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Silverstone always puts on a show for the British fans, and this time was no different. There was Alex Albon putting in a phenomenal effort for Williams on Friday, passing the baton to Lando Norris on Saturday who surged to the front for McLaren along with team mate Oscar Piastri. You can never count Lewis Hamilton out at his motorsport home, either. Oh, and Max Verstappen was in there somewhere. But did he pip the plucky Brits to the top rating?
Esteban Ocon (Hydraulic leak, Lap 10): 5/10
A solid sixth in first practice, Esteban Ocon slipped to 13th in FP2 and was even lower in final practice, although that was curtailed by the rain and so is probably not a true measure of the Alpine's capability. He had few troubles when it came to the first round of qualifying, but things got messy in Q2 when a misunderstanding with Lance Stroll saw him run wide, and then he got stuck behind Charles Leclerc leaving him struggling to set a representative time before the chequered flag. He started Sunday's race from 13th place on the same soft tyre gambit as George Russell, but immediately tangled with the similarly out-of-place Sergio Perez at the start. He came off best from that encounter and settled in to 12th place when suddenly a radio message from the team pit wall informed him they were going to have to retire the car due to the risk of catching fire as a result of a hydraulic leak. Whether he would have been able to achieve something if he had been able to continue is unclear; we think it's unlikely that he would have finished in the points even if he had completed 51 laps on Sunday. The simple truth is that their rivals have developed their packages faster and better than Alpine at this stage of the season.
Kevin Magnussen (Power unit, lap 32): 5.5/10
It's rather unfair to give Kevin Magnussen a rating, as both his qualifying and race sessions ended prematurely with mechanical failures. On Saturday he was forced to pull over when the car suddenly lost all power. And on Sunday there were more visible problems as the VF-23 started to belch smoke, and flames could be spotted licking the bodywork. Emergency exit required, for sure, and Magnussen didn't hang around long before leaving the vicinity. It was a shame, since having started from the back row of the grid Magnussen had managed to work his way ahead of the AlphaTauris and Alfa Romeo's Zhou Guanyu - although he had yet to make his first pit stop by the time the Haas started its own barbecue, which accounted for at least some of the gains. Perhaps the most positive aspect of the weekend was that Magnussen managed 32 laps on a single set of medium tyres which is mush better than we've seen from the Haas in recent outings where it's habitually made a banquet meal of chewing through all compounds.
