Lewis Hamilton has paid tribute to the “outstanding” performance of his Mercedes team after he secured a fourth British Grand Prix victory.
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Hamilton’s victory completes a hat trick of consecutive home wins at the British GP for the Mercedes driver, and is his fourth win on home soil and 47th F1 career victory. It meant Max Verstappen was second.
The top four initially stayed out on the wet tyres but Hamilton, Rosberg and Verstappen eventually changed on a drying track on lap eight in a virtual safety vehicle phase.
Stewards rules the team breached rules when they told Rosberg to avoid damaged seventh gear. The Stewards will be pontificating on a ruling.
Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo finished fourth, half a minute behind Hamilton on another dominant weekend for the Mercedes steamroller.
Red Bull’s other driver Daniel Ricciardo finished fourth, and fifth went to Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen more than a minute off the pace of the victor.
Outside the points, it was business returning to normal at McLaren with 12th and 13th for Button and Alonso, and 11th and 14th places for Massa and Bottas in the Williams.
So a lead that stood at 43 points after Rosberg won the opening four races is down to just one after ten. It’s game back on. “We’ve got the best fans here, thank you so much”.
“I’m glad the good English weather came out”, Hamilton said playing to the home crowd on the podium.
Those fans took Hamilton to heart in rare fashion on Sunday: not only did the victor crowd surf during his celebrations, but the faithful fans also booed Hamilton’s arch-rival Rosberg – apparently in retaliation for the booing aimed at Hamilton after the recent race in Austria.
“I don’t mind who I have to go up against, I’m ready”.
Rosberg leads Hamilton overall by 168 to 167 points, with Raikkonen third on 106.
By lap 25, Hamilton was surging again, 5.9 seconds clear of Verstappen, who was defending against a rampant Rosberg.
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The Silverstone stewards are investigating whether Mercedes broke the sport’s new radio crackdown when they issued a series of the instructions to their driver as Rosberg grappled with the problem. While Rosberg was pursuing Hamilton, he received a message via the team radio informing him that he’d lost seventh gear.
