🏁👀 My secret Silverstone visit ahead of the British Grand Prix | Pit Lane Chronicle
Lando Norris strikes back, inside Cadillac's F1 preparations and what Stefano Domenicali really thinks of Silverstone.
First of all, more than 500 of you now subscribe to this newsletter after less than two months of its existence, which is a number that just blows me away. Thanks so much for being here – hopefully you’re enjoying these weekly blasts and, if you have any feedback or suggestions, please do get in touch!
Onto business, and the embargo has lifted so I’m free to tell you some of what I saw when I was invited down to Silverstone last week to take a tour of the new Cadillac F1 team’s makeshift factory, and to speak with team principal Graeme Lowdon. You’ll find that section below, amid the best of the fall-out from an entertaining Austrian Grand Prix won by Lando Norris after another eye-catching duel with McLaren team-mate and title rival Oscar Piastri. And, like always, there are specific sections for each of the midfield teams to make sure they get the coverage they deserve.
This newsletter looks beyond just the stories about McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull to shine a light on the other six teams making up the rest of the grid and help make F1 the vibrant sport it is today – and there are dedicated sections for each below. So read on for some of the news covering the homepages of the top F1 sites, but also plenty more content which probably didn’t.
QUICK QUIZ QUESTION – McLaren are already 207 points clear at the top of the constructors’ championship after 11 rounds of a 24-race season. What is the largest points margin by which a team has ever won the title, and in which year did they do it? The answer is at the bottom of this newsletter.
The Formation Lap
The main headlines and stories from the Formula 1 paddock this week:
🏆 Lando Norris had every right to be pretty happy with his victory in Austria on Sunday, after some intense pressure from team-mate and title rival Oscar Piastri. He said after the race that it had been a “perfect” showing – Formula1.com
🇬🇧 Up next for Lando is, of course, his home race which he said after the Austria race is “the place I want to win more than anywhere else” – Kieran Jackson, The Independent
↳ He’s obviously going to have a lot of people rooting for him at Silverstone and Norris has already asked his fans not to show any hostility towards Piastri as part of that – Giles Richards, The Guardian
🟠 This is a good look at McLaren’s dominance so far this year and whether there is any hope that another team might be able to give them a challenge in the constructors’ battle this year – Filip Cleeren, Autosport
🔴 The McLarens were joined on the podium by Charles Leclerc as Ferrari’s upgrades had a good initial impact, with Lewis Hamilton fourth, as the Scuderia leapfrogged Mercedes into second place in the championship. Leclerc said he got the most out of the upgrades because of a “big” mid-weekend setup change that paid off – Taylor Powling, Motorsport Week
↳ It wasn’t all smooth sailing with Leclerc having to lift and coast and Hamilton nursing a problem with his brakes. But the seven-time champion was still happy having benefitted from moving his own setup closer to Leclerc’s than usual which helped make the car more driveable – Alex Harrington, Motorsport.com
🤦♂️ Red Bull usually enjoy competing at the Red Bull Ring, for obvious reasons, but this one was an absolute disaster for them. Qualifying wasn’t great but things truly went to pot when Max Verstappen was punted off by Kimi Antonelli on the first lap. But the Dutchman was quick to accept the rookie’s immediate apology – Andrew Benson, BBC Sport
↳ Antonelli also retired as a result of the crash and so what would have been a time penalty became a three-place grid drop that he must serve at Silverstone this weekend – Formula1.com
👀 If you’re a fan of conspiracy theories, this is a particularly enjoyable one hypothesising that Antonelli crashing into Verstappen could end up being the catalyst for George Russell losing his seat to the Dutchman – Joe Holding, Top Gear
🗣 We had another update in the saga of Verstappen’s future at the weekend, with Russell hinting that Mercedes remain in contact with the four-time champion and then Toto Wolff confirming that, although he made it clear the chances of signing him for 2026 are slim – Sky Sports
↳ Wolff later specified that he plans to have his driver line-up for next year set in stone by the middle of the summer break – Tobia Elia, GPBlog
🇮🇪 Rewind back to Friday and Irish F2 driver Alex Dunne turned a lot of heads with a very strong performance in his very first FP1 appearance, driving Norris’ McLaren, and said afterwards it was the best day of his life – Andy Gray, BBC Sport
🏎 Attended a small media roundtable with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali earlier today who said a record attendance of 500,000 fans is expected at this weekend's British GP. He also said Silverstone has all the right attributes to remain on the F1 calendar "forever". – Read the story
A couple of other interesting lines from Domenicali:
"No" chance of the UK getting a second race alongside Silverstone.
He suggested an update will be given on Thailand's bid to host an F1 race "before November".
He confirmed Barcelona will be one of the tracks vying for a rotational slot after 2026.
