Hamilton stands on the podium in home race: ‘Planned to just stay out’

"For me, I really didn't expect to be on the podium today, but when we go through all the different strategy options, this is the one you hope for, which is the safety car. I basically put on the medium tyre and plan to just stay out on them until the very end, until the safety car potentially would come, and fortunately it did," Hamilton explained his strategy after the race.

He continued: "Our long run pace is really good, and we're really grateful for the team for continuing to push. We do have a lot of work to do on our car to put ourselves in proper competitive form to fight the Red Bulls and now McLaren."

On the other hand, Hamilton’s start of the race was not as good as the way he finished it. "I can't tell you the actual words I was thinking, but it was one of the worst opening laps that I've had for a while. I think ultimately I was just trying to gather my thoughts and calm down and not be erratic, but I had a relatively decent start, and then into turn three, just seemed to lock the rears for some reason. I think we had a tailwind into there, and for me, I just kept snapping and went wide," Hamilton acknowledged his poor start.

Battle with Norris

After the safety car restart, Hamilton was close to overtaking Lando Norris on soft tyres, but Norris could keep his P2. Hamilton explained his battle with his compatriot. "I threw out the inside into turn seven, and hoped that that this is the moment I'm going to make it happen, and I pressed the overtake button. We're both going down the road with the overtake button, but he had less drag. I guess he said they have a smaller wing and they just started pulling, so I had to back out. I was relatively quick in the first half of the lap. I think if you look at our qualifying laps, we were very, very close to Max all the way to turn 13. That's where they pulled all their time. We've got some work to do to improve our high speed performance."

Hamilton also praised his former team. "They deserve to have the performance they have. We've got to do a better job. They've now done a better job than us. What I would say is that this is one of the most exciting times I think we've seen in the sport, where we're finally starting to see the regs pull people closer," he concluded.