Max P5 after first day at Silverstone: 'Quite a bad day'

Published on 04 July 2025 by Misha van der Kroon

After finishing tenth in the first free practice session, Max Verstappen closed the second session in fifth place, showing signs of improvement. Lando Norris topped the timesheets for McLaren, ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in P2 and teammate Lewis Hamilton in P3. At the Silverstone Circuit, Oscar Piastri and Max completed the top five. Max’s teammate at Oracle Red Bull Racing, Yuki Tsunoda, finished the session in P15.

“For me personally, it was quite a bad day,” Max said after the second free practice session in England. “The balance was very bad, and it was difficult from corner to corner. The wind has a big impact, but that’s not an excuse, because everybody has to deal with it. Our car seems quite sensitive to it. In general, it was not really an easy day. We’re lacking performance, and we’re looking at a few things to try and improve that.”

When the lights go green for the second free practice session at Silverstone, Tsunoda and Nico Hülkenberg are back in their cars after rookies Arvid Lindblad and Paul Aron took over during FP1. Hülkenberg is the first to hit the track, trying to make up for lost time. The circuit is immediately busy, only Max and George Russell remain in the garage.

Five minutes in, Max joins the action with a set of medium tyres on his RB21. His first flying lap is good for P2, just a few hundredths behind Hamilton. The reigning World Champion reports understeer in the high-speed corners and asks his team to adjust the front wing. “Plus two clicks,” Max says over the radio as he returns to the pits.

Not long after, Max is back out for another push on the same set of mediums. During his second attempt, he finds time in the middle sector, but the first and final sectors are less convincing. “Did you see my tyres in the fast corners? The fronts just don’t respond,” he radios in, before being told to return to the pits.

Meanwhile, Tsunoda struggles to match Max’s pace and finds himself over a second behind, down in P17.

At the halfway point of the session, several drivers switch to soft tyres for qualifying simulations. Both Mercedes drivers move into P1 and P2, with Kimi Antonelli ahead of Russell. That doesn’t last long, as Leclerc soon takes over the top spot, followed by Piastri. Moments later, Norris makes a strong statement by going nearly four tenths clear of the field to secure P1. Max also attempts to close the gap on softs, but can only manage P8, eight tenths behind Norris.

With just over twenty minutes remaining, he improves slightly and moves up to P5, half a second off the benchmark.

As the session enters its final 15 minutes, most teams shift focus to long runs in preparation for Sunday’s Grand Prix. Max heads back out as well, this time on mediums, to simulate race pace in the RB21.

During the long runs, Verstappen’s race pace looks promising compared to the rest of the field. The question that remains is how much fuel each team is carrying.

With that, the first day of running at Silverstone comes to an end.

Contest British GP: win a by Max Verstappen signed Red Bull Racing 2025 cap!

Results second free practice Great Britain: