On a vintage British summer day Silverstone delivered a vintage Lewis Hamilton result.
The greats always excel in the wet, and Hamilton is statistically the greatest of them all. Piloting a Mercedes that looks more comfortable at the front than it has in years, he masterfully picked his way through mixed conditions to emerge victorious.
In doing so he snapped a remarkable 945-day, 56-race winless streak, having clocked up an unprecedented two winless campaigns on the way.
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For a driver who already commands so many of F1’s headline records, Hamilton was able to accumulate a couple more at his home race.
He’s the first driver to win nine grands prix at the same event, surpassing Michael Schumacher’s eight in France.
He’s the first driver to win a race after starting his 300th grand prix — this was his 344th — breaking the so-called 300-club curse that’s seen champions Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen, Schumacher and Jenson Button as well as Rubens Barrichello fail to add to their victory tallies after clocking up their triple centuries.
He’s broken the all-time record for time between his first and last career victories, with the weekend’s race coming 17 years and 27 days after his maiden win in Canada in his rookie 2007 season.
At 39 years, 6 months and a day old he’s also the oldest grand prix winner of the 21st century, eclipsing Räikkönen 2018 United States Grand Prix victory in 2018 at 39 years and four days old.
And though his remarkable streak of at least a victory per year has long been broken, he’s now the first driver in Formula 1 history to win races in 16 different seasons.
It’s been a long time coming — and it almost never came at all.
‘CANT STOP CRYING’: Teary Hamilton’s 945-day curse ends in fresh F1 shake-up
‘WOULD HAVE BEEN FASTER’: Norris cops brutal Hamilton reminder in awkward green room moment
Lewis tears up after Silverstone triumph | 02:15
HAMILTON OPENS UP ON QUIT THOUGHTS
The 2021 season remains Hamilton’s white whale, his title defeat setting up this entire final chapter of his career. Winning his eighth championship has become the increasingly explicit reason for him to continue racing, even as Mercedes has struggled badly under these regulations.
But it wasn’t until Sunday in Silverstone that we appreciated truly how heavily that controversial campaign has weighed on him and how closely he holds that defeat to his core.
His burst of tears after the race made all that clear in a moment of pressure release.
“My heart’s racing,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “I’ve had so many amazing times here in the past, but when I came across that line, something released in me that I guess I’ve been holding onto for a long time.
“It’s the most emotional end to a win I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always wondered why I never cry … but it hit me hard.”
Hamilton has periodically alluded to considering quitting the sport in the aftermath of 2021, but for the first time he admitted that his travails with Mercedes since the rule changes of 2022 had been equally dispiriting.
“I think after such a difficult 2021 I just tried to continue to come back, but obviously we as a team have had a really difficult time,” he continued.
“There were just so many thoughts, so many doubts in my mind along the way to the point of at times wanting to not continue.
“To arrive and to continue to get up and continue to try and finally succeed is honestly the greatest feeling I can remember having.
“I definitely know for sure that I couldn’t do what I do without the fans that I have,” he said. “Having grown up in Stevenage … I always thought my parents would be my only followers.
“The other is just that glimpse of hope, even if it’s the tiniest spec. I just try to not ignore that and just continue to focus on my inner peace day by day.
“Never give up. it’s so important. It’s the easiest thing to do but you should never do it.”
With Mercedes now so seemingly comfortably ensconced at the front of the field, there’ll be questions for Hamilton to answer — some certainly asked by himself — about his decision to quit the team for Ferrari next season, particularly given the Italian team’s mid-season struggles this year.
Perhaps without the move to Maranello he wouldn’t have been in the motivated position to perform this year. But on Sunday afternoon in Silverstone it was difficult to imagine Formula 1’s most successful driver racing in any other colours.
McLAREN, NORRIS BOTCH VICTORY CHANCES
Hamilton and Mercedes won the race through perfect execution, perfectly reading the conditions and nailing the timing of their pit stops.
There was a sense of inevitability that he would win the grand prix once Hamilton took the lead in the final stint.
McLaren, on the other hand, appeared to seize every opportunity it had to lose the race — and not for the first time.
Lando Norris was particularly aggrieved, having fought hard to take the lead from Hamilton in the first stint only to see it evaporate through a series of mistakes switching from wet-weather tyres back to slicks.
First he waited too late to make the change, with Verstappen and Hamilton having pitted a lap earlier.
Then he overshot his pit box, blowing out his stop time to 4.5 seconds. He rejoined around 2.5 seconds behind Hamilton.
Worse, though, was his choice of the soft tyre with 14 laps to go — an ambitious stint for the most delicate compound — that cost him second place
It was particularly galling given then team has purposefully saved a second set of mediums — the best compound to be on at the end of the race — exactly for this sort of situation.
“I think the lap too late is completely on me,” a very downcast Norris told Sky Sports. “That’s just driver feel and driver knowledge of when to box. Lewis did a better job than me on that side.
“Boxing to the soft — that’s a team call. That’s between the team and between me.
“I expected to come out ahead of the Mercedes. I didn’t. Even if I’d come out ahead, we should’ve have won the race, because we were too slow [on softs].”
This is far from the first time the McLaren-Norris combination has lost a shot at victory this season.
