Revealed: The big question hanging over F1 after Lewis Hamilton’s British GP win

Lewis Hamilton ahead of Lando Norris.

With F1 coming alive with genuine battles for race wins, Dutch pundit Allard Kalff believes if F1 kept the rules stable for another five years, the entire field would be separated by a mere “two-tenths”.

After two years of Red Bull dominance, which included 21 race wins in last year’s 22-race season, this year there have already been six different winners in 12 races.

The British GP produced the sixth different winner of F1 2024

Although the majority of those wins have since gone the way of Max Verstappen, who has bagged seven out of 12, Sunday’s P2 at the British Grand Prix meant for the first time since 2022 he lost two races in succession.

Both the Austrian and Silverstone wins went the way of Mercedes, the first time since 2021 that the Brackley squad has won more than one race in a season, while the other victories belong to Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has called it a “convergence”, adamant that in “year three of these regulations, it is inevitable that you are going to get convergence” and with that some “strong competition”.

So strong that Dutch pundit Kalff has urged Formula 1 to keep the rules as they are, rather than introduce new cars in 2026, as the sport could then see “everyone” separated by a mere 0.2s.

“If you keep these regulations for another five years, you won’t believe your eyes. Then everyone will be within two-tenths,” he told Viaplay’s ‘In de Slipstream’ programme.

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It had Kees van de Grint, a former Bridgestone engineer, saying TV cameras didn’t have to search for the action at the British Grand Prix, it was right there at the front of the field – both in qualifying and the race.

“In this race you didn’t see anything in the back, because the director has to – rightly so – keep an eye on the first six cars. That’s what it’s all about,” he said.

“It’s not about who comes nineteenth or eighteenth, but about – let’s say – who’s in the top five. That’s what we need.

“Saturday’s qualifying was also fantastic. In qualifying you couldn’t say ‘Hamilton or Verstappen, he’s on pole’. You didn’t know until the last one crossed the finish line. And that’s what we want!”

“It was a great show, and I asked myself afterwards: do we really need new regulations?”

Alas, Formula 1 will not only put new cars but also new engines on the grid in 2026 with Martin Brundle declaring the sport has a “truly epic 18 months of racing before” the new rules come into play.

After Lewis Hamilton became the sixth winner in 2024, Brundle told Sky F1: “We only had three winners in all last season, and I have no doubt that we are in for a truly epic 18 months of F1 racing now, before the all-new 2026 cars appear.”

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