Lewis Hamilton says the entire Mercedes team needs to get their heads together after being outpaced by a resurgent McLaren at the 2023 British Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion was one of the biggest beneficiaries under the safety car at Silverstone, which gave him a cheap pit stop and an opportunity to snatch an unlikely second place when the race restarted.
But despite being on the soft tyres, Hamilton was unable to pass Norris on the hards, underlining the leap forward the Woking-based team have made with their recently introduced upgrade package.
And Hamilton hopes this will inspire Mercedes to make progress as they try to bridge the gap to Red Bull out front.
“It’s definitely been an up and down season in the last year and a half,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.
“We have a lot of work to do. I think I know exactly what we need to do. And I think we’ve got to have some serious conversations about what we’re going to do moving forward.
“The McLaren is proof of the direction that they’ve gone and it was impressive how quick they were in the high speed.
“We have strengths in our car and long run particularly is great. As soon as we get the rear end that they have we’re going to be on our way so that’s what we got to fight for.
“But George had really great long stint on the soft tyre and I did also on the medium. We got to hold on to the good bits and just bolt on some other stuff.”
Despite failing in his pursuit of Norris, Hamilton was full of praise for his fellow Brit and expressed his delight at seeing the resurgence of McLaren, the team where it all began for the now 38-year-old.
“Huge congrats to Lando, and to McLaren,” Hamilton added. “That’s where I started so to see them back doing so well really warms my heart.”
Wolff targets McLaren-esque improvement
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was in a similarly magnanimous mood in the aftermath of Max Verstappen‘s British GP victory.
The Austrian admitted that it would have been interesting to see if Hamilton could have challenged Verstappen had he made quick work of Norris, but conceded that McLaren had the better package at Silverstone.
Wolff was, however, buoyed to see just how much lap time they were able to gain, insisting it gives him hope Mercedes can do something similar.
“I think possibly at the end on the soft we would have been able to pull away at the beginning,” Wolff said.
“Who knows how close we could have been to Max but we’re just lacking the straight line speed at the moment.
“[Hamilton’s] tyres went off but they just had a better car. We need to honestly say with the hard tyre to be able to hold us off with the soft, it’s just their efficiency or let’s say straight line speed.
“It will be very interesting to see on the more twisty circuits [like] Budapest. But in any case, they made a big step ahead and that’s good for us to see that this is possible to how quickly you can catch up so we’ve got to go for them.
“We’ve got to go for the for the Red Bulls.”
