Hamilton won the British Grand Prix for the ninth time at Silverstone, and Norris, who had the better chances, missed out on victory again, and it was undoubtedly the team's poor strategy that led to his defeat. As at the Austrian Grand Prix a week ago, strategy was once again the difference between success and failure, with the start of the race starting in dry conditions and 90% of the drivers opting to start on medium tyres, which was no problem, as rain would be a high probability of time, so staying on the track for as long as possible was the wisest option.
From lap 17 onwards, it rained over the track, and the two McLaren drivers benefited from the lead group staying on the track on medium tyres as much as possible, and it wasn't long before they took advantage of their better grip to take a position or two, at which point the team didn't call them pit for semi-wet tyres, but on lap 27, as the rain increased, forcing the drivers to pit for medium tyres, McLaren made the first mistake of the race, they could have made a two-car pit stop like Mercedes did. As a result, Piastri, who pitted a lap late, lost a lot of time, although Norris was not affected too much.
However, McLaren's biggest mistake in the race was the last pit stop after about 10 laps. Norris was still 2.2 seconds ahead of Hamilton on lap 38, and Mercedes made a pit stop to try to overtake Norris with an undercut, but the Silver Arrows put Hamilton on an old set of soft tyres, while McLaren put Piastri on medium tyres on the second pit stop, while Verstappen switched to hard tyres in the exact opposite way of Mercedes on the same lap. And the Aussie told the team via TR that the mid tyres were the best option, and that the McLaren drivers had two new sets of medium tyres compared to all other potential rivals, giving them a tyre advantage in the last stint.
But Woking Racing replaced Norris with an old set of soft tyres, which deprived him of an innate advantage over Hamilton and Verstappen, and strangely enough for the team to make his own choice, and Norris seemed to think that his tyres with the same formula as the leader were the most reasonable choice, but it turned out to be the worst option. So why did Norris opt for soft tyres? Speaking to the track engineers at the time, he said that he could overtake Verstappen on the track with the semi-wet tyres, so he thought that the same soft tyres as the leading Hamilton would allow him to overtake the Mercedes in front of him on the track, but this logic obviously did not hold.
Although the track conditions were complex and the grip was low, the decision should have been made directly by the team, as they could simulate the best results directly from HQ's algorithms, and it was clear that soft tyres were not the right choice. In addition, Hamilton had already overtaken Norris with an undercut, and Norris didn't get much off by chasing Hamilton with the same tires.
Although you Norris had some time to avoid an unsafe release after the tyre change, the fact is that Hamilton spent a total of 30.038 seconds in the pits compared to his and Hamilton's stoppage times, while Norris spent a total of 30.387 seconds, the latter only 0.35 seconds more in the pit stop, so this is not the main reason for Norris's failure.
On the same formula tyres, Norris could not match the same long-distance rhythm as Hamilton, and not only that, but he also consumed the tyres quickly, in contrast, Hamilton's lap time was more consistent, which showed that the seven-time winner managed his tyres more effectively than Norris, while Verstappen on hard tyres and Piastri on medium tyres showed more competitive lap times, while the Dutchman's advantage of almost a second and a half on the lap quickly closed the gap between him and Norris, and finally on lap 48, Verstappen overtook Norris.
Norris with soft tyres was the slowest of the top four riders, even more than 0.7 seconds slower than Verstappen in the final stint, while his team-mate was almost as fast as Verstappen, proving once again that Piastri was the right choice to switch to medium tyres. In other words, if Norris had switched to medium tyres for both stops, not only would he not have been overtaken by Verstappen, but he would have been able to easily overtake Hamilton on the track. If we look at Piastri's neutral lap time, Norris would have caught Hamilton's Saint on lap 43 and would have been able to take advantage of the tyres to overtake Hamilton on lap 46 without DRS.
All in all, Norris once again missed out on victory, not only by his own misjudgment, but also by the team's distrust of the analogues, which is perhaps the most ridiculous thing about McLaren, and Red Bull is confident that they will never let this happen.