Poor strategy cost him in Canada. A bad start cost him in Spain. A crash cost him in Austria. Now a series of mistakes have cost him dearly at his home race.
These are no longer one-offs. This is a trend.
“I’m fed up of saying, ‘I should’ve done better and I should’ve done this and I could’ve done that’ and whatever,” he said.
“I should be doing it now. We should be winning now. I should be making better decisions than what I’m making. I’m just disappointed.
“It’s a win in Formula 1. I’m not going to settle for something less when I should’ve achieved it.
“Should we have won a race today? Yes. Did we? No. So I’m not going to be happy with another third place.
“I lost more points to Max, so I’m not going to be happy with that.”
PIASTRI RUES SECOND STRAIGHT SILVERSTONE SLIP
Norris might at least draw some solace in remembering just how far McLaren has come in the last 12 months.
It was exactly a year ago, at the 2023 British Grand Prix, that the size and effectiveness of the team’s massive upgrade became clear, setting it on its race-winning trajectory.
This time last year he and Oscar Piastri qualified second and third and finished second and fourth respectively, Piastri having been dudded by the timing of the safety car that dropped him off the podium.
This time the team arrived at Silverstone stronger. So did Piastri.
Yet the result for the Australian was the same.
Having been running in podium contention and even briefly having had a chance to win the race, Piastri was done over again, this time by a massive team strategy fumble, leaving him out an extra lap on slicks in the rain. It put him down almost a full pit stop to net leader Norris, effectively ending his race.
“That played out horribly, that extra lap. Norris was almost back on him by the end of that lap where Piastri was tiptoeing around,” Martin Brundle said, while David Croft added: “McLaren got it wrong with Piastri.”
And much like Norris is lamenting a growing list of missed chances, so too is Piastri counting ruing circumstances outside his control costing him big results.
“I think we need to review what we could’ve done better there, because clearly it wasn’t the right call in the end,” he told Sky Sports. “I think our pace was phenomenal.
“I feel like we’ve had to many weekends recently where we’ve come out of it thinking we should’ve had a much better result.
“I think we’ve got the hardest part nailed, to be honest — we’ve got a really quick car, and it’s consistently quick everywhere.
“We just need to give ourselves a better chance of using it. I think we’ve had the potential to win a lot of races recently. We just need to capitalise on it.”
McLaren boss Andrea Stella admitted that the team had dropped the ball but said the race would be treated as a learning experience on the team’s continued upward trajectory.
“We didn’t want to lose the time in the double shuffle, but in hindsight it would’ve been the right thing to do,” he told Sky Sports.
“For both Oscar not going one more lap and for Lando not going on soft but actually going on medium it should’ve been a call of the pit wall, so we take the responsibility for this.
“The pit wall has more information. It’s for us to make these calls. We will grow and learn, but we are also excited and encouraged we keep being competitive and fighting at the front.”
McLaren is still on course to overtake Red Bull Racing in the constructors standings, but missed chance like these put that at risk.
FERRARI CONFIRMS FORM SLUMP IN BRITISH ‘NIGHTMARE’
The Monaco Grand Prix was a long time ago. The team has had one podium since Monte Carlo but four non-scoring finishes between both drivers.
The British Grand Prix, billed as a “sanity check” by team boss Frédéric Vasseur ahead of the weekend, resulted in the team removing most of its recent upgrades and still generated answers that will have been deeply troubling for the Scuderia.
“One of the best races I’ve had in the last few years,” Carlos Sainz said after finishing fifth and 47 seconds off the lead “We were just not quick enough.
“We executed almost a perfect race in terms of execution and obviously we were not quick enough.”
Charles Leclerc, previously Verstappen’s closest title challenger, recorded his third non-scoring Sunday in the last four rounds.
He’d done well to rise from 11th to seventh in the opening stint, but Ferrari then bizarrely gambled that progress on a super ambitious early switch to intermediates that completely grenaded his race, putting him a lap down almost immediately and putting him out of points contention.
It felt similar to his inexplicable switch to slicks during the wet Canadian Grand Prix last month, albeit an engine problem had already ruined his race by then.
“Very frustrating,” Leclerc said, per Autosport. “Another weekend to forget, and it starts to be a lot.
“It’s a very hard [period]. I don’t really have the words to explain it, but it’s been four races that it’s been worse than a nightmare. I hope we can come back soon.”
After such a bright start to 2024, Ferrari has a power of work to do if it’s to turn its season around.
DOES F1 NEED ITS NEW RULE CHANGES?
Finally, consider the moment in which Formula 1 finds itself.
Six different drivers from four different teams have won races this season, including three different drivers from the last three grands prix and four from the last five.
The margin between Red Bull Racing and McLaren, the presumptive title challenger, has shrunk again this weekend, closing to a vulnerable 78 points.
With Mercedes genuinely on the pace in Silverstone and winning two consecutive races for the first time since 2021, we can safely say we now have three teams are in regular victory contention. Ferrari could yet make that four.
Yet in less than 18 months Formula 1 will revolutionise its rule book and almost certainly blow open the field once again.
Rule changes are integral to the story of Formula 1, but perhaps the sport will reflect on whether they need to be made so frequently when history strongly suggests that stable regulations lead to closer action.
At least we’ll get another season of this tight competition.