Why is Ferrari so fast at Silverstone? Lewis Hamilton says even the team doesn’t know. Ferrari's unexpected Silverstone pace surprises Lewis Hamilton: .

Ferrari shines at Silverstone despite missing out on Sprint victory

Ferrari may have missed out on victory in the Sprint Race despite Lewis Hamilton’s Sprint pole at Silverstone on Friday, but the Italian team remains one of the biggest stories of the British Grand Prix weekend.

Regardless of the result of Saturday’s 100-kilometre Sprint, which was won by Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Ferrari’s performance has already exceeded even the most optimistic expectations. Before the weekend began, the SF-26 was widely expected to struggle on the long straights of the historic Silverstone circuit.

Hamilton himself had warned during Thursday’s FIA press conference that Ferrari could lose as much as six tenths of a second per lap to its rivals because of deployment, battery management and, more generally, the power unit’s performance and straight-line speed.

Reality at Silverstone has completely overturned expectations

Those predictions have not only failed to materialise, but have been completely turned upside down by what has been seen on track so far. While qualifying and Sunday’s British Grand Prix will ultimately provide the final verdict, Ferrari’s pace has already caught everyone by surprise.

Remarkably, the SF-26s of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc recorded the highest top speeds through the speed trap at the end of the Hangar Straight, a result that few would have expected before the weekend.

Even more surprising is the fact that Ferrari itself appears unable to fully explain where this unexpected performance has come from. That was the impression given by Sir Lewis Hamilton after the chequered flag fell on Saturday’s Sprint Race.

Lewis Hamilton: “There are only questions, no answers”

“Honestly, I don’t have an answer,” the seven-time Formula 1 world champion admitted during the post-Sprint press conference when asked why the team’s pre-weekend predictions had been so dramatically contradicted by what happened on track.

“In fact, literally after Sprint Qualifying on Friday, during our debrief I asked the engineers, ‘Guys, what do you think? Yesterday you told me our weekend was going to look a certain way, and then everything turned out completely differently.’

“They replied that, at that moment, even for them there were only questions and no answers.”

With the qualifying session set to determine the starting grid for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Ferrari’s unexpected surge in performance remains one of the biggest mysteries of the Formula 1 weekend. Whether the SF-26 can maintain that impressive pace over a full Grand Prix distance is a question that will soon be answered.