Lewis Hamilton has questioned why the British Grand Prix started under the Safety Car, while his fellow drivers have criticised how long it stayed out.

As with the Monaco Grand Prix, rain before the race meant race control felt it was too risky to start the race as normal. The pack was led away under the Safety Car, which then stayed out for six laps.

Though Hamilton himself complained about aquaplaning in the early laps, he was heard saying "Come on Charlie, let's go," before it came in, a message aimed at FIA race director Charlie Whiting.

"I personally think we could have started from the grid," Hamilton said. "For sure there were patches all over the place and it would have been tricky but that's what Formula One is all about. But then we did stay for sure far too long. It was pretty much intermediates by the time they let us go.

"It would have been fun. I think it was just as wet and there was more water on the track in 2008 [Hamilton won his first British GP that year] when we started from the grid so that's why I said that."

Hamilton's comfortable race victory could have been very different, with the reigning world champion nearly running into the back of the slow-moving Safety Car at Copse.

"I had glazed my rear brakes and they were low on temperatures. I was trying to pick up them, but the safety car was so slow, you cannot imagine. Our car is so fast, and you cannot see that well behind the safety car, I braked and the thing wasn't stopping, so I nearly hit the safety car. It is a first, fortunately I didn't."

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Not everyone agreed with Hamilton's opinion. Jenson Button thought the track was too wet for a normal start, though he said the Safety Car stayed out for much longer than was needed.

"It was definitely a safety car start, it was super wet, loads of standing water," Button said. "But we waited a long time. The safety car should have come in two laps earlier.

"The problem is then everyone pits at the same time so you can't do anything different [strategically]."

Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz says the spray in the early laps was difficult for those running down the order.

"They played very safe," he said. "The start needed to be behind the safety car because you could see absolutely nothing in the middle of the field. But two laps to see how the track is, see where the puddles are, then go for it."

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel said the decision showed people do not have enough faith in Pirelli's extreme wet tyre.

"It depends where you are to be honest. I was looking forward to a start because it gives you a chance to move ahead. Obviously if you are in the lead then it's a safe bet that you will stay in the lead when you start behind the Safety Car. Initially I think it was the right call initially to start behind the Safety Car because there was quite a lot of standing water in the first half of the track, whereas the other half was quite dry.

"I think to criticise it's not really the call whether to start behind the Safety Car or not, I think to criticise is the fact that nobody has any trust in the extreme wets. So you'd rather take a lot of risk going on to the intermediates where there was a lot of aquaplaning in the beginning, simply because it's the quicker tyre. So I think we've mentioned a couple of times that the extreme wets are basically good enough to follow the Safety Car and then you want to fit the intermediates. So nothing has changed in that regard."

The early Safety Car, and a Virtual Safety Car triggered by Pascal Wehrlein spinning off, neutralised much of the strategy around the grid. After switching from wets to intermediates around lap five, the drivers then took on slick tyres between laps 14 and 16, with the majority going to the end on that set of tyres.