BRITISH GRAND PRIX SPECIAL

THE one place where Lewis Hamilton’s restless soul has always found succour is ‘squished into the car, feeling every bump’ — his description of the Mercedes cockpit as he scorched around rain-speckled Silverstone yesterday.

The cheers of the partisans filled the chilled air as the Brit took pole by a more than half-a-second. The fans stood up and applauded behind the blue, red and white banners tied to railings and carrying the Brit’s number, 44, or slogans such as ‘Hammer time’ or simply ‘Lewis’.

He waved his gloved right hand in relief as well as gratitude as he completed his warm down lap.

The celebration marked not only a wonderful pole position, the 67th of his career, but a performance that brought respite after some of the most turbulent few days in a career not entirely unaccustomed to controversy.

Hamilton’s decision to skip the pre-British Grand Prix promotional event in London on Wednesday was a PR disaster. It caused him to be booed in Trafalgar Square. And he only received a pretty equal share of cheers when the crowd were asked who they wanted to win at Silverstone tomorrow: Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel, and this was in London, not Berlin.

The chances are that Hamilton, trailing Vettel by 20 points, can deliver that victory after dominating qualifying with his third pole in the last four of his home grands prix. He was as comfortable in the early drizzle as in the later drier conditions.

Vettel will start third, a place behind his Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, with rain expected. Mercedes’ second driver, Valtteri Bottas, will be ninth on the grid after taking a five-place penalty for a gearbox change.

Should Hamilton succeed in front of an estimated crowd of 140,000, it seems certain he will be warmly hoorayed, providing vital repairs to his sometimes brittle psyche.

The Stevenage-born star certainly made sure he did everything in his post-qualifying remarks to appeal to the watching masses. No courtesy was apparently too sugary.

He started with a big thank you, he noted they are amazing each year, he said he caught them out of the corner of his eye every lap. He cited Nigel Mansell’s hyperbole that the home fans gave him an extra second of speed.

There was a brief scare for Hamilton when Haas driver Romain Grosjean complained over the radio that his flying lap had been blocked by him. After a fairly brief investigation, the stewards waved away the complaint, saying that while the Frenchman ‘may potentially have been affected by the presence of Hamilton at Turn 15, he was not impeded.’

Grosjean was unimpressed, poring over the semantics. He said: ‘If losing 0.3 to 0.4sec in one corner is not being impeded I’m very surprised.

‘It opens room for a mess in qualifying. I know there is a world title battle going on at the front but we are in a position where we fight as hard as the boys at the front and I was impeded today.

‘Maybe if it was another driver there would have been a sanction.’

Back in the Mercedes motorhome, Toto Wolff, who seemed in strangely volcanic mood for a team principal whose man had just secured pole position, hit out at Grosjean.

‘There are some who moan all the time and just continue moaning,’ he said. ‘If Romain Grosjean comes out and starts asking for penalties for other drivers, you should look at his track record.

‘He should be happy he is driving in Formula One.’

While Hamilton focused on the positives, Wolff was trying to settle scores over what he perceived to be unfair criticism of his driver’s non-attendance in London.

Some of Wolff’s claims stretched credulity. Were there really only three people — literally three people — who booed on Wednesday night, as he insisted?

It was not the only flaw in Wolff’s splenetic attack. He claimed that he and Hamilton discussed ‘at the beginning of the week whether it was good to go to the event or not’. That appeared to go against earlier briefings from his PR man, Bradley Lord, who had insisted Hamilton’s decision had been conveyed to the organisers, Liberty Media, during last weekend’s Austrian GP.

Mercedes seem to have been in an awful tangle about this whole episode since Hamilton broke the news of his non- appearance via social media on Tuesday afternoon and took himself off for a holiday on the Greek island of Mykonos.

Wolff went on: ‘ Questioning whether a three-time world champion who has just broken Lewis Hamilton’s pole record ( sic: he meant Ayrton Senna’s) and is going to beat Michael Schumacher’s record understands how he should prepare himself is an insult.

‘I give him freedom to organise his days in a way he wants. If he feels that staying away from a Formula One environment, being with his friends, helps him to overcome what happened in the past and extract performance at Silverstone then so be it.

‘I am perfectly fine with it and always was. We were there in London with the car and it was a great event, something we should do in many cities. But within the team there was never an issue.’

This has not been a good week’s build up for Hamilton or his team. Censoring who asks questions at their press conference is not the answer. They should move on, just as Hamilton did inside his cockpit.