Lewis took his 13th podium at Silverstone to set a new record for the most podiums at a single event, while George suffered an early DNF.
A scarcely believable safety car restart passage saw Lewis, PER and LEC battling back and forth over several laps with exquisite car control to the delight of the sell-out Silverstone crowd. Lewis lost out to PER but took LEC’s third place to score his 185th podium.
Lewis Hamilton
I gave it everything today! I was chasing, trying to get those Ferraris, but congratulations to Carlos. They were just too quick today for us and in the end, I was in amongst that battle with Checo. Those guys were just too quick on the straights for me today, but I’m so, so grateful for all the hard work the team did to get an upgrade here, we’ve made a step closer to them, so we’ve got to keep pushing! We lost a little bit of time in the pit stop, and then I was chasing, and chasing, and chasing, but the pace was great on both sets of tyres and then at the end there it was just a little bit difficult. Once you get a Red Bull behind, they’re so fast on the straights. We’ve got some improvements to make but this is a huge bonus for us to be on the podium. I’m glad everyone was safe from that big crash at the beginning of the day. Thank you to everybody, we’re going to continue to push.
George Russell
We started on the Hard tyre because I made a mistake in qualifying and we thought that risk gave us the best opportunity later in the race but there was just very little grip at the start. It’s the hardest compound, it’s cold out there and I got swamped by all the cars. The next thing I know I got touched, I was on the side of Zhou, and that was it. I jumped out of the car to see if Zhou was okay and I saw it was red-flagged straight away but when I came back to the car, I couldn’t quite get it started for whatever reason, so I ran back to the team to check. I asked the marshals to leave the car and the next thing, when I got back, the car was on the back of the flatbed which meant I couldn’t restart. It was obviously frustrating for my race because the car just had the puncture and there’s no doubt we had the pace to come back to P6 today but I’m just glad that Zhou was OK.
Toto Wolff
A great race today for the fans who all came out with such passion. We had some light at the end of the tunnel in Barcelona and then struggled on three street circuits so I don’t want to talk us up too much or be too pessimistic, I’d rather be cautious. We still had our persistent ride issue all three days which is a key focus for us to tackle but we showed strong pace this weekend which is pleasing and our updates seemed to work well. In Austria, there will be a couple of corners which haven’t made our car happy in the past but it’s a constant learning process for us. This year is going to be a pretty tough one to win but we just need to get our house in order to be properly on top of the car’s performance.
It was disappointing for George not to be in the race because the car pace was good but that’s the regulation so it is what it is, unfortunately. Lewis drove a strong race, we had the win right in front of us before the safety car and were chasing the Ferraris down but then after the safety car, we were never quite in the position to challenge for the front and lost a little momentum. I’m glad it’s a quick turnaround for Austria, another chance for more information which is more learning.
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