Leclerc wins British GP at Silverstone for Ferrari

Charles Leclerc won the 2026 British Grand Prix at Silverstone for Ferrari, finishing the 52-lap race in 1:27:11.335. George Russell took second for Mercedes, 0.427 seconds behind, and Lewis Hamilton finished third in the other Ferrari, 0.772 seconds back. Leclerc’s victory was his first of the Formula 1 season, his first at Silverstone and ended an 18-month wait for a win. Max Verstappen retired after crashing at Stowe, and the safety car period that followed helped shape the result. Lando Norris finished fourth, Isack Hadjar fifth and Liam Lawson sixth, while Oscar Piastri ended up 11th. Alexander Albon and Nico Hülkenberg did not finish.

The race followed a weekend in which Kimi Antonelli won Saturday’s Sprint and took pole position for the Grand Prix. Antonelli lost ground after a poor start and the Ferrari drivers moved ahead early, with Hamilton starting third on the grid behind Antonelli and Leclerc. Hamilton also faced an FIA investigation before the race over an alleged yellow-flag safety breach. Pierre Gasly’s three-place grid penalty changed the starting order, while Russell lined up fourth, Hadjar fifth, Norris sixth, Verstappen seventh and Piastri eighth.

Silverstone drew about 564,000 spectators across the weekend, a new British Grand Prix record, as the event mixed racing with music, comedy, camping and fan activities. Pirelli had predicted a one-stop race on the medium-to-hard tire sequence, but lower-than-expected degradation and the Verstappen safety car made strategy less straightforward. The circuit’s fast corners and limited heavy-braking zones also fed into the weekend-long debate about energy management under Formula 1’s 2026 rules.