LEWIS HAMILTON
AGE 36 | SILVERSTONE F1 STARTS 15 | SILVERSTONE WINS 7 | 2021 CHAMPIONSHIP POS 2ND (150 POINTS)
LEWIS HAMILTON
“WE’RE GIVING IT ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. I’M TRYING TO EXTRACT AS MUCH AS I CAN FROM THE CAR”
If Lewis Hamilton wins this Sunday’s British Grand Prix, he’ll extend his record of wins at the event to eight. But he’s not the most recent Formula 1 winner at Silverstone. That’s Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who triumphed in the 2020 repeat event – the 70th Anniversary GP – last August, and leads Hamilton in the standings ahead of the Mercedes driver’s home race for the first time since then Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel arrived one point clear in 2018. Verstappen’s 32-point advantage has come about because of Red Bull’s recent domination – a five-race winning streak that followed Hamilton’s Barcelona triumph. This one-team hegemony (sound familiar?) followed the opening phase of 2021 that produced a swinging title scrap, with Red Bull having the faster car, although only just, and Hamilton often able to make the difference when Mercedes exploited strategy advantages of generally having two cars taking on Verstappen.
But since F1’s 2021 street-circuit sojourn in late May and early June, Red Bull has edged away on one-lap pace and over longer stints, while Sergio Perez is more often a factor with which Mercedes must contend. It continues to regularly update the RB16B’S aerodynamics and is enjoying superb engine power from Honda – two things that have drawn Mercedes’ire while the W12 has not been upgraded so frequently.
“It’s a shame it’s not as close as it was at the beginning of the year,” Hamilton said after finishing fourth last time out in Austria, where Verstappen scored a fifth 2021 win.“but that’s the way it is, and we’ve still got a lot of races ahead of us. We just have to keep our heads down.”
There’s also another aspect to Hamilton’s deficit that lies closer to home – his own driving performances this year. They’ve been rather more inconsistent than F1 has become used to witnessing in his years as the championship’s undisputed star. That’s not to say he’s driven badly this year, very far from it, it’s just that his tremendous Imola charge followed an uncharacteristic error in slippery conditions, which cost him a lap he was very fortunate to get back. Then there was the second start in Baku, where his“finger problem”, per Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, accidentally sent his brake bias forwards, and left him heading right into a left-hander and missing the chance to capitalise on Verstappen’s dramatic tyre blowout-induced retirement.
It’s far too early to say there’s a trend of errors in Hamilton’s 2021 campaign, but they do stand out. So too do his qualifying defeats to team-mate Valtteri Bottas at Portugal, Monaco and in the Styrian event. In the Principality he was the one really struggling with Mercedes’tyrewarm-up issues for a change. But then there have also been races where Hamilton has been unfortunate to ship points. Last time out in Austria, he’d finally seen off Lando Norris, whose pace for Mclaren thwarted any hope of the world champion catching Verstappen, before a kerb strike – not caused by “a driving mistake”, again according to Wolff – meant he lost 30-40 downforce points with damage to the winglets on his leftrear uprights. Norris’s pace that day meant Mercedes could not manage Hamilton’s issue – which left him fighting with oversteer – while running far adrift of Verstappen and he had to let Bottas through to preserve second. It of course remains to be seen if sacrificing any chance of Hamilton hanging onto third for the sake of its second driver taking second in the Austrian GP will be costly in the final reckoning…
And then there was France, where Hamilton capitalised on Verstappen’s first-corner slip off the road (the Dutchman has also made position-costing mistakes, in Bahrain and Portugal, and nearly spun off at the safety car restart at Imola). Then Mercedes’misjudgement of the undercut cost him at his pitstop and Red Bull subsequently used Perez’s performance upturn to go aggressive on strategy and put Verstappen on the winning two-stop run that Hamilton had demonstrated so perfectly in Spain – his most-recent victory.
“Of course, [I’m] praying for a different scenario in the next race, but you look at their car, it’s just on rails,”hamilton said at the Red Bull Ring. “We’re giving it absolutely everything. I’ve been to the factory, trying to extract as much as I can from the car. But our car just didn’t go well [in Austria] for some reason. I really hope that it does at these next ones.”
Mercedes is bringing its final aerodynamic update package of the season to Silverstone, and has also spoken of eking out a little more performance from its engine. It also has a tremendous record at the circuit. Without Kimi Raikkonen punting Hamilton around at the start in 2018, it would likely have had an unbroken victory run from the 2013 British GP right up until Verstappen’s 70th Anniversary GP triumph, which had plenty to do with Mercedes’downforce-laden W11 destroying its tyres (although Red Bull and Verstappen were excellent on the day).
But Hamilton knows the power of home support. He loves the Silverstone layout, where Mercedes is hoping that the high-speed turns will help it get back on terms with Red Bull in front of the returning fullcapacity crowd.“[i’d say] really just everyone stay safe,”hamilton says of those fans when Autosport asks if he has a message for them.“continue to wear your mask, please. And I hope the weather’s good for us. The Silverstone GP is always incredibly special. So, [with the fans back] it’ll definitely be a lot more enjoyable this year compared to last year.”