Why Lewis Hamilton didn’t produce his usual magic in the rain

SILVERSTONE, U.K. — For three practice sessions and a good part of qualifying, it looked like Lewis Hamilton might put himself on the front row of the grid Sunday for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

New upgrades on both Mercedes cars had yielded a step forward in dry conditions relative to rivals Red Bull and Ferrari, and with a capacity crowd braving a typical Silverstone rainstorm during qualifying, the stage seemed set for some Hamilton magic.

Yet the final qualifying result saw Hamilton drop back into Mercedes’ now familiar 2022 territory: fifth place and over 0.8s off the pace.

The good news for driver and team is that there was a very clear reason. The bad news is that it represents a missed opportunity on a track that clearly suits Mercedes.

The usual tactic in a wet qualifying session is to continue lapping at high speed in the hope track conditions improve and the lap time comes down. But setting fast lap after fast lap after fast lap means there is no chance to charge the power unit’s hybrid system for maximum power deployment on any single lap.

Mercedes decided that by backing off on Hamilton’s penultimate lap he would have a chance to charge the battery to the maximum and then use a more powerful power unit setting on his final attempt. The only problem was that the rain intensified during the penultimate lap, meaning Hamilton couldn’t hook up a faster lap with the extra battery power when it mattered.

“I was really, really so hopeful because we have this incredible crowd and all of a sudden I was in the fight,” Hamilton said. “It was feeling great. I was like, ‘I can definitely go quicker than that,’ I think I was two tenths up and then they said back off [on my penultimate lap] and go again. But the next lap wasn’t as good.

“We wanted to go to a more ‘racey’ power mode for the final lap and charge the battery. As we did that it rained a little bit more on the final…