F1 Starting Grid 2020 British Grand Prix

Starting grid at Silverstone

F1 Race Event: British Grand Prix
Race Track: Silverstone

Start time:14:10 local | 14:10 GMT | 07:10 PT

Lewis Hamilton starts from pole for the fifth time on Silverstone. The Mercedes team showed they where the fastest team by far. The qualifying lap time of Hamilton is over 1 second faster than Max Verstappen who is best of the rest in the Red Bull.

Charles Leclerc did a very good job for Ferrari by being only 0.1s slower than Verstappen. A performance that nobody had expected after the first 3 races.

The starting grid was finalized one hour before the race and was identical to the provisional version.

F1 Starting Grid 2020 British GP

*Penalties:

• Daniil Kvyat, AlphaTauri car no. 27 is penalised 5 grid places for an unscheduled gearbox change.
• George Russell, Williams car no. 63 is penalized 5 grid places for failure to respect double yellow flags.

See the onboard footage of Hamilton's record breaking lap around Silverstone.

Pole No. 7️⃣ at Silverstone ✅
New track record ✅@LewisHamilton was a class apart in qualifying 👏#BritishGP 🇬🇧 @pirellisport pic.twitter.com/v79KGE9rzm

— Formula 1 (@F1) August 1, 2020

2020 British Race Strategy

The theoretically quickest strategy for the 52-lap British Grand Prix is a one-stopper, assuming that temperatures remain similar to today. The fastest way is to start on the soft tyre for 18 to 22 laps and then move onto the hard until the end.
Second-fastest is a two-stopper, also starting on the soft. After 16 to 18 laps switch to the soft again for another 16 to 18 lap stint, before going onto the medium until the end. The hard tyre can be used as an alternative to the medium: either for the middle or the final stint.

Third-quickest is a different one-stopper: starting on the medium for 21 to 24 laps, then hard to the end. It's not advisable to do a soft-medium one-stopper, as tyre wear then becomes too marginal.

2020 British Race Notes

• Strategy. Many of the drivers started Q2 on the medium tyre, with both Mercedes drivers, Max Verstappen (Red Bull), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) and Lance Stroll (Racing Point) setting their best times on this compound. As a result, they will start the race on the yellow tyre tomorrow.
• Temperatures. Today's temperatures were cooler than the extreme heat of yesterday, with track temperatures of around 40 degrees in qualifying. Tomorrow's conditions should be similar to today.
  Wind. The cars were affected by gusting winds throughout qualifying, which influenced aerodynamic grip.
• Speed. The track record was already broken by Valtteri Bottas in the early stages of qualifying, before being lowered again twice in Q3 by Hamilton. This year's pole was 1.2 seconds faster than the 2019 pole, on the same tyres.
• Close racing. Racing Point's Lance Stroll and Alpha Tauri's Pierre Gasly set exactly the same time in Q2 (albeit on different tyres), but only Stroll went through to Q3 as he set the time first.

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