British Grand Prix Forecast

Andy Murray’s been knocked out of Wimbledon, the England Football team were long since knocked out the world cup, ok Chris Froome has a distinct possibility of doubling up his Tour de France win, but if you want almost guaranteed British success then look no further than the British Grand Prix.

I’m not just talking about the high probability that Lewis Hamilton will triumph or at least be fighting for victory, but his team Mercedes may be racing under the German flag, but as with seven other teams, they are based in Britain. Not enough is made of the success story that is British motorsport.

It’s a good time to highlight it as it is the 50^th Anniversary of Silverstone’s hosting of the British Grand Prix. Among the events going on will be demonstrations of old cars that have raced around this famous track which has changed so much over the years yet always remains familiar. Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jackie Stewart amongst others are all taking to the track in various cars over the weekend in celebration of a great venue.

One of the major people taking to the track is Susie Wolff for Williams. She will be driving in first practice on Friday morning as she becomes the first female to take part in an official Formula 1 session since Giovanna Amati in 1992. Wolff is the team’s test and development driver and took part in the young driver test at Silverstone last year as well as the test after the Spanish Grand Prix.

She lapped competitively and so it’ll be very interesting to see how she goes up against the regular drivers of at Williams and the rest of the grid. She has hopes to gain a race seat one day but at 31 maybe that time has already passed her? Then again Damon Hill didn’t make it to Formula 1 until he was 32 and he didn’t do too badly. There’s a lot more to be written about women in Formula 1 but that’s for another day.

Wolff may well have to contend with some pretty appalling conditions as rain is forecast for Friday. Saturday is little better while race day is clear and fine, although other weather services say there is a chance of rain then too. There are two DRS zones, one on the hanger straight and the other on the Wellington straight, separated by about half the track. Pirelli have brought the Hard and Medium compound. Medium should provide decent grip while the hard might last well but not give up much grip, depending on how well a car works the tyres and the temperature.

The British Grand Prix is almost the halfway point of the championship and after looking invincible in the early races it is only now that the dominant package of Formula 1 is beginning to show signs of vulnerability. Mercedes have suffered problems in the last two races, it says a lot about their advantage that they still got a 1-2 and a second place out of it. Nevertheless it’s still encouragement for their rivals to perhaps sneak an opportunity.

A lot of their problems seem to have come from overheating which has then affected the brakes, particularly on Hamilton’s car. But Silverstone isn’t a track to cause the brakes too much concern, so Mercedes may have a trouble free weekend, and if anyone needs that it’s Lewis Hamilton. He’s suffered a few problems over the last couple of races, some of which were his mistakes, but generally it’s been the car.

Hopefully he can have a clean weekend. I expect the Mercedes team to return to a front row lock out this weekend and have victory once more. Last year Lewis was much quicker than team mate Nico Rosberg and he’ll definitely want to be in that position again as he fights to close that 29 point gap in the championship. Hopefully for Lewis he won’t be suffering any tyre blow outs like 2013 which cost him the race leaving Rosberg to mop up the victory after Sebastian Vettel also retired. He can’t afford any more retirements and what better place to launch a comeback than his home Grand Prix.

I think Red Bull will replace Williams as Mercedes’ main challengers this weekend. The previous two races have suited Williams. They are extremely quick in a straight line thanks to their Mercedes power unit and slippery nature of their car; they can handle the slow corners but when it comes to the faster turns they don’t have enough down force to cope. Silverstone is full of medium and fast corners, so I expect Williams to fall back slightly although they’ll still be competitive, but maybe not race winning speed like they were in Austria.

Red Bull has a great car sadly let down by their Renault power unit. On a track like Silverstone they should be back to being the main challengers. Daniel Ricciardo has tasted victory and was clearly a little disappointed to then be fighting for eighth place at the very next race. This weekend should see him back up fighting for the podiums and if there is a sprinkling of rain you never know… He will definitely be the one to take advantage should Mercedes slip up again.

Vettel would like to get in the way of that, but at the moment he just doesn’t seem to have an answer for Ricciardo. Once Red Bull sort the car out to his liking then he should be back where he belongs, but other drivers might have compensated around the problems. It would be nice if he just had a clean weekend, for more than anyone apart from the Lotus drivers he has suffered with reliability. Vettel has gone well at Silverstone before so maybe he’ll get one over on Ricciardo but having said that this is where Ricciardo convinced Red Bull to hire him in the young driver test last year. His pace and consistency were very favourable when compared to Vettel.

Fernando Alonso isn’t looking forward to the race, last time they raced on the hard tyre in Spain he was lapped. I think Ferrari have given up on this year already which means Alonso is staring at a winless campaign for the first time since 2009. I hope his motivation continues to be high as his current performances continue to impress, but he should be fighting for wins. Let’s also see if Kimi Raikkonen can finally get to grips with this years cars.

Caterham have been sold to a Swiss consortium advised by former HRT boss Colin Kolles. We won’t see an immediate improvement but hopefully this group will inject some cash into the team and they can join Marussia as point scorers too.

Keep an eye out for Force India too especially as the rivalry between Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg begins to heat up. Nico in particular seems like he’s becoming frustrated with the performance of Perez over the last few races when he’s been outraced fairly comprehensively. Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat continues to be the rookie of the year. He may have retired in the last three races but when he’s still showing great qualifying pace to line up seventh in Austria, you know he’s still one to watch.

Lotus were getting better up until the similar tracks of Canada and Austria so let’s see if they return to a more competitive state too. McLaren have been promising much for a while now then not delivering. I don’t think Jenson Button will be challenging for much more than a few points but the crowd looks set to be turned pink in tribute to his late father penchant for wearing pink shirts.

Hamilton will certainly be challenging for more than a few points, it has to be this weekend when he starts bring the points gap down to Rosberg, the championship is still very open, but another result for Rosberg and Lewis could find it very hard to mount a comeback. So where better place to start a charge than at his home Grand Prix at Silverstone. 

all photo's taken from autosport.com