How Hamilton and Bonnington rolled back the clock for one last Silverstone success · RaceFans

When you’re so accustomed to victory, anything else feels like failure.

Lewis Hamilton arrived at Mercedes’ Brackley factory for the first time in January 2013 already a champion, already considered one of the field’s elite drivers. The perfect prospect to fill the seat of the sport’s most successful ever drivers – Michael Schumacher.

It was only natural for Mercedes to pair their newest driver with Schumacher’s race engineer – 37-year-old Peter Bonnington. Despite some near-misses, it only took 10 races for the partnership to produce a win in that year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

“Get in there, Lewis,” Bonnington told his driver as Hamilton crossed the line for his first grand prix win as a Mercedes driver and, with it, providing Bonnington with his first grand prix triumph as a race engineer.

Over the next eight years and 168 grands prix, Hamilton and Bonnington became the most successful driver-engineer tandem the sport had ever seen. Six world championship titles, 77 pole positions and 82 grand prix victories – the last coming during an ill-tempered Saudi Arabian Grand Prix at the apex of a bitter championship battle with Red Bull and Max Verstappen

When Hamilton was denied an unprecedented eighth title one week later, few could ever have predicted the barren spell that would befall Mercedes and Hamilton over the following two seasons. As Hamilton and Bonnington headed into Silverstone for their 12th and final British Grand Prix together, they did so having not taken a chequered flag first for almost 60 rounds. They were only able to watch on as Verstappen and his engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, rapidly built up a challenge to their own standing as the best partnership in the sport’s history.

However, both Hamilton and Bonnington arrived at the circuit on Sunday morning knowing this race would have a different dynamic to so many they had endured over more than two frustrating years before that day. For the first time since that last victory in Jeddah back in 2021, Mercedes team mate had locked out the front row in a qualifying session. The only difference being that, this time, Hamilton had been beaten to pole by his team mate, George Russell

Although Mercedes had secured a rare win just a week prior in Austria, thanks to Verstappen and Lando Norris taking each other out and handing the victory to Russell, the team were under no illusion of the threats they were likely…