Sir Lewis Hamilton bagged his 14th Silverstone podium in the British Grand Prix, after capitalising on a safety car situation. After going off at turn 3 on the opening lap, Hamilton found himself briefly stuck behind Fernando Alonso, but after DRS became enabled he disposed of his former teammate. Going longer than his current teammate George Russell and both Ferraris, he was able to profit of the safety car that was brought out to recover the stricken Haas of Kevin Magnussen.
A cheap pitstop later he found himself on the last spot of the podium, chasing Lando Norris for second place. Unfortunately for Hamilton, he couldn’t fully utilise his tyre-advantage, but he was nevertheless happy with his third place.
“Well firstly, I didn’t do it, the crowd did it,” he said to David Coulthard post-race.
“Once again Silverstone put on an amazing show. We’ve got the greatest crowd here, so a big, big thank you to everyone for supporting. I felt the energy, I felt the support, which is the reason we got back up there.”
He didn’t forget to congratulate his old team McLaren, who seemed to have a sudden rise to the podium with Norris.
“I want to say a big congratulations to Lando and to McLaren, where is my family, where I first started.
“So to see them back up there looking so strong, I mean that thing was rapid through the high speed corners, I was: ‘Wow I can’t keep up.’ But we had a good little battle on the restart.”
The little battle between the Mercedes and the McLaren was fun, but eventually his fellow countryman managed to pull away on the hard tyres, and according to Hamilton, it was nearly impossible to actually catch him.
“Once he goes through turn 13 and 14, or 15, he’s gone. We had good performance in the low speed.
“We had a good little battle there, I just didn’t have the grunt on the straights, but I’m really happy.
“To start seventh and come third is a mega, mega job. A big thank you to my team, great pitstops, great work all weekend.”
Despite being stuck behind Alonso for a bit, the seven-time world champion saw enough promise in today’s performance.
“The start wasn’t so great for me, but the long run on the medium was really great. So O think this is a good positive for us as a team, to know that we’re not that far away.
“We just gotta keep on pushing and we can catch those guys up front.”
Hamilton’s final words were of course for his loyal fans, who let out a loud cheer when he grabbed the microphone.
“It continues to be an honour for me to race and represent all of you. We’re gonna continue to push. Thank you so much for the support and hope you had a great day!”
