Lewis Hamilton has called on Mercedes to find answers to its rollercoaster form after declaring himself ‘murdered’ by Lando Norris during the British Grand Prix.
A safety car after Kevin Magnussen’s Haas caught fire appeared to open the way for Mercedes to claim second and third behind race-winner Max Verstappen in his Red Bull.
McLaren duo Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri were second and fourth on track at the time and seemed vulnerable after being switched to the hard tyres.
In contrast, third-placed Hamilton took on a set of softs, whilst team-mate George Russell was running on mediums as he had stopped shortly before Magnussen’s incident.
But once the racing resumed, Hamilton was unable to find a way past Norris despite a few attempts to do so, whilst Russell never got close to Piastri.
Despite being on the hard compound tyres, the raft of recent upgrades on the MCL60 allowed Norris, in particular, to fend off Hamilton who was left surprised by the pace of his former team’s car.
“Knowing what it’s like to be on the hards on the restart and with someone on the softs behind, I knew that it would be difficult (for Norris),” said Hamilton.
“I hadn’t had any running with the McLarens, so I had no idea how strong they were earlier on in the stint, or in the race.
“It wasn’t until that moment that I started to see some of their strengths and see them get stronger and stronger over the laps.
“So I threw it up the inside and I tried to get past, but we have a little bit more drag down the straights and then through the high speed, that’s where they were just murdering us.
“It was difficult, but fun for those first few laps. I wish we could have stayed in that close battle for many more, but it wasn’t meant to be. I look forward to hopefully having some more of those battles in the future.”
For that to happen, however, Hamilton needs more from Mercedes as the W14s, sporting a new front wing at Silverstone, were expected to be firmly in the fight at the front.
Instead, Russell and Hamilton could only qualify sixth and seventh respectively before improving to third and fifth in the race.
“Qualifying yesterday was not the greatest feeling,” added Hamilton. “We’d had a really bad race the previous week (in Austria), and we knew we had an upgrade (for Silverstone).
“So we were all very hopeful of the step that we were going to try to take and bring us in closer but to our disappointment it didn’t take us that step, unfortunately.
“For us to be sixth and seventh just wasn’t a great feeling, just knowing how hard everyone’s worked, and everyone was feeling it in the team.
“Overnight you have to turn that negative feeling into a positive, which we often do, and work on our positives, which is that we had good long run pace that showed on Friday, and just get your head down.
“Our long run pace was really good (in the race) and I’m really grateful to the team for continuing to push.
“But we do have a lot of work to do on our car to put ourselves in proper competitive form to fight the Red Bulls and now McLarens.”
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