2024 British GP: Post Race Analysis

If you were able to afford tickets to the British Grand Prix, you got to see a banger! Great race with the mixed conditions. Legitimately 5 drivers had a shot of winning that race.

Mercedes had everything fall into place for them today, at Silverstone of all places. How they were able to elevate themselves up to equal the best car without significant updates is a question I would love answers too. In quali the car was incredible, but it was just as good in the race. On a pure dry track they were class of the field, and were relatively gentle on tires. Lewis Hamilton had a phenomenal performance. Kept pace with George in the dry, but was clearly faster as the rain drizzled down. Quickly got passed George and managed his car. A good strat call to pit before Lando put him in the lead, but how Lewis managed to keep those soft tires alive for around a dozen laps is unbelievable. Tough break for George Russell, likely would have been in the mix.

Red Bull Racing at least today was only the 3rd best car. Fortunately they still have Verstappen as he was one of the drivers of the day. Didn't have the pace on the medium tires, but kept himself in the game. Good strategy and fast pitstops put him back in the hunt. He was the fastest guy on track at the end and finished a very strong 2nd. Maybe worth noting, in all the wheel to wheel battles he gave perhaps too much space to other cars. Perez started from pit lane. Showed pace to make his way forward, perhaps even into the points. However the team made a rare bad call by pitting him onto inters and that ruined his entire race.

McLaren must have stolen the "How to lose a race" playbook from Ferrari. McLaren had the golden ticket with a set of brand new medium tires and they opted to put on a used set of softs. Lando even said they knew their car does not like soft tires, so why would they put them on? Lando of course finds ways to hurt his own race by overshooting the pitstop and costing himself 2 seconds. An easy win tossed away. Whoever ran the math and figured leaving Oscar out for an extra lap was faster than the double stack needs to go back to school. Horrendous call that destroyed his race. McLaren could have got a 1-2 finish today.

Ferrari can always find a way to shoot themselves in the foot. Carlos had an incredible drive. He was up there in the fight with the top 3 cars most of the race. Sad that with such a strong performance, 6th would have been his best result had Russell not retired. Of course Ferrari/Leclerc made the wrong call with tires once again. The team should know what weather is coming, and driver should know what tire is best for the conditions in real time. Neither of them are getting it right.

Haas are not getting the credit they deserve, especially Nico Hulkenberg. He has been a super star in qualifying for some time, but now is getting the results in the races. I dont know if the car is truly ahead of the Aston Martins just yet, but they are beating them. Magnussen had a disappointing race when you consider what the car is capable of, and he finished behind Logan Seargant.

Aston Martin probably had the car to fight for 6th and 7th, but they just don't seem to know how to make it work. They totally screwed over Alonso by leaving him out on a wet track and pitting Stroll onto inters first, even though Alonso had track position. This cost Alonso more than 10 seconds. They did return the favor later in the race by pitting Alonso onto mediums first, but the net gain wasn't nearly as much. For some reason Alonso suffered from a lot more clipping on the straights in the last half of the race. These changing conditions fit into Stroll's strong points. So it isn't too surprising to see him having a good race.

Williams is another team that had a very surprising performance in their home GP. Albon was superb with the car he has to get into the points. Give credit to Logan Seargant, he perhaps had the best race of his career.

Visa RB managed to get the final point position with Tsunoda. After a couple of strong races from Ricciardo, we are back to normal with Yuki being the stronger driver.

Sauber still looking like a bunch of amateurs. The car is slow yes, but they still have slow pit stops, they aren't progressing, and they are making bad strategy calls. Starting Zhou on soft tires when you know you need to have tires that will get you to the point of changing to intermediates was crazy. Bottas showed about how good the car could do, which doesn't say much for them. They should have retired Zhou to save the car.

Alpine. What a difference a week makes. Ocon had no pace all race, perhaps even worse than Bottas. Bad luck with Gasly, being forced to retire on lap 1.

Driver of the Day. Lewis Hamilton. Was faster than his teammate, and did a brilliant job keeping those soft tires alive, which was key to his 104th victory.