The post-England Euros penalty study that won Hamilton the 2024 British GP

“Just leave me to it, mate.” Lewis Hamilton in command of a British Grand Prix for Mercedes at Silverstone. High-drama, massive stakes.

It was all so familiar and it can never happen in quite the same way again, as his quest to take the record victory tally at his home race into double figures will now be done in Ferrari red from 2025.

This was lap 41 of 52 last Sunday – Hamilton 2.7 seconds in front of Lando Norris. If he could keep any of his lead intact to the finish, a first Formula 1 win in nearly 1000 days was on. Hamilton had the chance to grab his 104th F1 victory thanks to five key moments, which swung things decisively in his favour.

1. Hamilton passes polesitter and early leader Russell

The weather that beat down on the Silverstone grid foreshadowed what was to come in the action ahead. After a dry start, the heavens opened – but you could just about get by without needing too much waterproofing. Not so in the second dousing, before this passed and strong summer sunshine returned.

During this final period, George Russell brought his Mercedes W15 to the grid’s head. He started from his impressive third F1 pole alongside Hamilton, as Mercedes enjoyed its first front-row lockout since the 2022 Brazilian GP. Behind sat recent heavyweights Norris and Max Verstappen.

When the lights went out, Russell easily maintained the lead from pole and the two Mercedes cars were generally unruffled out front – bar Norris’s Village slip meaning his nose swung close to Hamilton’s left rear as they squirted towards The Loop, with the pack massed behind.

Russell nailed the start from pole while Verstappen climbed up to third ahead of Norris

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Here, Verstappen went on the offensive – determinedly going all the way around Norris’s outside as the double-apex left-hander unwound and fed into Aintree. Now the attention turned back to the Mercedes car ahead – but Russell was already scampering to a 0.8s advantage by the first tour’s conclusion.

By lap eight, this gap had reached 1.6s, as Russell “had a really great pace and he was trying, obviously, to break the tow”, per Hamilton post-race. “So, I was trying to make sure that I stayed within 1.6s or two seconds,” he added of a time when he was struggling with understeer – lacking front wing angle to aid his balance in the conditions. “And then I could see the rain was coming.”

The two Mercedes drivers were circulating solidly within the 1m31s bracket – “really controlling the pace at the beginning”, according to team boss Toto Wolff. “And then it was very encouraging,” he continued. 

This referred to how Verstappen had slipped back to 4.8s adrift of Russell by the time lap 15 began – Hamilton having closed in on and then fallen back to 1.6s off the other W15. The world champion – his RB20’s floor replaced pre-race after he’d damaged the one he’d taken into qualifying with his Q1 Copse off – felt he “just didn't have the pace” and was “slowly dropping back when it mattered in the beginning”.

As the track finally started getting properly wet, Hamilton “knew that that was the moment to pounce” on Russell

Lots of factors feed into this. One was how, as Red Bull team boss Christian Horner noted, “it was all about the tyre working at a certain point in time, a certain condition – whether it was hot, cold”.

The early stages were 16.4C ambient, compared to nearly double that in Austria a week earlier. Horner felt that boosted the W15s as “the Mercedes has always been strong in the cooler conditions and George looked to have things pretty much in control [at this stage]”.

The W15s were lower on downforce overall compared to the McLarens and Red Bull cars – as could be seen on the top speed outputs in qualifying, where GPS trace data had them at 202mph for the Mercedes and Red Bulls at the end of the Hangar Straight (the Red Bull’s slippery overall design and DRS efficiency overcoming the added drag of a bigger rear wing) and 198mph for McLaren.

In theory, with reduced sliding thanks to the stability provided by the bigger wings in slower corners, this would pay the MCL38s and Verstappen’s RB20 back as the opening stint on the mediums all the leaders were running wore on.

Both Mercedes drivers were able to control the pace at the front, but the race turned on its head when the rain arrived

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

But F1 never got to see that play out, as the rain a chorus of race engineers had been telling the drivers to expect just past the one-quarter distance indeed really started coming down. There had been regular spots falling up to this point, but as the track finally started getting properly wet, Hamilton “knew that that was the moment to pounce” on Russell.

On lap 18, with the younger Briton’s lead having fallen by over a second to 0.8s on the previous tour, Hamilton blasted by with DRS into Stowe. The next time lap, the two Silver-and-black cars dramatically fell off the road at Abbey. Ready to make his own opportunistic move was Norris.

The race’s other home hero (with a hat tip to London-born Alex Albon too) had spent the race to this point generally lurking around 1s behind Verstappen. But on lap 14 he got that down to 0.6s and then the next time by, with DRS down the Hangar Straight, Norris got revenge of sorts for that Austria crash.

With Verstappen surprisingly offering no fight and sticking to the racing line as “the overspeed of the McLaren was so big that they could have gone either side”, per Horner, Norris switched to the inside and powered by as Stowe approached.

Two laps later, Oscar Piastri, who had lingered in DRS range behind his team-mate for much of the early chase behind Verstappen, made a thrilling dive on the Dutchman at Stowe to move up to fourth.

But Norris would only spend four laps in third place. His speed compared to the Mercedes cars was scintillating as the pace briefly fell to 10s slower than the opening phase as the rain intensified.

