Mercedes will continue to roll out incremental upgrades in Budapest and Spa after the development of its 2024 Formula 1 car led to a win on merit at the British Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton took an emotionally charged ninth home win at Silverstone following a two-and-a-half-year wait for his 104th grand prix victory, holding off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in a mixed-weather thriller.
It is Mercedes’s second victory on the trot after George Russell won in Austria following a highly publicised clash between Verstappen and Lando Norris.
But with Russell and Hamilton locking out the front row in Silverstone, Mercedes won the race on merit on home soil, being slightly behind on mixed weather race pace against the McLarens but superior in race execution.
Watch: British GP Race Review – Hamilton Returns To The Top
For Mercedes, it was a vindication of its recent upgrade trajectory after many false dawns, and team principal Toto Wolff vowed the Brackley-based team would continue to bring new parts to the two remaining races before the summer shutdown.
“There’s more to come in terms of performance,” he said. “We’re bringing updates to Budapest and Spa.
“We mustn’t get carried away, we had a win last week benefiting from [Verstappen and Norris] tangling, but today we have an honest win.
Peter Bonnington, Senior Race Engineer, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, 1st position, celebrate on the podium with the winners trophy
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
“We had the real pace, you could see George and Lewis in the lead… almost under all conditions we were there.”
Wolff said Mercedes’s development efforts finally “clicked” to put Hamilton in a position to sign off his streak of home race podiums with a “fairytale” victory before he moves to Ferrari in 2025.
“When you consider that five races ago we weren’t even a contender for the podium, which looked like the third year of non-performance, then it clicked,” he explained.
“Suddenly everything that didn’t make sense made sense. And the results of the development directions are back like in the old days. We are finding performance, we’re putting it on the car, and it translates into lap time.
“That wasn’t the case for the last two years. We couldn’t give the drivers a car that enabled them to go for the victories.
“And to make Lewis win the British Grand Prix again in his last race for Mercedes here is almost like a little fairytale, we couldn’t…
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