Hamilton wins epic British Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton fought off a strong challenge from the Williams team, his teammate Nico Rosberg and mother-nature to secure his fifth win of the season and a third career victory at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Despite a poor start in which he and Rosberg lost out to the Williams cars, Hamilton fought his way back to lead after his first pit-stop, before judging the timing of his second stop perfectly as the rain began to fall to take the win ahead of Rosberg and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in the best race of the 2015 F1 season so far.

After an Austrian GP in which Hamilton had been outperformed by Rosberg, a result that saw his championship lead over his teammate cut to ten points, the Brit knew he needed a good result on home turf at the historic Silverstone circuit to keep a step ahead of Rosberg.

Rosberg was the least of Hamilton’s worries at the race-start however as both Mercedes cars bogged down at the lights, allowing the Williams cars of Felipe Massa and Valterri Bottas to slot into first and third respectively.

The Safety Car was quickly called out to deal with a first lap accident that saw both Lotus cars and the luckless Jenson Button retire from the race, but Hamilton, in his attempts to retake the lead from Massa at the restart, ran wide at the final chicane and ended up losing second-place to Bottas, and only just staying ahead of Rosberg.

The next several laps saw Massa, Bottas, Hamilton and Rosberg pull well clear of the rest of the field, with just a couple of seconds covering the top-four at any one time. Bottas was clearly faster than his teammate, but could find no way past Massa as the top-four remained in formation.

Hamilton was the first of the four to make his pit-stop on lap 20, and it proved to be a good call as he jumped the two Williams cars to lead the race, while Rosberg was left frustrated as he remained behind Massa and Bottas after the stops.

At this point, Hamilton’s victory seemed assured as he pulled clear of Massa, who was still keeping Bottas and Rosberg behind him, but the arrival of rain around 15 laps from the end threatened to throw everything that had happened before out of the window.

It certainly did for Williams, as both cars were noticeably slower in the drizzly conditions, allowing Rosberg to overtake the pair of them, before quickly closing the gap to Hamilton as everybody tried to work out when to change to intermediate tyres as the rain got progressively heavier.

Hamilton made the call to switch tyres with ten laps remaining, and his timing proved to be perfect as Rosberg was far slower on the next lap as the track got wetter, such that by the time the German completed his stop, Hamilton was well clear as he cantered to victory in front of his home fans.

Despite being well off the pace in dry conditions, Vettel found an extra gear in the wet as well as timing his stop correctly to finish third ahead of Massa and Bottas, with the latter only just taking fifth ahead of the fast-finishing Red-Bull of Daniil Kvyat.

Nico Hulkenberg, Kimi Raikkonen (who fell from fifth to eighth after mistiming his second stop), Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso completed the top 10, with Alonso finally managing to score his first point of the season in the abject McLaren, as he benefited from only 13 cars finishing the race, the lowest number since the season-opener in Australia.

It was disappointing for Williams, as they didn’t even have a driver on the podium despite running first and second for the opening third of the race, but they did at least challenge Mercedes in a way they had not done so far this season, and the sort of challenge that Mercedes hadn’t really faced from any team since the Bahrain GP in April.

It was ultimately however an eighth win in nine races this season for Mercedes, although everyone else on the grid will be hoping this race is a sign that the German team can be run close, and may not have it all their own way for the rest of the season.

As far as the championship is concerned through, it remains a straight fight between Hamilton and Rosberg for the driver’s title, although Hamilton’s lead over Rosberg is now back up to 17 points, and he will fancy his chances of increasing that lead as F1 heads to Budapest in Hungary in three weeks’ time, a circuit where Hamilton has won on four occasions.