Late decision costs Verstappen the win.
SILVERSTONE, England—August 2nd—Two safety car periods and a flat left front tire car laps from the end didn’t stop Lewis Hamilton on Sunday. The favorite son won his seventh British Grand Prix by holding off Max Verstappen by five seconds. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished third.
Lewis Hamilton: Until the last lap, everything was relatively smooth sailing. Then I noticed the shape of the tire shifting, and that was heart in the mouth. I didn’t know if it had gone down until I braked. Then just driving it, sometimes it will come off and break the wing. I nearly didn’t get around the last two corners.
For most of the race, Hamilton had no trouble taking the lead from Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, and kept it as high as 2.1 seconds. Others were making more of a train–from fourth to tenth–even following two safety car periods. Those occurred when Red Bull’s Alex Albon struck Haas F1 driver Kevin Magnussen at Stowe, spinning the Dane into the wall and retiring him from the race. On lap 12, Dani Kvyat crashed into Maggots when his front right tire deflated going into the corner. Although Kvyat was unhurt, he severely damaged his Alpha Tauri’s rear wing and back section.
The rest of the race seemed uneventful until Bottas suffered a right-front tire failure with a few laps to go. Bottas crawled into the pits, losing second to Verstappen.
At that point, Verstappen felt satisfied with second place and decided to pit for fresh tires in an effort to get the single point for fastest lap. Ironically, he would have won the race had he stayed on old tires. That’s because of Hamilton’s tire failure, which caused the Briton to hold on slowly to win by just a few seconds.
Hamilton might have dodged a bullet, but he knew there was trouble when it happened. “The car seemed to turn OK through Maggotts and Becketts, and then it was a real struggle in the last two corners. I could hear the gap coming down from 19 to 10. I could hear out of the last corner him going, ‘Nine, eight, seven,’ and I was just like, ‘Get back on the gas!'”
In a wild finish for the rest of the top ten, Daniel Ricciardo took advantage of the bad luck from Bottas and Sainz Jr. to take fourth for Renault. Teammate Esteban Ocon finished in sixth. Lando Norris took fifth in the only McLaren left in the race, while Pierre Gasly, Albon, Lance Stroll, and Sebastian Vettel finished seventh through tenth, respectively.
In the second American Haas F1 car, Romain Grosjean, who had been as high as fifth after staying out following the second safety car period, ended up 16th overall.
After four rounds of the 2020 F1 season, Hamilton leads the championship by 30 points over Bottas. Verstappen is in third 25 points behind the Finn.
The season continues next weekend at Silverstone when the sport celebrates its 70th anniversary of the start of the Formula One World Championship. Racing Point’s Nico Hulkenberg, who never began Sunday’s race with a failed power unit, expects to race next week for Sergio Perez, who is recovering from Coronavirus.
