Hamilton takes Silverstone sprint pole for Ferrari
NXTbets Pro | Published On: July 6, 2026
Hamilton takes pole
Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton took Sprint pole at Silverstone and did it with authority across the whole session. Hamilton beat Kimi Antonelli by 0.011 seconds after posting a fastest lap of 1:28.376 in Sprint Qualifying. He also set the pace in practice and led all three Sprint Qualifying segments, which put him at the front of the field from start to finish. The result gave Hamilton his first pole in either Formula 1 qualifying format since the previous season’s Sprint in China. It also added a sharp early highlight for Ferrari at one of the sport’s biggest stages, with Hamilton finding the speed when the track tightened up and every lap mattered. The margin over Antonelli was tiny, but Hamilton kept the decisive edge when the session reached its final runs. That speed showed up early and held through the end of the session. He did what he needed to do in each segment and turned it into the top spot on the Sprint grid.
Silverstone top 10
Max Verstappen qualified third, with Charles Leclerc fourth and George Russell fifth. Those three gave the front half of the grid a familiar look, but Hamilton’s lap split them at the sharp end and kept Ferrari in the spotlight. Lando Norris overcame damage to his car in SQ1 and still reached SQ3, where he qualified sixth. Oscar Piastri took seventh, Isack Hadjar was eighth and Liam Lawson finished ninth. Arvid Lindblad rounded out the top 10 in tenth. The order gave the session a tight spread through the midfield and the lower edge of the top 10, with small gains deciding who advanced and where they landed once the final segment began. Norris’ recovery from the early setback stood out because he kept the car moving through the rounds and still reached the final stage. Hadjar, Lawson and Lindblad all secured places inside the top 10 after clean runs when the field was under pressure to deliver one fast lap after another. The result set up a compact sprint field behind Hamilton and Antonelli, with several of the usual front-running names mixed into the next group.
Silverstone conditions
Track temperatures reached 44 degrees Celsius during Sprint Qualifying, and the session asked a lot from the cars and drivers across the lap. Hamilton still found the quickest pace in that heat, and he did it while staying fastest in practice and through each of the three Sprint Qualifying segments. That combination of speed and consistency mattered because the field had little time to recover from mistakes once the laps started to count. Hamilton turned that into a pole that came by 0.011 seconds over Antonelli, a margin that left no room for slack in the final order. The lap time of 1:28.376 stood as the benchmark for the session and gave Ferrari the top starting spot for the Sprint. The result also reset the conversation around Hamilton’s qualifying form, since he had not taken a pole in either Formula 1 qualifying format since the previous season’s Sprint in China. Silverstone produced a tight, fast session at the front, and Hamilton finished it with the clearest answer. His run controlled the headlines from practice through the final classification. The rest of the top 10 trailed into place behind him, but the pole belonged to Hamilton from the first moments of Sprint Qualifying to the last.
