The world champion delivered a fearless display of front-running to register his third successive Silverstone victory ahead of Rosberg, whose bad day got worse with a 10-second post-race penalty which dropped him to third behind Max Verstappen.
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In a reversal of the scenes at Spielberg following last Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, where Hamilton and Rosberg collided on the final lap, Rosberg was booed by fans during the podium ceremony at Silverstone. The loss of one position closes his lead in the standings over teammate Lewis Hamilton to just one point.
Race stewards imposed a 10-second penalty for receiving help from his team via radio transmissions, in breach of the regulations that state the driver must drive the vehicle alone and unaided.
Stewards ruled that the advice he received broke regulations introduced to limit the amount of information teams are able to supply to drivers in those circumstances.
With Verstappen gaining quickly, Rosberg informed the team of a gearbox problem six laps from home.
Hamilton led every lap of a race that started under the safety vehicle in wet conditions but dried. “It is never plain sailing”, he said at the prize presentation.
Behind Hamilton, it was a more eventful race for second-place starter Rosberg.
“I’m glad that the good English weather came out”, he said afterwards. “For now though, it’s my time – our time – and thank you so much to everyone out there”. As frustration mounted, Fernando Alonso angrily condemned McLaren’s strategy while Williams driver Valtteri Bottas, who spun, rued “a really bad race” and admitted to “mistakes I will have to learn from”.
The penalty saw Rosberg’s Formula One championship lead over Hamilton cut to one point. In a radio call to help resolve the problem, his engineer told him to “chassis default 0-1” and to “shift through” seventh gear, otherwise they risked not finishing. After being given illegal advice over the radio that he says saved the auto from a certain retirement, he was handed a ten second time penalty after finishing second that would demote him to third.
In Austria, the race before Silverstone, Mexican Sergio Perez crashed his Force India vehicle after a brake failure that the team felt unable to inform him about even for safety reasons.
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In sixth and seventh places were Force India drivers Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg, respectively.
