Lewis Hamilton was once again full of praise for Lando Norris after conceding third place to the young McLaren charger in last Sunday's British Grand Prix.
A well-time pitstop under the Safety Car and a tyre advantage brought Hamilton into play for a spot on the podium at Silverstone.
Although the Mercedes driver had gained the upper hand over Norris' teammate Oscar Piastri, the seven-time world champion was unable to overhaul the leading McLaren despite several strong attacks.
"I threw it up the inside into Turn 7 in the hope that ‘this is the moment that I’m going to make it happen’ and I pressed the overtake button…" Hamilton explained as he recounted his tussle with Norris.
"So we’re both going down the road with the overtake but he had less drag so I guess he said they had a smaller wing and they just started pulling so I had to back out.
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"But I was relatively quick in the first half of the lap and I think if you look at our qualifying laps, we were very, very close to Max [Verstappen] all the way until Turn 13 and then that’s where they pull all their time. So we’ve got some work to do to improve our high speed performance."
Hamilton lauded Norris, and not for the first time, underscoring not only the 23-year-old's talent but also the absolute trust he feels while racing wheel-to-wheel with the young gun.
"He is very talented, naturally, as you can see," he said.
"And I think it's great when you can have close battles like that and rely on the driver that you’re competing with to be fair and hard but fair and so there was never an element or a moment where we thought we were going to come together or anything like that.
"That’s what motor racing is all about. As he wanted to hold onto second, I wanted to get that second but it wasn’t meant to be.
"So we just get our heads down and keep pushing and hopefully we’ll have some more battles moving forward."
Hamilton admitted that he hadn't realized how strong the McLaren was until Norris, running on the hard tyre after the Safety Car restart, was able to fend off the soft-shod Mercedes.
"Knowing what it’s like to be on the hards on the restart at the end with someone on the softs behind, I knew that it would be difficult [for Norris],"
"I hadn’t had any running with the McLarens. So I had no idea how strong they were earlier on in the stint, or in the race. And it wasn’t until that moment that I started to see some of their strengths and see them get stronger and stronger over the laps.
"So I threw it up the inside and I tried to get past. But we have a little bit more drag down the straights and then through the high speed, as I said, that’s where they were just murdering us.
"So difficult, but it was fun for those first few laps. I wish we could have stayed in that close battle for many more laps, but it wasn’t meant to be.
"I look forward to hopefully having some more of those battles in the future."
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