Once in a lifetime every person finds a moment when recovers from all the obstacles, backdowns and rumours suffered for an entire period.

Pierre Gasly’s first season in Red Bull so far could have been resumed in that way: being lapped by teammate in the same race when he battled for the only win of the team in 2019 with the old contender of karting, Charles Leclerc. Who wouldn’t lie down in front of such adversities? Who could struggle to find force when the team’s talent scout talks about “inacceptable” performance? Maybe everyone. But not Pierre.

It may hazard, but his season could get a turning point in this weekend, if the stakes will be confirmed. With only three races for demonstrating to be ‘honourable’ to the Red Bull flag, Gasly must give everything he has until the August break. A fifth on FP2 may be not sounding strong; but teammate had always seen the tail in both sessions. Nice beginning:

I’m happy because it was a really good day on our side and the best Friday of the season. We made some changes after Austria and we have a good plan on how I can improve things. There are still a few improvements I can make and my lap wasn’t perfect in FP2 so I can still extract a bit more, but overall I’m happy. It’s only Friday so we won’t get excited but we need to keep going in this direction. It will be important not to make any mistakes and perform tomorrow when it’s important, but the feeling I have today is a lot better. This is a high-speed track and with the wind today it made the conditions super tricky as the balance changes from one corner to another, but this is the same for everybody

For the first time the French man closes on top, thanks to the track evolution in the last seconds of action. Several aero-test for the teams in Silverstone, covered by some threatening clouds

On the other side, the “Holland’s lion” has suffered the blow: from winner in front of thousands of Orange tees to being smashed by lapped teammate does not sound as a good signal for the weekend. Can Max Verstappen catch again his way before qualifying and race? Despite half of the field drivers (standing to rumours), he won’t panic for the hunger of result before summer market will kick off: but being slammed from teammate isn’t an option contemplated for “Mad Max”:

From my side, today was not so good and I didn’t find a good balance with the car in FP1 or FP2. I was sliding around a lot in the wind and rear grip, so we have a bit of work to do. Even though I’m not fully comfortable yet we’re not that far away and the times are pretty close which is a positive. There is a lot more grip with the new tarmac which all drivers like. In general, the new surface is quite a good change but there are some pretty bumpy sections out there, especially going into Turn 6 and Turn 9. It’s not very easy on tyres here with the high energy corners so it will be interesting to see what choices everyone makes tomorrow and in the race. It’s promising that we are still quite close to Mercedes and Ferrari so there is still a lot of potential for the weekend

A reborn driver, the other one at the heart of the top teams’ future manoeuvres: what else? Well maybe none of these. Remember the Baku clash of 2018? Can You imagine its proposition for 2019? I don’t know, but I guess that Marko and Horner won’t see anything like that again…