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Lewis Hamilton’s performance was a masterpiece of control, speed and courage. He was faster in the rain than his Mercedes team-mate George Russell, managed to pass him, kept his cool as the soft McLarens closed in and overtook him, took advantage of two strategic errors by the McLarens and finally held off Max Verstappen, who was driving a Red Bull on the more durable hard tyres, in the end.
But in truth, if McLaren had made all the right decisions, this would almost certainly have been a race where Team Papaya would have won first and second.
But Hamilton’s return from obscurity could not have come at a more opportune time. As Toto Wolff said, what a wonderful way to sign off their shared history at the British Grand Prix. Hamilton took his ninth home win at the age of 39, 16 years after his first.
The race was fantastic and lively with the classic weather intervention testing everyone’s courage both in the cockpit and on the pit wall. With bright sunshine and sudden rain, the race started on a dry track with a gloomy cloud in its path.
The wet stage from laps 17 to 21 was not enough for a playoff race, so it was a matter of surviving on the slicks and getting the compliance and grip from the big-winged McLarens. This was the stage where Hamilton passed pole-sitter and early leader Russell, who was then overtaken by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Further back, there were some moderate risks – notably the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc and the Red Bull of Sergio Perez – but that ended their hopes as the track remained relatively dry and they would soon have to make a corrective stop to return to slick tyres.
The Mercedes spun off the track onto the apron at the Abbey and when it rejoined, it was grouped from first-second to third-fourth! With Norris now ahead of Piastri. “When we spun off and the McLaren came in, I couldn’t believe it,” said Hamilton. “I couldn’t understand how they could generate so much heat in their tyres or maybe it was aerodynamics or something.”
Between laps 21 and 24, the track dried out, and the sun came out. But another dark cloud was on the way, a bigger one. In this dry phase, with everyone at the front still on their original medium tyres, Norris and Piastri (who had passed Max Verstappen to Stowe in the opening laps) maintained a small gap to the Mercedes, all of them pulling away from Verstappen’s Red Bull, which was opening its front-left tyre before the others. It was even briefly threatened by Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.
With the big clouds in, it was time to ditch the mediums and swap them for the mediums. But on which lap exactly should you stop? At the start, it was dry on parts of the track, but it was very wet from Chapel, through Stowe and Vale, and up to the pit straight. So it would be easy to burn the mediums if they were fitted too early. Or it would be easy to lose whole chunks of time by stopping in the pits too late on your worn slicks on a wet track.
In those moments of uncertainty, Red Bull, Verstappen and his engineer Gianpiero Lambiasi were the gold standard, as they have so often been before. They announced the result perfectly – on lap 26. Norris, Hamilton and Russell were in front on the next lap, with Mercedes overtaking Russell and losing him by about 8 seconds and one place to Verstappen.
Had Hamilton stopped on lap 26 and Russell on lap 27, Russell’s loss of time would have been minimal. But McLaren described it as worse than that and decided not to add Piastri to the track. His remaining off the track on the extra lap after Norris and Mercedes caused him to drop from second to sixth, behind Sainz (who stopped on the same lap as Verstappen).
Norris still led the race – ahead of Hamilton, Verstappen and Russell. The latter was forced to retire after a few laps due to a worryingly low water pressure, indicating an imminent power unit failure.
Seven laps after the break, with the worst of the rain over and the track starting to dry, Hamilton was able to pick up the pace ahead of Norris, and the gap of more than three seconds was quickly reduced, with the Mercedes in the red zone as the time came to make another decision on tyre choice. Which compound, on which lap?
And here McLaren made their second strategic mistake. It’s easy to say this in hindsight, but at the time Hamilton, and especially Verstappen, were much more direct and clear in their communication with Bono and GP respectively than Norris was with Will Joseph.
With 14 laps to go, Mercedes called on Hamilton to pass Norris. Verstappen (who was 6.5 seconds behind Hamilton) also came on. Hamilton was given the softs, Verstappen the hards. The mediums were the best tyre of the race – but neither was given new tyres. By contrast, McLaren had a set for both Norris and Piastri. Piastri pitted on the same lap as Hamilton and Verstappen and was given his tyres.
Norris’s indecision with Joseph caused him to crash out on another lap, and more uncertainty over tyre choice ensued. Did Lando want to beat Verstappen on the mediums? Or Hamilton on the softs? Norris replied: “Hamilton.” He then backtracked. But the softs were put on – and Norris was back in second after losing time in a pit stop when the Ferrari went out and then locked up when he entered a tight corner.
He had lost the lead and was now on the wrong tyres, with a set of good new intermediates still sitting in the garage.
This set up a tense closing stages as Hamilton pulled away from Norris while Verstappen used his hard tyres to relentlessly close them both down, and credited an early lap with a DRS-assisted overtake of Norris to Stewie.
Norris had lost grip on the soft tyres quickly but Hamilton managed to handle them perfectly. Verstappen kept pushing, the fastest car on track but only because of his superior tyres. He was closing in quickly, but not fast enough to deny Hamilton. It was his ninth British Grand Prix win, his first since 2021.
“Yes, I can’t stop crying,” he said. “Since 2021, I’ve been waking up every day trying to fight, train, focus on the task and work as hard as I can with this amazing team and this is my last race here with this team… There were definitely days between 2021 and here when I didn’t feel good enough or if I would get back to where I am today.”
Piastri finished fourth on the medium tyres, having made up the 10-second gap to Norris on the softs in the 12 laps that followed their stops. This seemed to suggest that with both cars on the correct tyres and without Piastri’s extra lap on the first stop (which he lost 18 seconds immediately and a further 4 seconds due to Sainz’s pace), McLaren could have finished one-two.
Norris took a lot of the blame, but it wasn’t just him. “I blame myself today for not making some good decisions,” he said. “I hate it. I hate ending up in this position and always finding excuses for not doing a good enough job.”
Team boss Andrea Stella was more sensible in his assessment. “We asked Lando because we thought it might be difficult to go to [medium] Under these conditions but in fairness it wasn’t too difficult as Verstappen on the hard compound was able to transition to the dry tyres without major problems.
“So I think we had to take responsibility to say that the medium tyre was the right tyre, and to make the right decision. I think when we asked Lando we doubted ourselves, and that’s what led us to go in that direction.”
Sainz gave the tough Ferrari almost what they deserved by finishing fifth, at least a long way ahead of Ferrari customer Haas, driven by Nico Hulkenberg, who out-qualified both Ferraris.
Hulkenberg was not far behind the Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso, while Williams driver Alex Albon denied Yuki Tsunoda ninth place with a few laps to go.
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