Two and a half years, 56 races, 945 days. Lewis Hamilton was missed, Formula 1 needed him too. The King of England is back: he hadn’t won since the penultimate Grand Prix of 2021, he would have won the last one too and that World Championship, it would have been the 8th of an inimitable career, if in Abu Dhabi the then race director Michael Masi hadn’t altered the final lap after the safety car. Then a very long tunnel. The Mercedes crisis, the successes of the others, the decision to marry Ferrari starting next year. Here he is again, Lewis. He won a wonderful race, made spectacular by the rain, overtaking George Russell in the first part – who started on pole and was then forced to retire due to hydraulic problems – and in the final, when they returned to slicks, Lando Norris, who had taken the lead on intermediates. Norris made a mistake entering the pits, stopping the car a little beyond the pit stop: this maneuver cost him a couple of seconds and the first position.
Mercedes in front again
And so Hamilton in tears can finally update his records. They make 104 victories, 9 of them at home: no one had ever won the same GP so many times, Lewis (8 victories also on the next circuit, Budapest) shared the record with Michael Schumacher, author of 8 wonders at Magny-Cours. And no one had ever won after the 300th GP: the seven-time world champion is at number 344. Max Verstappen, on hard tyres, tried to catch him up until the end, but had to settle for passing Norris, also penalised by the choice of fitting the soft tyres instead of the medium ones, on which Oscar Piastri was flying in the final laps. By the way: the choice not to do a double pit-stop on the same lap, when everyone fitted the intermediates, cost the Australian dearly, who lost 18” (instead of 4-5”) staying on the track an extra lap with the slicks on a wet track.
Leclerc and Perez lapped
And Ferrari? Charles Leclerc’s race was disastrous, good at recovering three positions at the start but penalized by the risk of fitting intermediates too early. His race ended with a lap, a fate he shared with Sergio Perez. Carlos Sainz did a little better, the fastest on slick tires when the track began to get damp. Waiting for better times, on the SF-24 without the updates that had debuted in Barcelona and momentarily rejected for the excessive “jumping” they generated in the fast corners, the Spaniard took home a fifth place. Objectively the maximum.
#Silverstone #Hamilton #triumphs #Verstappen #Sainz
