It is a great time to be an English sports fan. George Russell wins the Austrian Grand Prix, the England men’s football team are in the Euro’s semi final and now seven time world champion Mercedes’s Lewis Hamilton wins his first race win in 945 days. Hamilton’s ninth win at his home grand prix.
Mercedes had gone 56 races without a win but now have won two in a row. There has been six individual winners in the first twelve race of the 2024 season. In 2023 there was only three winners for the entire season.
The last pip stop defined the British Grand Prix
After 38 laps of the race McLaren’s Lando Norris was in the lead, Hamilton in second and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third. All three were still in contention to win the race. All three drivers were on the intermediate due to the mid section of the race being contested in the rain. As the rain disappeared and the sun came out, the track dried the track the drivers came into the pits to put on slicks.
Both Hamilton and Verstappen came in on lap 39 with Hamilton going on the soft and Verstappen going on the hard tyre. Norris came into the pit the next lap. As Norris came into the pitlane his team said over the radio the medium would be able to defend Verstappen and the soft would cover Hamilton. Norris chose the soft.
Norris’s pit stop was slower than expected with Norris locking up contributing to it. He came out behind Hamilton and Hamilton would go on to win and historic ninth British Grand Prix.
Speaking after the race to the media, Hamilton spoke about the excitement of winning his first grand prix of the season.
“Today means so much. It is the most incredible honour to be standing on the top step of the podium at Silverstone. I think my heart is still racing” he said to F1.com
For Norris he was still over six seconds clear of Verstappen but with Verstappen on the hard tyre and Norris on the soft he was able to catch Norris and pass him with ease, finishing the race in second position. Norris finished the race in third. After the race Norris spoke with the F1 media about the race.
“At the same time I blame myself for not making the right decisions. I hate it, I hate ending up in this position and having excuses for not doing a good enough job” he said.
But Norris also spoke during his press conferences about the positives of his home grand prix.
“This is the place I would love everything to go perfectly and it just didn’t happen today. But it is still lovely to be on the podium at Silverstone. We will come stronger, next race and next year.”
Norris is in second place in the championship, 84 points behinds behind Verstappen.
It is clear that Verstappen is no longer a super power in F1.
For Verstappen he struggled for pace throughout the British Grand Prix. After 14 laps of the race he was in third behind the two Mercedes but within three laps he was passed by both McLaren’s.
The next 10 laps the two Mercedes and McLaren’s would fight in a exhilarating battle for the top 4 positions but Verstappen was unable to keep up and sat almost 10 seconds behind George Russell in fourth when he came in for his first pit stop on lap 27.
With George Russell having to retire, and McLaren’s strategic error on a pit stop with Oscar Piastri’s car, Verstappen moved up to third. As we spoke about earlier Norris picked the wrong type of tyre on his last pit stop and the Red Bull team making the right decisions on their pit stops Verstappen was able to finish the race in second.
In a press conference after the race Verstappen spoke about the difficulties he had throughout the race.
“It was difficult today to manage especially with the rain, but looking at pure performance we were too slow in the first stint and overall struggled with tyre degradation” he said to F1.com.
“Out of a tough situation we still finished second and extended our championship leads, and that of course is a very strong result for us. We’re halfway through the season now and we still have a bit of work to do still to finish the season where we want to be.”
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