3 July 2026 14:00 (UTC)
Spielberg differences, why it’s tough on power units, and dealing with the wind: Answering this weekend’s key questions
Welcome to The Briefing, where we’ll be answering the key on-track questions ahead of the British Grand Prix.
Each week, powered by Google Cloud, one of our trackside experts will join us to explain all of the weekend’s biggest talking points. This week, ahead of FP1, we spoke with Senior Racing Director, Randy Singh.
We’re swapping one of F1’s shortest tracks for one of its longest this weekend, but that isn’t the only difference between the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone. Silverstone is a much flatter circuit, with sweeping high-speed corners, that rewards strong aerodynamic performance.
With Randy’s help, we’ll walk you through the circuit’s key features and what to expect this weekend, and explain why it’s always tough on the power units.
It’s one of the longer circuits, only 51 laps in Sunday’s race. It’s very flat, very exposed to the wind, and wind direction has a huge impact when it comes to optimising balance, optimising the power unit and deployment, even things like skid wear, with the car hitting the ground more or less depending on whether it has a tailwind or headwind. We’re expecting wind from the West – the prevailing direction – which will be a tailwind through Abbey, but we really can’t be certain if it will stay there all weekend.
In terms of other characteristics, it’s high speed, with very low track warp and a smooth surface. All of which pushes us towards running a very stiff car. On the other hand, there are some harsh kerbs, particularly through Vale and Club. Something to learn about in FP1.
We talk about Silverstone’s high-speed corners, but there’s a reasonable amount of low-speed as well, and because you spend more time in a low-speed corner, it can often be more rewarding to put effort into those, rather than concentrating purely on high-speed performance.
There are reasonable overtaking opportunities at Silverstone, but we need to understand a little more about how energy deployment is going to perform, to see what impact that has on overtaking.
From simulations, we expect these cars to have enough downforce to do a lot of the lap flat-out, similar to last year. Certainly, between Woodcote and Chapel, we’re not expecting any lifting or any braking, so energy management is going to be… tricky.
We last had C1/C2/C3 in Japan, and the big difference between here and Suzuka is that it was quite cold in Japan. Last year here, we saw some shallow graining on the C3 compound, but most of the race was done in the wet with the Intermediate tyres fitted, so we didn’t learn very much about the tyres. We’re not expecting graining with this year’s tyres, and are more likely to see overheating. It’s not as hot as it was in Barcelona or Austria, but it will be hot, and we’d expect tyre temperatures – surface and carcass – to be high, and probably a dominant factor on Sunday – but also Saturday for the Sprint. We’ll know more after practice.
This year, of course, we have a Sprint, so the biggest decision is going to be around tyres. The next thing to consider is whether anyone will run a Soft tyre in the Sprint. Some cars did the last time we Sprinted here, in 2021 – but that was run under different regulations, and is a bit too far back to be objectively useful.
We have a few small things around the brake ducts and the floor. Obviously, we’ll be evaluating things across the practice session to make sure they are delivering what they are supposed to deliver.
