2026 British Grand Prix Recap
Woof. I feel like I am just now recovering from last weekend. While I was not at the Grand Prix, I was outside most of the weekend in awful, muggy, heat - and that appears to be repeating itself this week.
First off, finally, a LeClerc win! While there has been much debate the safety car situation and I'm sure the racing would have been intense - after watching Charles try to finish the Miami Grand Prix, I think I will just take the W and move on. Again, we also predicted 2 out of the 3 on the podium, but not place correct. Sainz is our sole correct prediction on finishing order.
Charles was the third worst failure of the model, but the first two worst failures DNF'd. Kimi is not the Merc driver that I wanted to have a reliability issue with but again, I have to stick with taking the W with Charles. According to some analysis, the Charles failure is likely due to over reliance on recent results tied to rain performance. It also highlighted some changes we are making around VSCs and incorporating sprint data, so we have some changes to make.
Much has been made of Max's weekend. I don't know how you come out of that weekend thinking anything other than he's extremely right to be pissed. To have a driver of his caliber and results for your team and to have nearly killed him twice and then to not honor his request to make changes to the car... if Max or Laurent is at Red Bull next year, I will be shocked.
All of those changes led to a lot of shake up in the rest of the model perhaps the most of any race. I think the biggest surprise is that Oscar didn't match or beat his prediction, and then you have the Cadillac drivers - in particular Perez. I'm happy to see them get around some non-Aston Martin drivers no matter the circumstances.
What are your biggest take aways from the British GP?