F1 Paddock Notebook – British GP Saturday

- Valtteri Bottas snapped a two-month pole position drought by topping qualifying for the British Grand Prix on Saturday, edging out Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton by six-thousandths of a second. It marked Bottas’s first pole since the Spanish Grand Prix, and was the 10th of his F1 career. He now has more pole positions this year than any other driver (4).

- Bottas set his fastest time on his first Q3 lap, failing to improve with his second effort. Hamilton and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (0.079s down) both improved as they took the chequered flag, but could not stop the Finn from grabbing pole.

- It marked Hamilton’s first qualifying defeat at Silverstone since 2014, and prevented him from taking the record he shares with Ayrton Senna for the most home pole positions (6).

- Hamilton refused to say whether his mistake on his first Q3 lap at Brooklands had cost him pole: “It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day as you can’t go back. All you can do is look forward and Valtteri did the job, so congratulations to him.”

- Charles Leclerc was surprised Ferrari had managed to run Mercedes so close for pole on Saturday, having entered the weekend talking down the team’s chances. Leclerc said he felt P3 was all he had in the car, but said he had still been struggling a bit with the front-end issue that has blighted the team for much of the season so far. He remained uneasy about Ferrari’s chances entering the race, though, given its high tyre wear over the long runs on Friday.

- Leclerc and teammate Sebastian Vettel – six-tenths off the pace in P6 – will both start on the Soft compound tyre on Sunday. Leclerc had initially set the pace in Q2 on Mediums, but said a late switch to Softs to improve his time was always the plan. The Mercedes drivers on the front row will start on Mediums, as will the Red Bull pair of Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly in P4 and P5.

- Verstappen felt he too had a shot at pole on Saturday had it not been for a turbo lag issue with his Honda engine, which is set to be investigated ahead of the race. “It didn’t pick up the throttle like I wanted, so we definitely lost a bit of lap time with that,” Verstappen said. “But still to be that close to pole is good.”

- Under-pressure teammate Gasly matched his best qualifying result of the season so far by finishing fifth, saying it felt like his most complete weekend so far. However, he denied there had been a “reset” on his part as suggested by Christian Horner: “I don’t think I have changed my driving massively compared to last week. I think we put a lot more things together which seemed to work. We still need a few things, but on every aspect, we’ve made a step forward this weekend.”

- Daniel Ricciardo led the midfield for Renault in P7 after “a good turnaround” following struggles on Friday that left him surprised to jump McLaren. Lando Norris took P8 for McLaren, while a difficult session saw Carlos Sainz end up 13th and drop out in Q2.

- Tyre woes continued to complicate life for Haas as it failed to reach Q3, with Romain Grosjean leading its charge in P14. Grosjean outqualified teammate Kevin Magnussen (P16) despite reverting to his Australia setup, but found a massive difference in tyre performance between Q1 and Q2 that caused him to lap four-tenths of a second slower. Ironically, his Q1 time would have been good enough to get through to Q3!

- Sergio Perez and George Russell continued their 100 percent qualifying records in 2019 over their teammates, going 10-0 up over Lance Stroll and Robert Kubica respectively.

- Haas team boss Gunther Steiner remained coy when asked for updates on the Rich Energy case as the matter rumbles on, but stressed it was not damaging the team’s reputation or image. “How can you damage something if we don’t do anything wrong?” Steiner said. Netflix has been spending some time with Steiner and Haas this weekend in its filming for the second season of Drive To Survive.

- Luca Ghiotto claimed Feature Race victory for UNI-Virtuosi Racing in Formula 2 on Saturday, while Red Bull youngster Juri Vips won the opening Formula 3 race of the weekend.

- The Red Bull-designed Aston Martin Valkyrie completed its first public run on Saturday at Silverstone. The car will enter the FIA World Endurance Championship’s new hypercar-led top class from 2020-21.