Credit: Daimler AG

Lewis Hamilton was comfortably quickest around the Silverstone track as he secured his fifth British GP pole position. He was half a second up on next best Kimi Räikkönen, who in turn had a couple of tenths on Sebastian Vettel. Valtteri Bottas was fourth, with a five place gearbox penalty to take.

Daniel Ricciardo, who also had a gearbox penalty hanging over him, stopped out on track during Q1, which ended his running and also brought out the red flags whilst his car was recovered. Drivers had started their runs on the intermediate tyre, but a hardy few switched to the dry compounds – Fernando Alonso did that, narrowly beat the chequered flag as he crossed the line and continued to set the fastest lap time of Q1. Of course that only got him into Q2, and he has heft penalties to take once again this weekend, but boy, the crowd loved to see him at the top of the timesheets.

Elsewhere, Kevin Magnussen dropped out in Q1, whilst Romain Grosjean dragged his Haas into the top ten. The Williams pair dropped out early, but Stoffel Vandoorne impressed with ninth place, and Nico Hülkenberg also shone with sixth.

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Credit: Pirelli S.p.A

Free Practice Friday at Silverstone was free of too much drama, and it was Valtteri Bottas who was fastest in both morning and afternoon sessions. Sebastian Vettel had other things on his mind, , as he and the Ferrari team tested out the new shield cockpit protection prototype. He only had the windshield style device on his car for a few minutes, however, before stopping the test early because it made him feel dizzy. He said: “I think it’s because of the curvature, you get quite a bit of distortion.”

Giovinazzi made his debut for Haas in place of Kevin Magnussen for the morning session only, leaving Grosjean to struggle with a power loss and generally carry on hating his car. Wehrlein had gearbox issues in the morning, whilst it was spins all round in the afternoon – Räikkönen, Ricciardo, Verstappen, Sainz, Palmer and more all at one point or another ended up facing in the wrong direction.

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Quite famously, last year, Lewis Hamilton caused a whole heap of trouble by quite blatantly using Snapchat during a dull press conference. Fast forward just ten or so months later, and the new bosses in charge of F1 have fully embraced the Snapchat revolution. I’m not sure there will be bunny ears as part of the new deal, but F1 has agreed a partnership with Snap Inc to share content on Snapchat of F1 events.

Frank Arthofer, who is the new Head of Digital and New Business for Formula 1, also revealed this is just the start of their plans to open up and expand the previously quite limited social media strategy. He said: “Right from the start, we have said we want to work with partners to bring fans closer to the amazing show that is Formula 1, an incredible mix of technology and individual talent – and Snap fits that bill. We need to continue to bring new fans to the sport – by reaching out to them on social media platforms with behind the scenes, fun and engaging content.”

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