On lap 19, as the Mercedes cars skidded back onto the track from the run-off behind Farm, Norris was able to nip inside Russell at The Loop. His unsafe rejoining gripe didn’t matter, as on the next lap he shot by to take the lead at Abbey. Piastri, chasing close behind, then sensationally got Russell around The Loop’s outside and Hamilton too with a determined DRS-less run to Stowe. This was after the Mercedes had slithered through Becketts, while ahead Norris had been forced to cut Maggotts.

The initial rain shower, not enough for the inters switch, handed advantage to McLaren as Norris now led Piastri

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Over the next two tours, Norris shot to a 2s lead Piastri would then whittle down as the rain eased off and the pace returned to the 1m31s bracket Russell had set during the initial phase. Piastri’s advantage here was around the same over Hamilton, and early leader Russell suddenly faced a 5s deficit to the front.

If that seemed surprising, Verstappen was a whopping 10.5s adrift at this stage on lap 24. The next phase helped decide the outcome overall.

2. McLaren’s first pitstop blunder removes Piastri’s threat

Wolff said “you could see the massive performance of the McLaren, they were simply in the sweet spot of the tyre” during all the wetter weather last Sunday. The bigger rear wings on the orange cars were certainly helping them in the slippery lower-speed turns. But for Piastri this was all about to become meaningless.

"We were a little greedy – we didn't want to accept that we would have lost time with the doublestack. I think Oscar would have been in a really strong position today" 
Andrea Stella

On lap 26, Verstappen decided now was the perfect time to take intermediates his team-mate Sergio Perez had been running – along with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu – for seven laps already way back in the pack. That was to prove costly when the rain finally returned, as they’d all burned through the tread on those first inters during the brief second dry phase.

Pirelli reckoned that at no point during the race was the track as wet as it was during the only consistent wet running practice the field had had last weekend, which came in FP3. But as the coming second rain spell was predicated to last longer, Verstappen had been carefully eyeing the crossover point to finally abandon the mediums as the drops indeed fell again.

The yellow-walled rubber offered greatest strategic flexibility for the leaders, which is why only Esteban Ocon and Zhou started on softs – decisions that backfired with pre-rain stops. But on lap 26, Verstappen indicated to Red Bull the time had arrived and it responded by calling him in.

The next time by, McLaren did so for Norris too, but opted to leave Piastri out for one more tour. This decision would prove disastrous for the Australian, especially as Mercedes moved to doublestack its cars behind Norris, Russell duly following Hamilton into the pits.

McLaren opted against doublestacking Norris and Piastri - a call that would ultimately hurt the Australian's race

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

The rain was so heavy now that Piastri’s in-lap was 8s slower than Norris’s. When he rejoined, he was 18.5s back from his leading team-mate in sixth.

“We were a little greedy – we didn't want to accept that we would have lost time with the doublestack,” McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said afterwards. “I think Oscar would have been in a really strong position today, like at least as strong as Lando, in terms of opportunities to win the race.”

By this stage, after 29 laps, Norris led Hamilton by 3.3s, with Verstappen third having undercut Russell. Key to this, per, Horner, was “a really good out-lap from Max – he was 5s quicker in the middle sector, which leapfrogged him ahead”.

Horner added: “But then the next three or four laps, we were nowhere and it was like that extra lap we had taken out of the tyre had really hurt us.”

Indeed, Verstappen, 8.1s behind Norris on lap 29, fell back to over 10s from the McLaren’s lead again and over seven seconds off Hamilton’s rear by the time Russell regretfully retired with a water system problem in his engine on lap 33. After that, Verstappen then shaved 2s back again as the next critical moment of the race approached.

3. McLaren’s second and third pitstop errors do for Norris

The rain easing off meant the lap times up front tumbled from the low 1m40s towards the mid 1m36s. Norris’s lead was down to 1.9s by the end of lap 37, having hovered around 3.5s in the slippery tours just past the first stops. The slicks crossover point had arrived and Kevin Magnussen, Daniel Ricciardo and Leclerc stopped for softs at the end of lap 37.

One lap on, with the high-energy demands of this layout somewhat incentivising an early slicks switch because the drivers can quickly build and retain tyre temperature here versus, say, Montreal and its long, tyre-cooling straights, Hamilton and Verstappen were back in the pits.

Verstappen opted for hards while Norris and Hamilton went softs for the final stint - McLaren's calls again undoing its potential

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Mercedes and Wolff had been guided by “the strategists saying, 'We believe the crossover is now'”, while Verstappen decided “f*** it” and did likewise, having been informed of Hamilton’s pit entry. Hamilton went to the softs in 2.9s and the Red Bull was fitted with hards in 2.2s.

They had each come into the race with one set of new hards and just the mediums they’d started on. With Wolff explaining “and we didn't believe the hard was the right tyre to go”, softs were all Mercedes could pick.

McLaren, meanwhile, had an extra set of new mediums available for Norris, something it had also decided to give to Piastri when he came in on the same lap as Hamilton and Verstappen. Piastri had made his way back past Carlos Sainz, who had impressively threatened Verstappen just ahead of the first pitstops on what was otherwise an awful weekend for Ferrari.

