'Six-car fight for win' in prospect at Silverstone

British Grand Prix

Venue: Silverstone Date: 6 July Race start: 15:00 BST on Sunday

Coverage: Live commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live; live text updates on BBC Sport website and app

McLaren's Lando Norris predicts that Sunday's British Grand Prix could be a "great race" with six cars in with a chance of victory.

Norris qualified third, with Red Bull's Max Verstappen and McLaren's Oscar Piastri on the front row, and Mercedes' George Russell and the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc behind.

Piastri, who leads Norris by 15 points in the world championship, said it "could well be a six-car fight for the win" between all those cars, and Russell, Norris and Verstappen all agreed.

The closeness of competition in qualifying already suggests that - just 0.23secs covered the top six qualifiers despite both Ferrari drivers making mistakes on their final laps.

But the way the teams have prepared their cars for the race adds extra potential for variability.

Verstappen grabbed pole with the final lap of qualifying after he and Red Bull decided to take some rear downforce off his car.

Partly that was to cure understeer - a lack of front grip - in his handling balance. It gives him an advantage on the straights but will make the car slower in the corners.

McLaren and Ferrari have gone for a different balance between cornering and straights from Red Bull - and from each other.

Verstappen said: "All the cars have quite different speed traces. We are very fast on the straights and slower in the corners.

"Ferrari is quick in the corners so the slowest on the straights, and McLaren is in the middle of all that.

"It depends on who can keep their tyres alive. This year that has been a bit of a struggle for us, but hopefully with what we did to the car that will help at least.

"For sure, I can see a proper battle. Even in the long runs, there were a lot of cars that were quick. Even in qualifying, it was all quite tight."

Norris said: "I'm looking forward to it because I think it can be a great race with Mercedes, Ferrari, Max and us. There is opportunity for everyone.

"It can be exciting because everyone is on quite different downforce levels and has their strengths and weaknesses in different places so it should be good to watch.

"The weather can play a part. It might rain. Red Bull are incredibly quick in the straight, which means to pass them will be pretty tough. But they paid the price by being a little slower in the high-speed corners. Its difficult to know, people are quick and slow in different places. We have to wait and see."

In such a tight qualifying battle, the grid order was defined by small details.

Piastri did not improve on his second lap after damaging his car - "significantly", McLaren said - at Stowe on his first lap.

And Ferrari, who had looked to be the pace-setters through practice and when they locked out first and second places in the second session, failed to deliver in the final session when both drivers made mistakes at the final chicane of Vale/Club. Leclerc was so frustrated he unleashed a torrent of unbroadcastable invective over the radio afterwards.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said: "Looking at the lap times that Ferrari have been able to pull off in every single session, Ferrari seem to be the strongest team. Probably they still are the strongest team.

"The gaps are very small. And Max also went out for the final lap in Q3 relatively a few minutes later or a minute later. And here there could be a slight variation of wind that can affect 0.1secs here and there."

Stella also said that Verstappen was able to get away with such a relatively small rear wing because the corners at Silverstone are so fast and there is so much time spent at full throttle or close to it.

"With the direction of the wind, the high speed was relatively easy, easy flat. So you could afford a smaller wing because otherwise you would have lost too much time in the very long run from the outside Turn Seven until Turn 15 because Copse is flat and Becketts is just a couple of lifts and then you are flat again."

Red Bull have been at their most competitive compared with McLaren at high-speed circuits such as Silverstone this year - Verstappen's wins have been at Suzuka and Imola.

Their biggest weakness has been that they are tougher on their tyres, but Stella said that he did not expect Verstappen's low downforce set-up necessarily to result in higher tyre wear on Sunday.

"When you have the tyre wear that we expect to have at this circuit and in these conditions," he said, "our belief is that there is not a great relationship between the downforce level and the tyre wear.

"Because you will be fast in the straights, which means actually you have to push, if anything, a little bit less in the corners.

"If you rely on lap time generated in the corners, then you do have to push the corners, you may stress your tyres even more. So it's not clear that the rear-wing solution that Red Bull adopted will necessarily cause a worse situation from a tyre point of view."

How will all this play out in the race between the top four teams? Will they all be in play? Can Hamilton grab a first podium of his Ferrari career? Or will it come down to Verstappen v McLaren in the end, as it so often has this year.

"I don't think we will see a big difference between Max, the two McLarens, the two Ferraris and potentially even George," Stella said.

"We'll have to see if the (Mercedes) lap in qualifying was a one-off because up until that point in Q3, it seemed like they were not as competitive as the others for the top positions of the grid."

Piastri said the race would be "exciting" and "fun".