Last month’s secret Silverstone trip
I’ve already made the three-hour drive from my home in Merseyside down to Silverstone in the past couple of weeks. Last Tuesday, I was among a few other journalists invited by new team Cadillac to take a tour of their UK facilities which are quite literally across the road from the British Grand Prix circuit. They currently occupy six buildings in an industrial park there, having bought one outright and rented the others. Their main headquarters in Fishers, Indiana, is still under construction.
It’s all rather rudimentary, as you’d expect for what is essentially a start-up business. Yes, they have the backing of one of the biggest carmakers on the planet in General Motors, but this is a Formula 1 team being built from scratch. Cadillac were given final approval to join the grid on March 7 this year and must be ready for first practice for the 2026 Australian Grand Prix on March 6. A third of the time they had to get ready after being given the green light has already elapsed.
Hundreds of staff have been hired, while work on their first F1 car began long before they even knew they would be allowed to form the grid’s 11th team. I was shown their first prototype chassis, but not allowed to take any photographs of it. The FIA will put the final car through all its homologation and crash testing processes, but Cadillac have simulated their own using the same criteria and it passed both front impact and roll hoop tests. They have also secured their three-star environmental accreditation from the FIA, which is a requirement for all teams in the F1 World Championship.
Team principal Graeme Lowdon told us that they are currently on target to hit all the deadlines they need in order to get going next year. Two-thirds of the 600-650 staff they will need to go racing have been recruited, many being experienced hands poached from existing teams which has ruffled a few feathers on the grid. Lowdon said: “Some people say, ‘You're nicking our staff’, as if it's a possession. That's not what teams are for. We lay our stall out. We want people who want to work here. We want people who want to be in the team and we want really good people as well. But we don't steal somebody else's possessions. If we went and nicked their wind tunnel or something, then there's a valid concern.”
Even though every current F1 team is based in either the UK or Italy, Cadillac remain convinced they can make being headquartered in the USA work for them. Lowdon said they would be recruiting some staff in America where “the calibre of engineering is super high”, some of whom would be temporarily brought over to the Silverstone facilities for training.
Drivers are the most exciting topic for many fans, but there remains little to report on that front. Because they have so much going on, the decision over their 2026 line-up has yet to be made. “We know who's in the market, we've got a good idea of what we need, but we're still some way off reaching that stage,” Lowdon said. He did hint, though, that “experienced” drivers would be preferred. My understanding is both Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have held discussions with Cadillac and that the latter in particular is very keen on the project.
So still a lot of moving parts there, and there will be for several months more. The 2026 season starts next March but the car has to be ready, really, for the first five days of testing in Barcelona over the last week of January. Two more three-day slots will follow in Bahrain in February, while it’s understood Cadillac plan to put on a filming day for their car on February 9.
I’ll end this section with the Lowdon quote which stuck out to me most on the day: “We’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
Paddock Press
Here are the main stories around F1’s six midfield teams this week:
🔵 Alpine
🤔 Franco Colapinto has now reached the end of his initial five-race spell, but he is set to continue to drive for Alpine on a race-by-race basis for now, including at Silverstone this weekend – Scott Mitchell-Malm, The Race
↳ Colapinto finished 15th and well outside the points in Austria as his struggles continue. He also almost ran Oscar Piastri off the road when the McLaren was lapping him and said afterwards that he didn’t see the Aussie – Rachit Thukral, Crash
✈ The Argentine also this week spoke of how Lewis Hamilton saved him from an easyJet flight home after the Spanish Grand Prix a few weeks earlier with an impromptu offer to join him on his private plane! – DPA
🔃 He may have been flying high there, but the results haven’t been good enough for Colapinto and it has now emerged that Alpine are considering bringing in an experienced hand in Valtteri Bottas if things don’t improve swiftly – Jon Noble; Josh Suttill, The Race
🟢 Aston Martin
⚔ Fernando Alonso finished seventh in Austria to score more points and did so by holding off the F1 driver he manages, Gabriel Bortoleto, in an entertaining late duel and later spoke of how he tried to “confuse” the rookie – Samuel Coop; Aaron Deckers, RacingNews365
👏 Alonso pulled off an ambitious one-stop strategy on a day where most people visited the pit lane twice and the Spaniard was full of praise for his team for managing that situation well – Balazs Szabo, F1 Technical
😬 Lance Stroll was 14th in Austria, one lap down on the leaders, after he had said there was “some crap going on” which means he hasn’t felt able to perform since Monaco in May – Sam Cooper, PlanetF1
⚫ Haas
🏁 Esteban Ocon suffered a Q1 exit in Austria qualifying but nailed his comeback to score one point, while Oliver Bearman was just a little outside the top 10 – Formula1.com
👶 Haas’ next step on its journey to becoming a multi-faceted F1 team is to build and scale a driver academy for its future, team principal Ayao Komatsu confirmed this week – Ludo van Denderen, GPBlog
🇺🇸 The team confirmed this week that owner Gene Haas will be driving their 2023 car up the hill at Goodwood during the Festival of Speed later this month!
