McLaren: Win will give Hamilton momentum

Hamilton, aiming to recover from two disappointing races in Canada and France, stormed to his first home victory on Sunday, finishing over a minute ahead of second-placed Nick Heidfeld and lapping everybody but the German and Honda's Rubens Barrichello.

The win moved Hamilton back into the championship lead as the season passed its halfway point in Britain.

Whitmarsh reckons the performance will be a boost for Hamilton.

"Very important," said Whitmarsh of the win. "I think Lewis has had a very difficult, challenging time, and to come out with such flying colours...

"I think you must believe now that he's got momentum, the team has got momentum, and that he can come through this ... we're going to go testing this week in Hockenheim, we're going to improve the car, we're going to fight back, that's for sure, and we'll see.

"No one can see how competitive we'll be in Hockenheim. I'll be disappointed if we're not, but I also recognise that we've got to keep pushing hard. For the team it was absolutely vital.

"By Lewis's standards, by our own standards, and by Heikki's, we've been a bit disappointed by what has happened in the previous races, but we've come out of it today, certainly in Lewis's case, feeling very strong about what happened."

Whitmarsh admitted Hamilton had been feeling under pressure following his run of disappointing results, and after teammate Heikki Kovalainen grabbed pole position for Sunday's race.

"Yes, he's been under pressure. He's been under the pressure he puts on himself, because he wants to win. He's been under pressure from his teammate - let's be frank, Heikki has really been pushing him. So he has had that pressure from within his own team, but in a positive way.

"What I think was remarkable was he had, by his own standards, a pretty poor qualifying session, he was lucky to still be on the second row, and he came out of that in such a strong frame of mind, believing that, OK, it didn't go right in qualifying but I've still got the ability in the race to win this thing.

"And the believed it. Witnessing that yesterday, you start to think, 'actually, this is going to be OK today'."

The McLaren boss revealed the team tried to slow Hamilton down during the final part of the Silverstone race, but claimed the Briton kept pushing in order not to lose concentration, despite the tricky conditions.

"He had tremendous grip. We were trying to slow him up for most of it, and he was driving within himself but he didn't want to slow up any more, otherwise he feared he'd lose concentration, lose temperature in the tyres, but he could have gone a lot quicker if he'd needed to.

"If you get into that zone that drivers can in these conditions, they can just be so far ahead of the rest of the field."