SILVERSTONE — That’s as Sunday at the British Grand Prix as it gets, Lewis Hamilton rising again with a great champion behind him. And not any old champion. This won’t make up for Abu Dhabi 2021, but after three years without a victory, taking the chequered flag at Silverstone for a record ninth time with Max Verstappen in his mirrors felt better than good.
Winning never gets old. Victory No 104 triggered a tearful response from Hamilton, who fell into a deep embrace with his father, Anthony, in parc ferme before running towards the grandstands to share with a partisan crowd a moment that will rank as high as any in his career.
This was a day that required every ounce of wisdom, the weather throwing out wicked variables that proved too much for Lando Norris, who was arrowing towards his maiden British Grand Prix success with 12 laps to go.
Jumping in for slicks a lap too late opened the door for Hamilton, who never looked like passing up the chance despite the insane pace of Verstappen over the closing laps.
Three years of grind and toil melted away in the late afternoon sunshine, the muscle memory he feared might never be downloaded in the service of victory again suddenly pulsing.
“You are on the same tyre as Lando,” the Mercedes pit wall advised. “Leave it to me guys,” came the immediate response.
Hamilton was already welling up on his in-lap. “This one means so much,” he said over the radio.
When he removed his helmet his features were creased with tension. He had barely recovered he capacity to speak when his former teammate Jenson Button thrust the mic under his nose.
“I can’t stop crying,” he said.
“It’s been since 2021 just everyday getting up to fight, to train and put my mind to the task and work as hard as I can with this amazing team.
“This is my last race here with this team so I wanted to win this so much for them because I love them and I appreciate them so much. It’s tough for anyone but the important thing is how you continue to get up. You’ve got to continue to dig deep even when you feeling the bottom of the barrel.”
Hamilton has carried this underdog fight through his career. The sense that he is not only competing against rivals but the system and the world is in his bones. It is a mentality that has left some to infer arrogance and conceit.
Opinion is choice. Some choose not to like Hamilton, therefore. Others, particularly abroad, he is loved because he speaks to people like him who have had to negotiate a society in which their ethnicity has often been a barrier.
His responses to victory were not specifically conditioned by this but the years of struggle that began as a black child from a Stevenage council estate racing against competitors who did not look like him, inform him still.
“There’s definitely been days between 2021 and here where I didn’t feel like I was good enough or if I was going to get back to where I am today.
“But the important thing is I have great people around me continuing to support me and my team.
“Every time I turn up and see them and put in the effort that really encouraged me to do the same thing.”
Norris enjoyed a hero’s build-up to this race. There is a tide of good will at his back because he is so easy to like as well as being seriously quick. When he ripped past Hamilton to assume the lead on lap 15 when the first rains began to fall, destiny appeared to be calling him.
The British summer had other ideas, spraying the track in watery jeopardy.
Norris was dismantled by a mixture of circumstance and a critical error under pressure towards the end. He was never a threat in the finale. Indeed, he could offer no resistance to Verstappen, who he let by with four laps to go.
If the learning experience is deeper in defeat, Norris will have banked a heap of data here. None is more self-critical than him, and he was quick to offer himself up for sacrifice.
“I blame myself today for not making some of the right decisions,” he said.
“I hate ending in this position and not doing a good enough job. I’m still happy and I’m still going to enjoy it, and I think we still did so many things right.
“But especially here in Silverstone I would love for everything to go perfectly. We will come back stronger next year and try again.”
He still finished on the podium, a privilege that was denied last week’s winner George Russell, who set off from pole but was passed in the changeable conditions and retired 17 laps from the end. What a sport this is. The victor last week, a loser this.
Hamilton has come to understand the cruelty of his sport keenly on many a Sunday these past three seasons. This was not one of them. A total of 945 days after his last win he was back on the top of the mountain.
“It feels different after the adversity we have gone through and experienced,” Hamilton said.
“There are so many times when you feel your best shot is not good enough. Mental health is such a serious issue these days and there have definitely been moments when I thought this was never going to happen again.
“I have never cried after a win before. It just came out of me. And I’m just so grateful.”