Hamilton leads Silverstone FP1 as Red Bull slips

Lewis Hamilton set the pace in the British Grand Prix weekend’s only practice session at Silverstone, putting Ferrari on top while Max Verstappen ended up only sixth after an unconvincing switch to soft tyres.

Hamilton’s best lap of 1:29.260 left him 0.213s clear of Kimi Antonelli, with Charles Leclerc third on 1:29.859 and George Russell fourth on 1:29.938. In a sprint weekend with just one hour of practice before later competitive running, Ferrari and Mercedes immediately looked like the most settled cars.

That was most obvious once the field moved away from the opening hard-tyre work. All 22 drivers started on hards before teams introduced the medium and soft compounds in the final part of the session to prepare for sprint qualifying. Antonelli had shown strong speed on the harder tyre and briefly led again once the softer runs began, but Hamilton first took control with a 1:30.521 on hards and then reclaimed top spot for good with his late soft-tyre lap.

Verstappen’s session went in the opposite direction. Red Bull looked competitive in the early hard-tyre phase, but Verstappen’s soft-tyre laps were repeatedly less tidy and left him with a best of 1:30.240, 0.980s off Hamilton’s benchmark. Isack Hadjar was eighth on 1:30.338, which reinforced the impression that Red Bull had not found the same step on the soft compound as its main rivals.

Oscar Piastri was the lead McLaren in fifth on 1:30.147, one place ahead of Verstappen, while Lando Norris finished seventh on 1:30.288.

For Hamilton, the session gave the home crowd an early lift and put him at the center of the first meaningful story of the weekend. For Red Bull, the bigger takeaway was that decent rhythm on hard tyres did not carry over when the softer rubber went on, leaving the team with clear work to do before sprint qualifying.