2017 race 10, British Grand Prix 16 July. Comments thread

Kyvat again drove stupidly on lap one for the second consecutive Grand Prix. He was never going to realistically overtake Sainz on the outside Maggotts, as the track turned right it was always inventible that Kyvat was going to run out of room. It was almost like Silverstone was Kyvat’s first Grand Prix or something; the lack of anticipation was worrying.

It is puzzling as to why Red Bull continues to have such faith in Kyvat. They demoted him last year during the season to make way for Verstappen. Perhaps being demoting him back to Toro Rossso was supposed to motivate him. Kyvat hasn’t really stood out since returning to Toro Rosso, and now makes frequent errors and fails to show the most basic of race craft. The Red Bull machine is usually notoriously harsh; fail to perform at Toro Rosso or Red Bull and you’re out. Perhaps Helmet Marko can’t identify a suitable candidate to replace Kyvat, but the second chances that Kyvat gets are undeserving.

I thought Jean Eric Vergne was a much better driver than Kyvat was, yet he got shown the door pretty ruthlessly.

Talking of underperforming drivers, it would be harsh to say that Palmer is underperforming. He simply hasn’t had the track time to definitively illustrate where he is compared to Hulkenberg. However, I don’t think that Palmer is good enough for that seat. When the car has been working normally, he’s been blown away by Hulkenberg. Palmer did very well to reach F1, but given the youngsters coming up from Renault’s young-driver programme – I don’t see how Palmer can stay. I’m sure that Palmer will argue that the car hasn’t been reliable enough to show his potential, but the team can see the data for individual laptimes – and the raw pace simply isn’t there.

Vettel’s real pace was masked by running behind Verstappen; it wasn’t possible to see if Vettel could have caught up with Raikkonen. Kudos to Raikkonen, he didn’t lose any positions on the opening lap and kept Hamilton honest enough before the pitstop phase, but ultimately the Mercedes was a superior car – evidenced by Bottas’ ability to overtake cars despite being in the turbulent air. I thought Vettel was too tentative with Verstappen in turn four on the first lap. Vettel had overtaken Verstappen around the outside of turn three, but decided to stay behind Raikkonen and defend from Verstappen into turn four. The latter managed to pass Vettel on the outside of turn 4, when in reality Vettel was entitled to run Verstappen wide – as Verstappen did to Vettel in the Vale corner. Perhaps being the FIA’s naughty boy made Vettel think twice about anything too aggressive.

When you catch Verstappen unawares under braking, you’re doing something right. And was precisely what Vettel did on Verstappen into Stowe. Evidently, Verstappen thought he had Vettel covered; he placed the car in the middle of the road and thought that was enough to deter Vettel from slithering up the inside. It’s extremely difficult to get alongside Verstappen in wheel-to-wheel combat, with his interesting movement under braking. Unfortunately for Vettel, he was on the wrong side as Vale approached, and of course, Verstappen was never going to yield and let Vettel by. It’s his trademark stubbornness, but I suppose you can’t accuse him of being inconsistent.

As I said a few weeks ago, Mercedes have made significant gains mechanically and aerodynamically. They have a much better understanding of the tyres, have been introducing subtle but effective updates at each Grand Prix, and they’ve moved further ahead in an area where they were already advantageous – qualifying engine modes.

The tyre failures were interesting, and I think it might dampen the teams’ continual requests for lower tyre pressures – particularly at circuits with high loadings like Silverstone. I think the conservative minimum pressures have been contributing to the error-strewn Friday's we now see; the cars don't look particularly planted as the cars run for the first time.