Verstappen takes pole at British GP

SILVERSTONE, England — Lando Norris nearly delighted the British Grand Prix crowd with pole position. There was just one problem: Max Verstappen.

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

The British crowd roared in celebration when Norris briefly took over the top spot late in the qualifying session, before Verstappen went yet faster to take it back by .241 seconds.

The result may be routine in Formula One — Red Bull has taken pole in nine out of 10 races — but it followed a session of tension, another failure for Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Pérez, and a moment of jeopardy for the Dutch driver himself.

Verstappen made contact with the pit wall and broke his front wing while leaving his garage during a red-flag stoppage in the first part of qualifying. “I just understeered and it just didn’t grip,” he told the team over the radio.

Red Bull replaced the wing and checked there was no other damage before Verstappen continued, but he was at the back of a line of cars and worked his way through the field to set up for a fast lap, going side-by-side with old rival Lewis Hamilton on the way.

Pérez qualified 16th, out of the top 10 for the fifth race in a row and the sixth time this season. He was moved up one place when 15th-placed Valtteri Bottas was disqualified because his car didn’t have enough fuel to provide a sample for analysis. The Alfa Romeo driver is set to start last.

Pérez lost out in a frantic end to the first part of qualifying as drivers had three minutes to set times on a drying and increasingly faster track after an earlier red flag for Kevin Magnussen’s Haas breaking down. Pérez set what at first seemed a competitive time but it was then surpassed by almost all of the other drivers before the first session was ended by Bottas stopping on the 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 had been watching TV screens around the circuit on his slow-down lap to see if Verstappen would beat his time, and he expected he’d need the champion to make a mistake if he was to hold on to first place.

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 massive step in the right direction,” said Piastri, who said the car felt like a “rocket ship” and 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 into the gravel early in qualifying to carry on. Alexander Albon was eighth for Williams, Fernando Alonso ninth for Aston Martin, and Pierre Gasly 10th for Alpine.

Security is tight for Sunday’s race as organizers and local police aim to deter a repeat of the protest last year which saw environmental activists gain access to the track.