Norris and Hulkenberg scare away ghosts at Silverstone

There's no single style of winning in Formula 1. Not all victories and titles have to be achieved by force, as Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, or Fernando Alonso have done, to name the three world champions currently on the grid. If Oscar Piastri, still the championship leader, is crowned , he will be said to be the modern version of Kimi Raikkonen. The interesting thing will be to see how the title is interpreted if it is won by Lando Norris, about whom countless things have been said. Many of them good; others, not so much.

Normally, his downside always revolves around his handling of pressure. The mental aspect, which is increasingly relevant in the world of racing. Sometimes it's been Verstappen who has messed up his situation, leaving him sunk in misery and lying on the couch. On other occasions, it's been Piastri who landed a couple of direct hits that made him stumble and question himself again. It remains to be seen whether his magnificent run at Silverstone this Sunday will allow him to banish several of those ghosts. In a race that the rain turned into a kind of Horror Passage for the strategists, Norris did everything right, without exposing himself too much, and took advantage of all the slip-ups suffered by the others. The first of them was Piastri; whom the stewards removed with a fair ten-second penalty for erratically driving during one of the restarts (lap 21). The second was Verstappen. Or rather, Red Bull, which configured a car with minimal downforce that helped the Dutchman take an unlikely pole position , but left him in a lurch on Sunday. The Dutchman's hands-on approach enabled him to save face with a fifth-place finish that underlines just how good he is.

Following the two McLarens, who secured their fifth one-two of the season, Nico Hulkenberg's Sauber emerged, breaking a seemingly eternal drought and, 255 Grands Prix later, finding their way onto the podium. Aside from Norris's victory and Piastri's anger at the referees, the event will go down in history for Hulkenberg 's feat, who started last in one of the most discreet cars and, thanks to the technical guidance of the Hinwil (Switzerland) team, which will become Audi in 2026, found himself in a position to achieve something almost impossible. Fernando Alonso finished ninth and Carlos Sainz crossed the finish line 12th.

Norris 's victory carries tremendous symbolic significance. Not only because it's his second in a row—the first time he's achieved this in a single season—and his fourth of the season, but also because it's at home, in front of a crowd completely devoted to him, who a month later once again believe they can dream of winning the World Championship. The eight points separating the McLaren pairings suggest a high-voltage second half of the season, with days of glory for one and misery for the other. "It was incredible, very stressful. In those last two laps, I was completely blank. All I was thinking about was not screwing up and trying to enjoy the moment. It might not happen again, so I tried to hold on to as much as I could," summed up Norris, the 13th Briton to win on home soil, completely ecstatic. "I don't want to talk about what happened. Apparently, you can't brake behind the safety line these days, even though I did it five laps earlier," Piastri blurted out, looking incredibly angry and sporting a sour face the Australian had never seen before. "I honestly don't even know how I did it," Hulkenberg added eloquently.