🗣 I’m sitting down with Komatsu at Silverstone this weekend to talk about 10 years of Haas in F1, and a little about Ollie Bearman’s development too. So keep an eye out for the results of that interview in future editions!
⚪ Racing Bulls
✅ Liam Lawson finished an impressive sixth in Austria, the best result of his F1 career to date, and he admitted afterwards that a one-stop strategy like the one Alonso behind him managed was the key to that success – Phillip van Osten, F1i
↳ But it almost never happened as Lawson came within a whisker of being taken out by Kimi Antonelli in that same incident which ended Max Verstappen’s race very early on – Jack Oliver Smith, Motorsport Week
⌛ Red Bull young driver boss Helmut Marko has admitted they are considering promoting impressive rookie Isack Hadjar, who finished 12th in Austria, to the top team and will consider their options over the summer break – Andrew Maitland, AutoRacing1
🇦🇺 Former Racing Bulls driver Daniel Ricciardo has poured cold water on any suggestion he may be looking for a way back into F1, insisting he is enjoying “life in the slow lane” right now – Simon Chapman, Speedcafe
🟢 Sauber
📈 It was another big weekend for Sauber who pulled off a double points finish, with Gabriel Bortoleto converting a fine qualifying performance into his first top-10 and Nico Hulkenberg driving from last on the grid to ninth. Jonathan Wheatley was, of course, over the moon and heaped a lot of praise onto Bortoleto in particular – Luke-John Buckle, GPBlog
🇧🇷 Bortoleto clearly took a lot of confidence from that result and said it was “just the beginning” – Mark Mann-Bryans, Motorsport.com
🤝 Sauber have struck a deal to borrow Alpine reserve Paul Aron to drive for them in FP1 at Silverstone this weekend – Keith Collantine, RaceFans
🏠 On Tuesday, Sauber announced the opening of their new UK satellite base, at Bicester Motion, to go along with their existing Audi base in Neuburg an der Donau and Sauber headquarters in Hinwil, Switzerland.
🔵 Williams
🔥 Safe to say the Austrian GP was certainly one to forget for Williams, especially for Carlos Sainz who qualified way down in 19th and then didn’t even start after failing to get going for the formation lap before his rear brakes caught fire in the pit lane, and that was that – Saajan Jogia, Newsweek
❌ Things only got worse on lap 16 of the race when Alex Albon pulled into the pits to retire his car because of a mechanical fault, having been running high up in the points. It was his third DNF in a row! – AlexAlbon.com
[Emoji] Sainz summed it up bluntly but effectively as he reflected on a “disastrous” weekend for Williams – Lydia Mee, Motorsport.com
Best of Substack
Here are some of the F1-related posts I enjoyed elsewhere on Substack this week:
🎬 Whatever you thought of the F1 movie, early box office results suggest it is going to perform well and this piece predicts it will bring a “second wave” of new fans to the sport – Olivia Hicks, Formula Flash
🤦♂️ It really was a weekend from hell for Red Bull in their own back yard and this piece shows how it went beyond just what happened in Sunday’s F1 race – Flowergothic’s Fractured Fables
📈 This first-person piece is a great look at how Williams are working to boost their brand off the track while also trying to revive their fortunes on it – Débora Wernke, The Paddock Journal
QUICK QUIZ QUESTION ANSWER – Red Bull's 451-point winning margin in 2023 was the largest in F1 history, but that record could be under threat if McLaren continue to dominate like they are this year!
The Chequered Flag
Thanks so much for reading this week’s edition of Pit Lane Chronicle. This newsletter is FREE for all to enjoy. Please do let me know what you think, with any tips, comments and suggestions always welcome!
✍ My name is Daniel Moxon and I’ve been an F1 fan since I was old enough to listen to my dad’s tales about Ayrton Senna and Damon Hill. I clearly caught the bug as I now work as the Daily Mirror’s Formula 1 Correspondent. I live in Merseyside, in the north west of England, with my fiancée Abby and our 16-month-old daughter Eve who has been making race car noises – “Vroom vroom!” – since she turned one.
Thank you for featuring my piece in Best of Substack! It means a lot to see my work alongside other amazing voices who are also shaping the way we talk about F1.
Writing about the fan experience — especially through the lens of Williams' current moment — has been such a joy, and I’m thrilled to know it resonated. Thanks again for the shoutout, and congrats on another great edition of Pit Lane Chronicle! ✨
Thanks for the mention, Daniel!