Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone: The magic has faded! Here’s what happened during the false start

Lewis Hamilton secured a spectacular Sprint pole on Friday at Silverstone in front of his home crowd. In the Sprint, however, he could only manage second place – he was beaten by championship leader Kimi Antonelli. In the Grand Prix qualifying session, he still managed to secure third on the grid – and he also finished third. An overall successful weekend – but Hamilton was nevertheless a little disappointed.

Hamilton’s magic was missing on Sunday

On Sunday at Silverstone, a Ferrari did finish at the front – but it was driven by Hamilton’s team-mate Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque driver claimed his first victory since Austin 2024. Lewis Hamilton said after the race: “Congratulations to Charles. He did a great job today.” For him, however, things didn’t go well at all on Sunday: “All the magic I had on Friday simply vanished over the course of the weekend.”

The magic of Friday, the hope of triumph in red in front of his home crowd – all gone. Hamilton attempted to explain: “I simply lacked grip on the front axle, and we set the front wing far too weak. That’s my fault and the engineers’ fault.”

What Leclerc did differently from Hamilton

Hamilton also observed: “I noticed that Charles had adjusted his balance – I think he’d added more wing compared to qualifying – and I felt that the car was oversteering badly with the differential settings we had. So I took some wing off and then had extreme understeer at the start of the race. That’s how he simply pulled away from me. I could barely steer the car until about halfway through the first stint. It was only after making a few differential changes that I managed to steer the car a bit better, but by then the gap was already huge. And then there were the five seconds lost at the pit stop, and one thing just led to another.”

Penalty for a mistake at the start

On top of that, he was also penalised for a false start. Officially a jump start – he moved his Ferrari ever so slightly before the race officially began. It didn’t give him a lead or a performance advantage at the start – but he was given the 5-second penalty all the same. He served it during the first pit stop mentioned earlier.

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Hand moved ‘just like that’

Hamilton: “It went pretty badly right from the start. I started too early, which has only happened to me very rarely in the roughly 380 races I’ve driven so far.” Hamilton’s tally stands at 389 Grands Prix following the Silverstone race. Hamilton explained: “My hand just moved on its own. I don’t really know where it went. I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t even tell my hand to do it. But never mind, these things just happen.”

After the race, he was worried he might face a penalty for a yellow-flag infringement. In the end, however, he was only given a warning.