Key events7m agoPreambleThe drivers warming up now in front of a very strong crowd. The expectation is that there will be 570,000 people through the gates across the weekend.PreambleSo where, exactly, is Formula One, other than on the Northamptonshire-Buckinghamshire border at a converted second world war airfield? Really, who knows.At the top of the standings, George Russell’s challenge seemed to be forlorn after Monaco, when the racing gods conspired against him once more and he finished pointless while his Mercedes teammate, Kimi Antonelli, won again. Since then Russell has come second and first while the Italian has had a DNF and third, and now the gap in the standings is down from 68pts to a rather more manageable 40pts.In the buildup to last weekend in Austria we were expecting Ferrari to carry on the form they had shown with Lewis Hamilton’s win at Barcelona, only for Charles Leclerc drop from second to eighth, and Hamilton from third to fifth, once racing happened. The suggestion was that the altitude was the disruptive factor, but no one knew for sure how the upgrades would work elsewhere.We then spent a week hearing from drivers worried that Silverstone’s long straights were going to lead to slower speeds as the layout of fast corners meant electrical energy would not be harvested through braking elsewhere on the lap, and would be exhausted on the extended runs. Hamilton said: “I think this is going to be an unprecedented weekend in terms of the power deployment. All us drivers have been talking in the drivers’ chat [about] just how poor the power is going to be through this track. We run out of battery power. There’s only a few corners to charge the engine.”Lewis Hamilton salutes the crowd after taking sprint pole. Photograph: Robbie Hoad/Every Second Media/ShutterstockCome Friday’s qualifying for today’s sprint race, Hamilton took pole and promptly rowed back on his fears, saying: “Even if you heard me in the press conference, I was like: ‘The track is not going to be the same.’ That’s what we all thought, but the track is still phenomenal, the track still feels great. The engine drop-off is not anywhere near what we anticipated.”No driver has been more outspoken than Max Verstappen about the 2026 regulations, but even he had something approaching a smile last weekend after coming second at Red Bull’s home race. Still, in the week he said of Silverstone: “I love the track but I did a few laps on the simulator, I just started laughing. It felt like a different track to be honest. You barely have battery around the lap.” Yet he will start third and, if not exactly sunny, he has at least been mollified, even as rumours about his future swirl.Join me from 11.30 for the buildup to noon’s sprint race start, as we let events themselves try to make some sense of it all. In the meantime, here’s Giles Richards’s sprint qualifying report.