Lewis Hamilton's reputation as a clean F1 driver endorsed after ...

Zak Brown wasn’t worried as Lando Norris battled against Lewis Hamilton late in the British Grand Prix as he always knew the Mercedes driver would fight “hard” but “fair”.

Losing positions at the start of the grand prix when he went flying off the track on the opening lap, Hamilton was made to work for his podium finish at the Silverstone circuit.

That not only saw him pass several cars but also take on his compatriot Norris in a Brit on Brit podium battle late in the grand prix.

While Max Verstappen romped to the victory after a late Safety Car restart, the result of Kevin Magnussen’s power unit failure, Norris on the hard tyres came under pressure from Hamilton who was running the soft Pirellis.

The seven-time World Champion was all over the back of Norris’ MCL60 for several laps and it seemed to be a matter of time once DRS was made available, but Norris defended with everything he had until finally he broke Hamilton’s challenge.

Bringing his McLaren home in second place to record the team’s first podium of 2023, McLaren CEO Brown was quick to applaud Hamilton’s racing etiquette throughout their battle.

“I’m still nervous and the race is over!” he told Sky F1.

“The nice thing is you know Lewis is going to fight you hard, but he’s going to fight you fair – so at least you feel like you’ve got a driver around you that’s going to be sensible.

“And we knew what the hards if we could get past the first couple of laps then when we broke DRS, I would say we never felt like we were home free, but that was a big, big moment.”

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Although Hamilton wasn’t able to pass Norris, he did briefly draw alongside him at Copse – the scene of his 2021 crash with Verstappen.

Asked for his perspective of his tussle with the 23-year-old, Hamilton said: “I threw it up the inside into Turn 7 in the hope that I can finally… this is the moment that I’m going to make it happen and I pressed the overtake button.

“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.

“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 all the way until… I think it’s 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.”

The 38-year-old says he was impressed with the gains McLaren have made with their upgraded MCL60.

“The most impressive part was at the end following him. Honestly, it was just… it was nice… it was amazing to watch how good his car was in high speed. And I know that we’ve got some work to do to catch up.”

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