Dehydrated Hamilton delighted by 'great result' in France

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Lewis Hamilton celebrated his 300th Grand Prix start with his best result of the 2022 season, finishing as runner-up to Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the 2022 French Grand Prix at Circuit Paul Ricard.

With George Russell also on the podium on Sunday, it was a big comeback for Mercedes who had been downhearted after a disappointing time in qualifying 24 hours earlier.

Although Hamilton benefitted from pole winner Charles Leclerc crashing out of the race on lap 17, he's already muscled his way past Sergio Perez at the start to put himself in an ideal position to benefit from the ferrari's crash.

Read also: Verstappen beats Hamilton in France, Leclerc crashes out

He was more than able to stay ahead of Perez at the restart, although he was never able to chase down Verstappen to challenge for the race victory before the chequered flag.

If it had looked straightforward and easy for the seven time world champion, inside the cockpit pit was another matter as he revealed to David Coulthard in parc ferme after the finish.

"That was actually a tough race because my drinks bottle didn’t work," he said, estimating that he'd probably lost three kilos of bodyweight as a result over the course of the race in blistering conditions at Le Castellet.

But any concerns about hydration were eclipsed his his delight at finishing on the podium for the fourth race in succession.

"What a great result considering we’ve been so far off these guys all weekend," he acknowledged.

"Reliability is one thing that my team has been amazing at, so a huge congratulations to the team back at the two factories, the team here

"Without them, we couldn’t get this podium, and George did an amazing job today as well.”

But Hamilton was realistic to know that his podium was in part due to Leclerc's accident and Carlos Sainz starting form the rear due to grid penalties for needing additional engine components this weekend.

"It's going to be hard to beat the Ferraris and the Red Bulls," he acknowledged. "You see they have the pace advantage still."

The next race is at one of Hamilton's favourite circuits, the Hungaroring, where he's emerged triumphant on eight previous occasions. Could this give him the advantage he needs to claim his first won of the season?

"I'm hoping we will bring some sort of upgrade to that track, and hopefully take a step forward closer to them," he said. "You can see in the race we can at least lean on them a little bit, so hopefully in that race even closer."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.