‘Massive difference’ - Lewis Hamilton explains how upgraded W15 feels “better everywhere”

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes’ W15 F1 car is “better everywhere” after helping the team secure their best qualifying result of the season at the British Grand Prix, writes Lewis Larkam at Silverstone. 

George Russell headed a British 1-2-3 in a thrilling wet-dry qualifying at Silverstone as he beat seven-time world champion teammate Hamilton to pole position by 0.171s, with Lando Norris third for McLaren.

Mercedes have made notable progress with their troublesome W15 in recent weeks amid an aggressive development push, with a raft of upgrades being introduced to their car.

When asked how different the W15 is compared to the start of the season, Hamilton said: “Massive difference.

Pushed for details on where the differences are, Hamilton replied: “Everywhere. It's just better everywhere.

“From Bahrain, for example, the car felt terrible, and the progress that we made in terms of dialling and fine-tuning the car to optimise the aero package.

“This team has never struggled to add performance, but where particularly they put that performance has always been, with this generation of car, has been a big question and where we're getting the downforce from.

“They've done an amazing job, the engineers back at the factory. But, you know, look, it's... We'd definitely take it today, but these guys are still… Red Bull, particularly Max, and the McLarens are very, very, very fast.

“And in some ways, you know, you saw in the last race, they were quite a bit ahead of us. So I'm hoping that tomorrow, with the conditions, we can hold our own.”

After claiming his second pole of the year, a week after scoring Mercedes' first win since 2022, Russell insisted the team have now found a “the happy medium” with their car. 

“I think we've made some small changes, which have had a big impact,” he explained. “We knew from the start of this year, the baseline of this car is substantially better than what we've had in previous years.

“But we went from having an oversteer car last year, then to an understeer car this year. And now we've just dialled it back and found the happy medium.

“When you've got the balance in a good place, the tyre temperatures are in the right window, and the lap time just really snowballs positively. It hasn't been a substantial change, but it's made a massive difference to the lap time.”