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Lewis Hamilton WINS British F1 GP For NINTH Time -HIGHLIGHTS
Lewis Hamilton Thrills Crowd by Winning British F1 GP For NINTH Time
Max Verstappen finishes second, Lando Norris third
The Guardian 8 JUL 2024
The win was a long time coming but when Lewis Hamilton secured victory in the British Grand Prix, what it meant to him and indeed the home crowd at Silverstone that roared him across the line was unmistakable.
This was sport as emotion writ large, the perfect stage for the perfect drama, an intense, gripping piece of theatre that left its protagonist for the first time in his career in tears, with likely all but the hardest of hearts similarly touched.
Hamilton has gone over two years without a win, his last at Saudi Arabia in 2021, a full 945 days then, so long and so hard a drought, including being controversially denied his eighth title at the close of that year, he admitted afterwards it had brought him low and led to him doubting even himself.
Yet at the same time also understandable given the context that since his debut in 2007 and 2021 he had won a race in every season but the spiral in form of Mercedes since 2022 has looked at times to be a vortex from which even Hamilton could not reach escape velocity.
He ultimately took the flag at Silverstone from the Red Bull of Max Verstappen in second and the McLaren of Lando Norris in third after a race that ebbed and flowed across wet and dry periods but through which the 39-year-old held his nerve with the same precision and control he has exhibited repeatedly in a remarkable career.
As he toured round on his in-lap to a circuit-wide standing ovation and cheering that saw off even the bellicose winds that had buffeted the track all day, he was, overwhelmed, in tears, as the scale of the achievement overtook him and when he climbed from the car there was an almost immediate emotional huge embrace from his mother and father.
“I am still crying,” said Hamilton. “The important thing is how you *continue to get up and dig deeper than ever, even though you are at the bottom of the barrel and there are days since 2021 where I didn’t feel I was good enough or I would get back to where I am but I have had great people around me.”
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