Hamilton tops British Grand Prix practice at Silverstone

Lewis Hamilton topped the only practice session for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone with a lap of 1:29.260, edging Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli by 0.213 seconds before sprint qualifying later on Friday. The Ferrari driver did it in front of a home crowd expected to reach about 500,000 across the weekend, a setting that made the result feel bigger than a Friday timesheet.

The session lasted just 60 minutes because Silverstone is running to the Sprint format, leaving teams with a single chance to gather data before competitive running began. In warm, sunny conditions, Hamilton was first out of the pit lane and quickly established himself on a track that evolved rapidly as drivers switched from hard tyres to softs late in the run.

Charles Leclerc made it a strong opening for Ferrari by taking third, with George Russell fourth for Mercedes. Oscar Piastri was fifth for McLaren after a spin at Becketts, while Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen was sixth and Lando Norris seventh, more than a second off the pace. The order suggested a tight midfield behind Hamilton and Antonelli, but also a session in which tyre choice and track temperature mattered as much as outright confidence.

For Hamilton, the lap added another line to an already dominant Silverstone record. He has won the British Grand Prix at the circuit nine times, more than any other driver has won a single Formula 1 race at one venue, and he arrived at this weekend chasing a record-extending 10th victory there. That history, plus the noise around a packed British crowd, gave his fastest time more emotional weight than a normal Friday benchmark.

The harder question is whether it signals genuine momentum or another familiar Silverstone mirage. Hamilton had predicted on Thursday that Ferrari would lose significant straight-line time to Mercedes compared with Austria, yet he still led the field when it mattered most in practice. With only one session to calibrate upgrades, tyres and race pace before sprint qualifying at 16:30 BST, the evidence from the first day was encouraging for Ferrari, but still provisional.