Motor racing-Verstappen wins Silverstone Sprint for British GP pole

By Alan Baldwin

SILVERSTONE, England (Reuters) -Max Verstappen took pole position for the British Grand Prix and made Formula One history by winning the sport’s first sprint race on Saturday and extending his lead over Lewis Hamilton to 33 points.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton will compete alongside his Dutch rival in Sunday’s Grand Prix after finishing second for Mercedes in just over half an hour of qualifying over 17 laps.

The winner got three points, two of them for second and one for third place.

Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished third, ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, in a race aimed at adding more thrills to fans and possibly shaking up the grid during the three days of action on the track.

“We had a good start and a good fight with Lewis on the first lap and then we tried to go at our own pace. You could see that we were pushing each other a lot because the tires were blowing a lot at the end of the race, Said Verstappen.

“In the end, of course, I’m happy to have scored these three points – it sounds a bit strange to hear that you have taken pole position. But we’ll take it anyway. It should be a really exciting fight tomorrow.”

The first three were trucked around the circuit for a parade lap instead of celebrating after the podium as usual, without champagne, but the winner was adorned with an old-style laurel wreath.

Pole was the fourth in a row for Verstappen, who will chase his sixth win of the season and fourth in a row on Sunday.

It also finished a Mercedes run of nine straight poles at Silverstone.

GAME OVER

Hamilton had qualified on Friday with Verstappen at the top of the grid, but lost at the start and despite a brief wheel-to-wheel battle, the game was practically over by the end of the round.

Despite the flickering flames from the front left brakes, the Red Bull proved to be too fast for the Mercedes to catch up at the finish line, 1,430 seconds behind Hamilton.

The story goes on

“Tomorrow we will fight again, but they are just so strong. In the race he broke away,” said Hamilton the 2009 world champion and former McLaren team-mate Jenson Button, who conducted the interviews.

“There was nothing I could do to keep him up so we really have to try to get ahead somehow,” added the Briton, who has won his home race seven times, waving tens of thousands of cheers to fans on a hot afternoon.

The big victim of the new format was Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez, who spun over the gravel in seventh place on lap six.

He managed to bypass the barriers and continued before the team told him to withdraw.

“We thought there wasn’t much to win (in the sequel), so we decided to give up the car,” said the Mexican, whose team risks their lead shrinking to 44 points in the constructors’ championship.

The big winner at the start was Alpines Fernando Alonso, the two-time world champion shot from 11th to fifth place and finally finished seventh.

McLaren’s Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo finished fifth and sixth, respectively, and Sebastian Vettel eighth for Aston Martin from Silverstone.

Brit George Russell finished ninth for Williams but was later dropped three places after causing a collision with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who finished eleventh.

The penalty put Alpines Esteban Ocon in ninth place ahead of Sainz 10.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, Editing by Hugh Lawson / Pritha Sarkar / Ken Ferris)

source https://outdoorsportsnews.com/motor-racing-verstappen-wins-silverstone-sprint-for-british-gp-pole-2/