling the pack as per normal.

Unfortunately for him he was in a brake-warming phase, but even so he shed 100mph in that moment and he breached rule 55.15 (yes there really are lots of rules of engagement….) of the Sporting Regulations regarding erratic braking or manoeuvres.

However, this is a very important rule as the concertina effect, especially in poor visibility, can cause significant incidents in a ripple effect through the rest of the queue behind the Safety Car. As indeed it very nearly did.

The question was the scale of penalty for a clear breach.

Ten seconds would be the standard issue unless there were mitigating circumstances to make it five seconds. But the stewards decided not given the extent of brake pressure and speed reduction in the car data.

Lando would beat Oscar by 6.8 seconds and so the penalty was the decider, although we’ll never know how much speed either of them had in their pockets if required.

That’s not to detract in any way from Lando’s win, he should have won the race last year but for a better final tyre choice, and this was his moment in front of an adoring crowd which is starting to reach the frenzy of that witnessed for Nigel Mansell and Lewis Hamilton.

‘It was a seemingly endless stream of broken and stranded cars’

Changeable was the word of the day.

We were very surprised to read that the formation lap would be behind the Safety Car, but it was largely a dry track. That decision was quickly changed to a normal standing start, and George Russell, Isack Hadjar, Charles Leclerc and Gabriel Bortoleto even pitted for slick tyres and didn’t take to the grid, starting from the end of the pitlane instead.

That would be a gamble too far, and Bortoleto soon found himself in the wall and out of the race.

Mercedes had a curious habit of fitting the hard compound tyres in marginal conditions, with their slower warm-up capabilities but greater eventual longevity, which surely was a case of data winning out over common sense.

We saw many clumsy contacts, sometimes not really even in combat, just close company. Having driven one of these cars a couple of weeks ago I’m not at all surprised, they are so long and wide, and the visibility from the cockpit so poor, it’s no wonder they trip over each other.

It was a seemingly endless stream of broken and stranded cars, while others pirouetted at great speed or had lengthy adventures into uncharted territory some way off the track.

Max Verstappen had put in a supreme performance to take pole position for Red Bull. It was a six-way shoot-out for the front row, and while the likes of Norris, Piastri, Hamilton and Leclerc made small errors, Verstappen delivered a laser-guided gem again.

But he had trimmed out the wing levels and downforce for higher top speeds on the straights, expecting much less rain on Sunday than the wide Northamptonshire skies delivered.

This left him struggling for grip although he still led the early stages, and despite a Safety Car restart spin down the field and a ‘beeping undriveable car’, he still salvaged fifth place.

‘One of Leclerc’s worst races for Ferrari’

Generally, it was one of those days for being on the right tyre at the right time regardless of time lost in the pits.

For Hulkenberg, who started last on the grid, it was lap nine for fresh intermediates and lap 43 for slicks.

For Lance Stroll, who started 17th, it was intermediates to start, soft compound dry slick tyres on lap nine just as his team had told team-mate Fernando Alonso it would rain heavily in a few minutes.

Stroll then pitted for intermediates four laps later, and again for soft dry tyres on lap 42. The final compound choice was a mistake but he ran in a strong fourth place for a long time until fading to seventh near the end.

Amazingly, 15 of the 19 starters were classified finishers.

Franco Colapinto never got under way from the pitlane start in his Alpine due to transmission gremlins, but every one of those 19 drivers would be able to regale you for a good while about scary moments and near misses in that race, such were the challenging conditions.

Hamilton had a solid run to fourth place again, and he outperformed his team-mate Leclerc all weekend. Lewis looked to be struggling a lot in the heavy rain and poor visibility but recovered that well when conditions calmed down.

Leclerc said his more extreme car set-up of late didn’t work well at all in those grip levels in what must be one of his worst races for Ferrari.

The Piastri vs Norris state of play for second half of 2025

With the Ferrari boys, Verstappen and Russell having a more difficult day, and with the McLaren duo a full two seconds faster per lap than the rest of the field in some phases, as Silverstone marks the halfway point of the season, albeit with four of the six Sprint races remaining, it seems the Drivers’ Championship showdown will indeed be between Piastri and Norris, and we can expect some fireworks there.

That’s the first time we’ve seen the angry side of the calm silent Aussie assassin. Oscar’s radio call for the places to be swapped if the team thought he’d received an unfair penalty was more than cheeky, though.

And frankly they may as well hand the constructors’ trophy over to McLaren and save time in what will be a very short winter in F1 land.

The grid walk was reasonable fun. Apologies to any famous and high-achieving people I rushed past and failed to chat to, I’m afraid I have limited capacity to walk, talk, think, listen and meanwhile check out the faces of hundreds of people to see who they are.

I had a few hits on the head in my former career and so I need a new Google search and AI chips inserted because my brain still runs on floppy disks.

F1 takes a brief break before the season resumes at the Belgian Grand Prix as the Sprint format returns, live on Sky Sports F1 on July 25-27. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime.