"Very sensible driver" - Lewis Hamilton praises Charles Leclerc while taking a sly dig at Max Verstappen's aggressiveness

Lewis Hamilton took a subtle dig at Max Verstappen by praising Charles Leclerc for a great wheel-to-wheel battle at the 2022 F1 British GP. The Briton enjoyed battling the Monegasque and compared it to the experience with the Dutchman last year.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the race, Hamilton described his battle with Leclerc, saying:

“I mean Charles [Leclerc] did a great job. What a great battle. Very sensible driver, clearly a lot different to what I experienced last year. Like Copse for example, two of us went through there no problem. What a battle! We had to have the tyre deficit to get past him but yeah really really amazing weekend.”

Thoroughly elated at the battle he had with Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton praised the Monegasque driver for being sensible while going approaching the Copse corner in particular. Compared to last year’s battle with Max Verstappen in the same corner where the two made contact, the Briton enjoyed battling the Ferrari driver. The subtle dig at the Dutchman did not go unnoticed as at the 2021 British GP, contact between the two caused the Red Bull driver to crash into the barriers with a 54G impact. The two battles, however, were very different, as the Mercedes champion was on the back foot in comparison to the Ferrari driver this time around, while his clash at the Silverstone race in 2021 soured the title battle.

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Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes have had a turning point in their performance

Lewis Hamilton feels Mercedes might have turned around their performance woes after the upgrades on their car at Silverstone. The Briton believes they need more improvements but was grateful to be back in the fight up front. While he did lead the 2022 F1 British GP for the first time since the Abu Dhabi GP last year, the Briton felt a slow pitstop and the tire warmup cost him time to catch the Ferraris.

Describing Mercedes’ performance curve, the Briton said:

“I’d like to think we are kind of on the turning point. We are still on the bend. Big improvement from the car, we’ve still got work to do. A big thank you to the team for all the upgrades this weekend. We need more and we need to keep pushing, we gotta stay positive. It’s great to be back in the fight. I am so grateful to be back in the fight thanks to them.”

On whether he thought he could win the race, Lewis Hamilton said:

“Definitely for a while, for a while it was feeling on. These bunch of things went against us a little bit. The start we got to third and then they put us back to fifth and then lost ground to Land so I spent a bunch of laps trying to get past him. Then the gap was 5-6 seconds to catch the Ferraris. But I was doing good times to catching them up and I did a really good long stint. And I really thought maybe we could fight for a win here but unfortunately the gap was getting too big and the pitstop was not very quick. So in the end the warmup, I struggled with the warmup... lost out to two cars. It was so tough today.”

This is the longest Lewis Hamilton has gone without leading a single race in his entire F1 career. Overall Mercedes’ race pace seems competitive, but in qualifying, there is still room to improve. As far as the bouncing on their car goes, it is much less now but still hurts them in the straights against the Red Bull and Ferraris.