Wrong wing setting before the race left Hamilton struggling with understeer at Silverstone

A misjudged front wing change before the British Grand Prix hampered Lewis Hamilton throughout his opening stint at Silverstone, the seven-time world champion and his Ferrari engineers have acknowledged, as team-mate Charles Leclerc took victory on home soil.

Hamilton had arrived at the weekend with Ferrari’s engineers estimating a potential six-tenths deficit to Mercedes on the straights, making his shock sprint race pole on Friday all the more unexpected. But the momentum faded. While Leclerc added front downforce compared to qualifying — gaining front-end load and stability — Hamilton moved in the opposite direction, removing wing in an attempt to restore rear-end grip after feeling the car was too oversteery with his differential settings.

“I took wing off and, as a result, at the start of the race, I had huge understeer,” Hamilton said. “I was completely missing the front end. We went too low on the front wing and that is my responsibility and that of the engineering team.”

The consequences played out across Silverstone’s demanding layout. Hamilton struggled to rotate the car through slow corners such as Village and The Loop, but the damage was compounded in faster sections. Losing time through Stowe and Copse carries a direct penalty at Silverstone, because speed lost there bleeds into the high-speed Maggots, Becketts and Chapel complex that immediately follows. At one point, Hamilton said he could feel graining beginning to develop on the front tyres.

Pirelli’s motorsport chief Dario Maraffuschi confirmed that the data collected during Friday’s long runs and the Saturday sprint had flagged exactly this risk. “What we saw is that understeer actually stresses the front end too much,” Maraffuschi said. “It does not generate temperature, but makes you more prone to increasing wear. From the tyre point of view, I believe it is not worth putting the car on a set-up tending toward understeer.”

Leclerc, by contrast, benefitted from a clean opening stint, overtaking sprint race winner Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes on lap one and building a ten-second buffer over Hamilton before going on to take the race win. Hamilton recovered to finish third, with Antonelli second.

“Charles did a great job today and all the magic I had on Friday simply vanished over the course of the weekend,” Hamilton said. The result underlines how fine the margins remain between Hamilton and Leclerc as both drivers adapt to Ferrari’s machinery, with a single setup call proving the difference between a podium challenge and a difficult afternoon.