Hamilton Victorious As Rosberg's Luck Runs Out

Lewis Hamilton took the spoils in the British Grand Prix to reignite his championship challenge, as Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg suffered a costly gearbox failure while leading.  Six years to the day since his first British Grand Prix win in 2008, Hamilton had it all to do from sixth on the grid after misjudging the conditions in qualifying and aborting his final lap, but victory number five for the year was actually rather straightforward.  

Hamilton was not to be denied on home soil despite
his mistake in qualifying. (Credit: Mercedes AMG F1)

A sluggish start from front-row man Sebastian Vettel dropped the German to fifth and once the lack of dry-weather pace from the McLarens materialised, Hamilton was soon up to second behind only his team-mate. A long first stint opened up the possibility of running a one-stop strategy to jump the two-stopping Rosberg in the pits, but this was to prove academic when Rosberg was forced into retirement – his first of the season – on lap 28.  Such was Hamilton’s advantage that he could afford a precautionary second pitstop to cover the possibility of a late safety car. He needn’t have worried however, cruising to the finish a comfortable 30 seconds clear of Williams driver Valterri Bottas and cutting Rosberg’s championship lead from 29 to just four points. 

For Bottas, who qualified a lowly 14^th on the grid, second place marked his best-ever finish in Formula One and his second consecutive visit to the podium after taking third in Austria. Fellow one-stopper Daniel Ricciardo completed the podium in third, less than a second ahead of Jenson Button, whose long wait for a podium at his home Grand Prix will continue for at least another year, but all eyes were fixed on the titanic struggle for fifth between Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard, who like Bottas was coming from deep in the field after misjudging the changeable weather in qualifying, earned himself a five-second penalty that dropped him into the clutches of Vettel for lining up ahead of his grid spot at the start, but pulled off a brave pass on the Red Bull around the outside of Copse as Vettel emerged from the pits for a second time on lap 34. What followed was a masterclass in defensive driving as Vettel, on tyres eleven laps younger and with the benefit of DRS, was repeatedly frustrated in his attempts to pass, the two champions using all of the road and more until finally Alonso succumbed to the inevitable with five laps to go.

Fernando Alonso fought hard for sixth place up
from 16th on the grid. (Credit: Scuderia Ferrari)

Behind them, Kevin Magnussen slipped to seventh, having run third at the end of the first lap, while Nico Hulkenberg maintained his 100% points scoring record in eighth, despite battling understeer all afternoon. Toro Rosso team-mates Daniil Kyvaat and Jean-Eric Vergne rounded out the points in ninth and tenth, despite the latter having to fight back from first-corner contact with Sergio Perez. 

That was far from the end of the first-lap drama however, with Kimi Raikkonen eliminated in a heavy first-lap shunt that registered 47G and brought out the red flags for almost an hour while the necessary barrier repairs were conducted. The Finn ran wide at Aintree and hit a bump trying to rejoin, which unsettled the car and spat him into the wall before coming to rest in the middle of the Wellington Straight. 

Kamui Kobayashi’s Caterham just managed to take avoiding action, but Felipe Massa wasn’t quite so lucky. The experienced Brazilian, celebrating his 200^th Grand Prix this weekend, nonetheless still had the presence of mind to throw his Williams into a spin, reducing the impact to a glancing blow which possibly saved Raikkonen from serious injury. Thankfully, the 2007 champion emerged from the car under his own power, albeit with a noticeable limp, and will be fit in time for the German Grand Prix in two weeks time.