Il Nuovo Postiglione - Hamilton sparkles in Silverstone sunshine

The 41-year-old Briton, showing great zest to perform in a car that he has called underpowered, clocked a fastest lap of 1min 29.260sec to finish 0.213sec clear of the 19-year-old Italian.

Hamilton's Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc was third, 0.599 adrift, ahead of George Russell, winner of last Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, in the second Mercedes, and Oscar Piastri of McLaren.

Four-time champion Max Verstappen was sixth for Red Bull ahead of defending champion Lando Norris in the second McLaren, Isack Hadjar in the second Red Bull, Audi's Nico Hulkenberg and Liam Lawson of Racing Bulls.

Hamilton showed he was in the mood from the start when he was at the head of the queue in the pit lane in bright sunshine and a track temperatures of 40 Celsius, near-perfect conditions in front of a big Friday crowd.

He then dominated despite interventions from Verstappen and the two Mercedes men.

Hamilton was soon on top of the times but times then tumbled. Verstappen took the initiative, followed in turn by Hadjar, Antonelli, Piastri and more before Hamilton regained top spot.

After Hamilton warned on Thursday that the new "hybrid era" formula would not deliver the same flat-out speeding at Silverstone – and that Ferrari's upgraded engine remained less powerful than those used by Mercedes and Red Bull – this was a welcome surprise for home fans.

Energy management, Hamilton had said, would require drivers to coast on some of the straights to save battery power.

"It's not going to feel or be the same," said Hamilton. "It's just going to be a completely different track."

Norris had agreed.

"At Silverstone, where you are at full throttle for so much of the circuit, you run out of battery very quickly and you're in a pretty complicated place. The battery starts to die before going into Copse, but you are still going pretty quickly. It won't look slow, but..."

On the track, Norris struggled to match the pace-setters.

Meanwhile, Antonelli, after switching to soft tyres, pulled nearly half a second ahead of team-mate Russell.

In response, Hamilton – one of many drivers and teams sporting special livery, in his case a yellow helmet and gloves – beat the Italian by two-tenths. On his favourite stamping ground, the old champion was showing he can still do his stuff.

Q.Bernardi--INP