"If I can do the race again, I would pit at the same time as Hamilton and Verstappen"
Andrea Stella

On what was to be his second in-lap, Norris asked McLaren for information on the soft’s warm-up pace before he decided he had to pit come what may. Will Joseph offered him a “medium to cover people like Verstappen, or soft to cover people like Hamilton”. He rapidly decided “Hamilton”, but then almost immediately asked “do you think medium, I don’t mind?”. McLaren, having acknowledged his initial call, stuck with fitting the softs at Norris’s inevitable stop.

This took 5.4s to complete – in large part because Norris slid past his pitbox marks and forced his mechanics to readjust before they could get the inters off. This 1.5s swing to Hamilton meant Norris emerged behind the Mercedes.

“It was enough [to lose the lead],” Stella said of the slow stop. “If I can do the race again, I would pit at the same time as Hamilton and Verstappen.”

As the race’s final fifth kicked off, Hamilton led by 2.7s, with Verstappen 3.4s behind Norris. A grandstand finish was set, where this time the seven-time world champion’s efforts were really rewarded.

Hamilton took to the front after the final pitstops as McLaren's tardy service for Norris lost him the lead

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

4. Hamilton aces the final chase

Over the next eight laps, Hamilton’s gap to Norris fluctuated before rising to 3.1s, as the Mercedes driver was careful to bed his softs in with a gentler out-lap and first full flier. This would prove crucial as, just like in FP2, the softs were graining before degrading quite heavily – the former because the regular rain last weekend kept resetting the track to green and the latter stemming from the improved pace of the 2024 cars compared to their predecessors here.

Hamilton’s job to reach the finish – having asked Peter Bonnington to keep the updates to a minimum in the initial phase after the second stop – then changed.

Verstappen, being able to press on with the hards, had roared up to Norris’s rear. He was regularly gaining, “circa half a second a lap quicker in the middle sector”. This covers Copse, Maggotts and Becketts and is critical for tyre management driving – something Verstappen could eschew thanks to the more durable compound he was running, even as the track dried in the finally returned sunshine.

“We knew that the hard tyre was better for us,” said Horner. “We had a bit of info from Checo [starting on hards] from the beginning of the race that it seemed to have performed pretty well.

“What was baffling for us was that McLaren was the only team that had a new medium to them and they chose not to run it. It would’ve been an ideal tyre for those conditions.”

On lap 48, Verstappen used DRS to close right in on Norris down the Hangar Straight and, with the Briton making at least an attempt at resistance, stole confidently around the outside at Stowe to seal second.

Verstappen now had five laps to close a 3.3s gap to Hamilton. For the leader, all thoughts of tyre preservation had to be abandoned in the effort to stay ahead on the wearing softs.

“When Max started to close in, again [I was] just trying to give it absolutely everything,” Hamilton revealed when Autosport asked just how hard he was pushing to the finish. “Right on the edge, full attack – to try and keep the gap at three seconds.

Once Verstappen cleared Norris, he had five laps to catch Hamilton

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar

“And the tyres started to just drop off a little bit towards the end. So, I think it was the perfect distance of a stint. If we had another five laps I don't know if we would have held on to it but I'm grateful that we were able to.”

Indeed, Hamilton came home to win by 1.5s, with Norris 6.1s further back. But there was one more moment to consider as key to his famous first victory since the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP, which had actually happened on Saturday.

5. Hamilton’s pre-race choices prove critical

Hamilton had said after qualifying that he’d been “cautious with my set-up, more thinking to have a nice balance in the race rather than all for one particular lap”.

"I was here until about 10pm Saturday night. I came back and just really worked on my craft"
Lewis Hamilton

Autosport understands this referred to a choice made to raise the W15’s ride height slightly, which gives away some peak downforce. But, as Mercedes learned to its cost here in 2020’s 70th Anniversary GP, massive speed through the high-load, high-speed turns here chews the tyres – with the ground-effect cars going even quicker in these spots on skinnier wings overall than historically typical at Silverstone. 

But another Hamilton decision ultimately paid off even more handsomely.

“I was here until about 10pm Saturday night,” he explained of the time after he and Russell had joined thousands of spectators in watching England beat Switzerland on penalties in the quarter-finals of Euro 2024 on Silverstone’s gigantic fanzone main stage.

“I came back and just really worked on my craft. Worked on things that I needed to improve on from practice that weren't quite good enough. And I feel like I was able to implement that [in the final stint]. So, I think that time [Saturday] night really made the difference.”

Mercedes had tried the softs in FP2 last Friday – unlike Red Bull. Hamilton’s average had come in at 1m32.583s versus Russell’s 1m32.232s, with the former’s pace starting off faster before tailing off quite dramatically. Not so when it really mattered.

“That's the longest stint that I've not had a win – 945 days,” he finally, expressively concluded. “And the emotion that's accumulated over that time. So, this one feels [like it] could be one of the most special ones for me, I think, if not the most special.”

After watching England's penalty shootout triumph against Switzerland with fans, Hamilton crammed in a late-night study session

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images