Silverstone 50: British Grand Prix Preview

As Formula One descends on Silverstone for this weekend’s British Grand Prix, James Newbold looks at how the season has unfolded and what the expected 100,000-strong crowd should expect come raceday, as the circuit celebrates hosting its 50^th F1 race.

2014 has so far been defined by the intra-team rivalry between Mercedes team-mates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Exacerbated by the clear superiority of their equipment which has often relegated the rest of the field to a B class, tensions came to a head at Monaco where Hamilton, having first questioned Rosberg’s hunger, was denied pole by yellow flags caused – whether intentionally or not – by Rosberg, who thus retained the top spot and went on to take a lights-to-flag win, much to Hamilton’s disgust. That weekend proved a turning point, the end of a four-race winning streak which showed Rosberg was not going to let his best chance yet of scoring a first world title go lightly.

Rosberg rounds the final turn en-route to victory in Austria. (Credit: Mercedes AMG)

Rosberg has since built a 29 point lead over Hamilton, capitalising in part on the latter’s reliability issues – if not for two non-finishes, the standings could make for quite different reading – and a few small errors, not least a spin in qualifying in Austria from which he did well to recover to second in the race. In contrast to Hamilton’s season of ups and downs, Rosberg has been a model of consistency, never finishing below second despite having to nurse the car to the finish in Canada. A winner at Silverstone in torrential conditions en-route to the 2008 title, Hamilton simply cannot afford a repeat of last year when he fell victim to one of the many Pirelli tyre failures, allowing Rosberg through to win. Where better than in front of his adoring home support to swing the balance back in his favour?

Mercedes were challenged on merit for the first time all season in Austria as Felipe Massa and Valterri Bottas gave the team a surprise front-row lockout, the team’s since the 2003 German Grand Prix. The ever popular Grove-based team couldn’t buy a point during a woeful 2013 that saw them finish ninth in the constructors above only perennial backmarkers Marussia and Caterham, but an encouraging 2014 has seen a marked return to competitiveness, with Bottas’ third place at the Red Bull Ring putting them only two points behind fellow Mercedes customers Force India in the scrap for fourth. Massa and Sergio Perez came to blows in spectacular fashion on the final lap in Canada battling for the podium, and will surely be in the mix again this weekend.  

Sadly the same cannot be said unfortunately for Ferrari. The Scuderia had another tough start to the campaign and parted ways with team principal Stefano Domenicali after the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Marco Mattiacci taking over the reins. True, Fernando Alonso currently sits ahead of four-time defending champion Sebastian Vettel in the standings, but that tells more of Red Bull’s own problems than it signifies any genuine progress over the off-season. 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen has struggled badly on his return to Maranello and has failed to match Alonso, whose three fourths and a third in China are realistically the ceiling of what the troublesome F14-T can achieve. With eagerly awaited updates introduced in Canada failing to close the gap to Mercedes, there is a sense that focus is already shifting towards 2015. 

Ricciardo's first Grand Prix win has been the highlight in an
otherwise poor season for Red Bull. (Credit: Red Bull Racing)

As for Red Bull, they can take solace from being the only team to have beaten Mercedes this year – courtesy of Daniel Ricciardo’s breakthrough triumph in Canada – but their Renault power units have suffered from a frustrating lack of both power and reliability that, like Ferrari, cannot be remedied until the partial lifting of Formula One’s engine freeze come winter. Having steamrollered the opposition in the second half of 2013 with a record nine straight wins, Vettel has visited the rostrum just twice and been somewhat rattled by the arrival of affable Aussie Ricciardo, who has breathed new life into the garage previously occupied by a demotivated Mark Webber. Only the second driver ever (after Vettel) to be promoted from Toro Rosso to the Red Bull team, the popular Aussie has rewarded Helmut Marko’s faith in him with a string of consistently outstanding performances - outqualifying his illustrious team-mate 6 to 2 - that have drawn widespread praise across the paddock. Another podium contender this weekend, but likely nothing more than that.

Of the other British drivers, Jenson Buton’s wait for a home victory looks likely to continue with the McLaren again not at the races this season, while Marussia's Max Chilton will be hoping to keep his nose clean in the intense scrap with Caterham, who announced their change of ownership on the eve of the Grand Prix weekend.

Friday practise will also be notable for the debuts of Force India starlet Daniel Juncadella and Williams’ third driver Susie Wolff, who becomes the first female to drive on an F1 race weekend since Giovanna Amati’s disappointing stint in 1992.

This article originally appeared on Concrete. Click here for more sports coverage from UEA's student newspaper.