F1 British Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton lauds Silverstone’s ‘fighter jet’ feel after posting fastest time in practice

Sebastian Vettel headed the second practice session here on Friday as Silverstone was bathed in sunshine, but his time was fractionally slower than Lewis Hamilton’s best in the morning. The reigning world champion described driving his Mercedes around the resurfaced track as like flying a fighter jet.

“The atmosphere has been great,” Hamilton said. “The weather is fantastic and the crowd was incredible today. The track is the fastest it has ever been; we’re flat out through Copse and Turn 1 and through Turn 2 with the DRS – it’s insane how fast it is.

“The faster this track gets, the better it gets. It has to be the best track in the world, it feels like driving a fighter jet around it. However, it is also the bumpiest track I’ve ever experienced; it’s like the Nordschleife [the old Nurburgring]! With the speeds we’re going now and the G forces we’re pulling, I think it’s going to be the most physical race of the year. I was on the soft and the medium tyres today; the soft felt better, and they seem to last – which is impressive if you look at the forces and loads they have to take on this track.

“It’s going to be very, very close this weekend, the Ferraris are really fast. We’re in for a serious fight, which is great for the fans, and I hope that we can pull through.”

The two title contenders were the leaders all day, with Ferrari and Mercedes appearing to be evenly matched as Red Bull struggled for pace and lost time when Austrian GP winner Max Verstappen suffered a gearbox dog-ring failure in FP1 and spun out of contention at the Luffield corner early on in FP2 while attempting his first flying lap.

“The tyres were cold, the car slid, and then they gripped up,” team boss Christian Horner said.

The Red Bull oversteered on the exit to the relatively slow corner, but as the Dutchman corrected the slide the car snapped into an anti-clockwise rotation that ended in contact with the outer wall. Damage to his car was light, but he was unable to take further part.

“I wanted to be too quick on the hard tyre, so I lost it,” Verstappen said. “Unfortunately, the way you then hit the wall, it rips off the right rear.

“It’s not ideal to lose the second session, but the feeling I had before that was actually quite good. I think balance-wise we are not too far off, we are just losing a lot of lap time on the straight.”

Horner said that by the team’s calculation, they were losing nine-tenths of a second there. Verstappen will have to do some long-run work in tomorrow morning’s final practice session, but said he could also fall back on the data gathered by team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who was fifth fastest in FP2.

“I should be alright. I feel good always around this track. Of course it’s better to drive a lot, but I feel confident already in FP1 with the harder tyres, I think the pace was good. It seems like we’re definitely not fighting for pole, but we’ll try again tomorrow. At least I have two sets of softs, that’s positive.”

Earlier in the day, troubled Frenchman Romain Grosjean made a big mess of his Haas when he spun in the first corner, and hit the wall.

“The car is destroyed,” he said, his body language telling the full woeful story as the team set about rebuilding his car around a spare monocoque. He missed FP2 while the work continued.

Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas had backed the Englishman’s 1m 27.487s best in FP1 with 1m 27.854s, running a new power unit as a precaution after his hydraulic steering problems in Austria generated concerns over the effect of heat soak as his engine cooled suddenly.

Vettel was next on 1m 27.998s. In FP2, Vettel’s 1m 27.552s led the times, from Hamilton on 1m 27.739s and Bottas on 1m 27.909s. But Hamilton’s tyres were six laps old before he found the rhythm he was looking for amid the traffic.