What happened to McLaren's competition in the British Grand Prix?

The same McLaren which qualified only second and third for the British Grand Prix was on race day utterly dominant, occasionally lapping up to 2s faster than the rest of the field and with winner Lando Norris 37s ahead of the nearest non-McLaren at the flag.

What had happened to the competition? With Qualifying held in the dry and much of Sunday's race wet, it was clear that Red Bull and Ferrari had derived their Qualifying speed from a more extreme set up than McLaren.

As for Mercedes, its potential was disguised by a strategic gamble which did not work out and by tyre warm-up issues when running on slicks.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set an impressive pole position, with an extremely low-wing level which flew him down the straights but still allowed him to maintain good speed through the fast corners.

This proved disastrous on race day and, despite leading the first eight laps, his intermediate tyres quickly wore out and he was passed by the McLarens on laps 8 and 11.

Although he briefly got second place back at the pit stops, his spin after the Safety Car restart dropped him down to the midfield from where he could recover only to fifth.

“We trimmed out the car basically to Monza levels of downforce,” explained team boss Christian Horner. “That was based on the forecast that we had that there might be a 20% chance of rain on Sunday morning but thereafter dry conditions.

"None of the forecasts we saw said the rain was going to be that heavy and that late. It was clear very early on that Oscar (Piastri) had quite a pace advantage. As Max’s tyres started to overheat, as it was it was drying out, it rained on part of the track and not all of it, so we couldn’t change. McLaren’s advantage was particularly evident on that tyre.”

Ferrari used what Charles Leclerc described as "an extreme set up" to derive performance from its car in Qualifying, with a visibly super-low ride height helping generate plenty of downforce. A power unit glitch in Q3 restricted them to fifth and sixth fastest but they looked set for competitive races, having set the pace in the practices as well as Q1 and Q2.

But that was in the dry. In the wet, that set up made the car extremely difficult to drive, reluctant to turn in to the slow corners and which would snap unpredictably on the exits of the faster curves.

“I can't even express to you how hard it is,” said Lewis Hamilton after finishing an incident-filled fourth. “It's not a car that likes those conditions.”

Leclerc’s race was far worse as he gambled on fitting slicks after the Formation Lap. Several laps of VSC running when these tyres might have otherwise worked meant there was no advantage and by the time the VSC ended, the tyres were way below temperature and took too long to warm up, giving him many wild rides across the grass and gravel traps. He finished only 14th.

Despite struggling with overheating rear tyres on Saturday, George Russell qualified fourth but on race day made the same slicks gamble at the end of the Formation Lap as Leclerc. It proved every bit as disastrous, even though the pace was occasionally strong.

“It's always difficult making the right calls in conditions like today,” said Russell. “But sadly, we didn't manage to do that. We opted to go to the hard tyre after the formation lap and we then had a 25-minute window of dry weather, which should have enabled us to put them to good use but 15 minutes of that was under the VSC. Once we were running, we were seconds a lap quicker than others but just had too much time to make up.

“We were then a few laps too early pitting back to the slick tyre after the track had dried once again. We put on the hard tyre and suffered with warm-up issues.

"I spun and lost ground; we were fortunate to be able to fight back to P10 but overall, that was a bad day and not how I wanted my home race to go.”

It seems that McLaren were less competitive in Qualifying because of a more balanced set up than Red Bull and Ferrari but that set up allowed for their devastating race day pace.

“We didn't really think very much about the weather in the race,” said McLaren’s Andrea Stella. “We tried to select the wing that we thought was the fastest in the interest of Qualifying and in the interest of the race … but the rear wing is not the only reason why you perform.

"This is also to do with the way you use the tyres and the way you maintain the temperature symmetries. This is more to do with the way you use your tyres.”

With that, despite all the unpredictability dished out by the wet-dry Silverstone race, McLaren came away with their fifth 1-2 of the 2025 season.