Formula 1: Lewis Hamilton took Max Verstappen’s 1st place trophy

Lewis Hamilton is so used to winning Formula 1 races that he walked off with the trophy earned by Max Verstappen in Sunday’s race at Silverstone Circuit.

For the first time in over a month when teammate Valtteri Bottas won the 2020 Formula 1 season opener at the Red Bull Ring, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton was not the winner of a Grand Prix.

Hamilton entered Sunday’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone Circuit on a three-race winning streak, his first streak of this variety in over a year, but he saw that streak come to an end with a runner-up finish behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who delivered the Milton Keynes-based team their first win since last November behind a perfect tire strategy.

However, Hamilton, whose 87 career victories rank second all-time behind Michael Schumacher’s 91, has gotten so used to winning — he has won more than half of the races that have been contested since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era in 2014 (65 of 126) — that he walked off with Verstappen’s trophy.

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Hamilton had led all but eight of the 193 laps that had been contested over the course of the past three races, but he led only 10 of the 52 laps around the 18-turn, 3.661-mile (5.892-kilometer) Silverstone Circuit road course in Silverstone, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom today.

Those laps led came due to him staying out on his tires after his rivals had come into the pits. Verstappen led a race-high 29 laps while Bottas led the other 13 after starting from the pole position. The trio exchanged the lead six times, with four having been counted as official lead changes. Verstappen’s pass of Bottas after making a pit stop for medium tires was the first on-track pass for the lead through the season’s first five races.

Hamilton leads Verstappen by 30 points in the driver standings heading into the Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with Bottas another four points behind Verstappen. This race is set to be broadcast live on ESPN beginning at 9:10 a.m. ET next Sunday, August 16.