Lando Norris stood tall at Silverstone but Oscar Piastri came back fighting at Spa

The 2025 British Grand Prix would be the last race in which Red Bull Racing was led by Christian Horner, his departure from the team announced three days later. The following Belgian Grand Prix thereby became the first post-Horner race in the team’s two-decade history. The McLaren steamroller continued regardless.

Although Max Verstappen danced his skinny-winged Red Bull to pole position at Silverstone, a race day much rainier than forecast left him a bit-part player, albeit with an early cameo which was influential in deciding the result – but not in his favour. The lead roles were taken by the two McLaren drivers, with Lando Norris winning his home grand prix for the first time, from disillusioned team-mate Oscar Piastri, the recipient of a penalty which cost him the race and which he felt was unjustified.

“Max Verstappen led away from Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris on a wet but drying track”

Before the first of two consecutive safety cars, Verstappen had led away from Piastri and Norris on a wet but drying track. But the skinny wing meant he was giving his intermediate tyres a tough time and by the eighth lap was understeering through the slow corners and oversteering on the exits of the fast ones. Piastri surged into the lead on the eighth lap and was followed through three laps later by Norris, as Verstappen had a major moment through Chapel.

“External complications arrived courtesy of that historical randomiser, the Silverstone rain”

As the rain returned, so everyone pitted for new inters. Norris was delayed by a sticking wheel nut, allowing Verstappen back into second. Piastri at this point simply disappeared up the road, 13sec ahead within five laps, as Norris struggled to find a way back ahead of the Red Bull now that it was on fresh tyres once more. Without any external complicating factors, Piastri looked well on his way to a dominant victory. But those external complications arrived courtesy of that historical randomiser, the Silverstone rain.

The first safety car was in response to a sudden downpour making the track dangerous for the low-riding plank-equipped cars. This wiped out Piastri’s big lead. The restart a few laps later caused a few close shaves, but the incident which caused the safety car to come straight back out was Isack Hadjar hitting the back of Kimi Antonelli into Copse, not seeing the Mercedes in the spray until too late.

After the confusion caused by another late-notice safety car restart, Piastri was awarded a 10sec penalty, to be taken at his next pitstop. Verstappen, on cold tyres, half-spun through Stowe, falling to the midfield and allowing Norris to sit in the wheel tracks of Piastri and once informed of the latter’s penalty he knew the win was essentially his. The two McLarens pulled away from the field at an impressive rate.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Mercedes’ George Russell had effectively neutralised their races by pitting for slicks at the end of the formation lap and they’d fallen towards the back by the time they pitted for inters as the fresh rain had arrived. This left a potential podium place open, a long way distant behind the McLarens.

So it was that Nico Hülkenberg secured the first podium of his F1 career after 239 races. He’d started his Sauber at the back but made a series of perfectly timed calls from the cockpit for the tyre changes, including the final change to slicks as the track dried a few laps from the end. This and his usual ease with changeable conditions earned him the result in a drive which included fending off a late challenge from Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari until the latter’s soft compound tyres faded.

“Christian Horner-era Red Bull signed off with a fifth place”

Once the track dried, Verstappen’s low-winged car became more competitive than in the rain and he was able to stage a recovery to fifth place, behind Hamilton.

For the record books, Horner-era Red Bull signed off with that fifth place. Post-Horner, Verstappen won the Spa sprint race to give Laurent Mekies a flying start as team boss. That race was won by a low-wing choice which enabled him to slipstream past polesitter Piastri into Les Combes on the first lap and to then have the straightline speed to remain in the lead. But the situation for race day was complicated by the forecast of rain. Accordingly, Verstappen was loaded up with a much bigger wing for GP qualifying and, using this, was only fourth-quickest behind the McLarens (Norris ahead of Piastri this time round) and Leclerc’s Ferrari.

After a delay of over an hour to let a rainstorm pass, and which led to a rolling start after a few laps behind the safety car, Piastri did to Norris what Verstappen had done to him the day before – slipstreaming by on the Kemmel Straight on the opening lap. He would retain the lead for the rest of the day, his eighth grand prix victory putting him 16 points clear of Norris at the head of the championship table.

