Back to winning ways in 2024 after 946 days without gracing an F1 podium’s top step – Lewis Hamilton’s emotional Silverstone victory was the highlight of his season, but he was excellent in qualifying and on the orthodox two-stop strategy at Spa too.
Hamilton’s in-race tyre management remains top class, as his pace while rising in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi showed, plus how he held off Max Verstappen on more fragile tyres late in that Silverstone win.
But his overall qualifying against George Russell and braking confidence struggles, plus errors such as at Austin, mean he goes to Ferrari with peak performance questions to answer.
Where Hamilton still has a critical F1 edge
“I feel on race Sundays that it's still in me. I know I still have the speed and that gives me a lot of hope for what's to come.”
Hamilton said those words to the invited guests of Mercedes’ title sponsor, Petronas, just days after he’d turned out for the Silver Arrows squad in an F1 race for the final time.
That he was speaking to them in Malaysia at all in the days after the Abu Dhabi campaign finale was the reason he couldn’t make an early debut with Ferrari in the season-ending tyre test – Mercedes’ decision to hold him to the full length of his contract much about not handing a 2025 title rival any extra edge.
Team insiders also explained this was why he didn’t get a big pre-race send-off in Abu Dhabi, where it was business as usual until the chequered flag. And, in terms of one of Hamilton’s ongoing driving strengths, it really was there. This is how the seven-time world champion is still able to get the best out of the complex Pirelli rubber over race stints.
Back at Silverstone, he was able to make the soft tyres last in the dry final stint and see off a rampaging Verstappen, when Lando Norris in a McLaren could have previously been set to win. This was Mercedes’ mid-season purple patch, where the cooler conditions at Silverstone gave the W15 a critical edge. Even cooler temperatures in Las Vegas made it class-leading.
Hamilton’s final stint there – where he was homing in on eventually-winning team-mate Russell at a rate of nearly 0.3s a lap with much older tyres – showed again how his in-race tyre treatment can provide him with a critical edge.
The problem was how often this year he was deploying this from weak positions after poor qualifying results. Take Vegas – where Hamilton’s pair of Q3 mistakes meant he started 10th, with Russell on pole. The Abu Dhabi qualifying Q1 exit wasn’t his fault, but again he responded with a masterful race drive – gaining 12 places on the contra-one-stopper.
Next year Hamilton heads to Ferrari, where he will be paired with F1’s best qualifier in Charles Leclerc. His in-race tyre management prowess will again be a key strength, but his struggles with braking confidence – so long a career strength – when pushing on the peaky softest compounds mean there are already fears he’ll be battling back just as he often did with Russell this year.
No doubt, he’ll be out to prove such predictions wrong.