Verstappen’s bigger wing meant he could find no way by the much smaller-winged Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. Quicker over a lap but slower at all the overtaking spots, Verstappen was powerless to do anything as the two McLarens pulled away from Leclerc at almost 1sec per lap. Just as at Silverstone, the McLaren advantage seemed to be at its greatest when everyone is on intermediate tyres.

Those inters soon began to degrade as the track steadily dried and on lap 11 Lewis Hamilton – starting his Ferrari from the pitlane so as to fit a bigger wing after a disastrous qualifying – was the first to go in for slicks. The McLaren pitwall watched his sector times very carefully and as it became clear the slicks were indeed faster, so Piastri was instructed to pit and was fitted with medium-compound tyres. Team-mate Norris, running a couple of seconds behind, was presented with a choice. He stayed out as the pitwall discussed the merits of fitting him with the hard C1 compound, and pitted the following lap for the harder tyre. With everyone else also pitting, the McLarens remained and continued to pull ever further away from the Leclerc-Verstappen struggle behind. They in turn steadily edged clear of George Russell’s Mercedes and Alex Albon’s Williams, both of which were fitted with small, low-drag rear wings.

Hamilton’s early stop, together with some great passes before then, had brought him onto Albon’s tail. But he found himself with the same conundrum as Verstappen: faster over the lap but unable to pass.

“Piastri, in front of Norris, knew his task was going to be to get the mediums to last the distance”

Norris was hoping that Piastri’s choice of the medium tyre would oblige him to make an extra pitstop. Piastri, who had around 9sec over Norris as the latter rejoined, knew his task was now going to be to get the mediums to last the distance while not allowing Norris to get too close before the end. He delivered a masterclass in doing exactly that, Norris still 3sec behind on the penultimate lap, at which point he finally accepted defeat in the race. As if to emphasise that he’d had pace in hand if needed, Piastri then delivered his fastest lap of the race, one from the end. His drive had been a great combination of attack and conserve.

Norris, his approach by definition a more aggressive one as he tried to overcome the deficit his later stop had imposed, made a few small errors as he pushed hard. Without those, might he have been close enough at the end to make a move? As ever, it’s one thing to catch, quite another to pass.

Leclerc and Albon were similarly masterful in using their straightline speed advantage to thwart Verstappen and Hamilton respectively for third and sixth, with Russell having a somewhat lonely run to fifth. With the field roughly split into low and high-wing settings, the relatively quick drying of the track (70% of the distance was run in the dry) ensured the low wing was more effective. This pattern was confirmed through the field as one-stoppers Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls), Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) and Pierre Gasly (Alpine) took eighth, ninth and 10th. They prevailed over their early dicing rivals who opted to two-stop: Nico Hülkenberg, Kimi Antonelli, Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz, all of whom had been quick in the wet phase.

Yuki Tsunoda and Oliver Bearman could both count themselves unlucky to finish out of the points, the former through being told to pit after he’d already passed the entry, the latter through a power unit issue when running ahead of Gasly.

“The narrative is all about the McLaren drivers’ contest now”

Tsunoda’s much-improved form (he qualified seventh, 0.45sec adrift of Verstappen without the car’s full upgrade) was the noticeable change in Red Bull’s performance in its first race under Mekies. The pair have worked together extensively at the junior team, of course, and have a great rapport. Tsunoda looked in a much better place than previously and is hoping to stage a career rescue in the remainder of the season. Verstappen, meanwhile, looks set to remain at the team for another season while understanding that his run of titles will likely come to an end this season.

The narrative is all about the McLaren drivers’ contest with each other now – and Spa represented a valuable response from Piastri to what had happened to him at Silverstone. “I knew lap one was my best chance,” he said, referring to the enhanced slipstream opportunity. “I lifted as little as dared through Eau Rouge. After that, it was mostly under control.