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Hamilton wins in Great Britain

Writer's picture: Andrew ZarbAndrew Zarb


Lewis Hamilton has won the 2017 British Grand Prix after a quite spectacular drive from the Brit, and not without drama towards the end.

On the formation lap, Jolyon Palmer suffered a hydraulic failure, and this caused an aborted start and thus an extra formation lap. At the start, Hamilton got away well, even if he had to cover off Kimi Raikkonen going into turn 1. Meanwhile, Verstappen managed to leapfrog Vettel into third place.

On lap 1, at Becketts corner, Toro Rosso team-mates Carlos Sainz and Daniil Kvyat collided, prompting the former to retire from the race and a Safety Car (SC) was deployed. At this point, the order was: Hamilton, Raikkonen, Verstappen, Vettel, Hulkenberg, Ocon, Bottas, Perez, Vandoorne and Massa. The SC came in at the end of lap 4, and Hamilton got a good restart and maintained his lead of the race. Bottas managed to get past Ocon and soon after he passed Nico Hulkenberg as well.

A battle was developing between Red Bul's Max Verstappen and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel for third place, and this was also enabling Bottas (of Mercedes) to close up. Vettel tried one move on Verstappen on lap 11 and it looked like it would come off, but Verstappen held firm and put in a very stern defense. Verstappen was less than impressed with Vettel though, and said over team radio:

"He wants to play bumper cars or something?"

By lap 16, Hamilton was able to stretch out his lead to Kimi Raikkonen to 4 seconds. Vettel tried once again to overtake Verstappen, but still couldn't get past. Vettel had had enough of being stuck behind Verstappen, and pitted on lap 18. Verstappen pitted a lap later, and, coupled with a slightly slow stop for the Dutchman as well as a quick out lap from Vettel, saw Verstappen re-emerge behind Vettel.

At this point, the order was: Hamilton (who had yet to pit), Raikkonen (who had yet to pit), Bottas (who had yet to pit), Vettel and Verstappen. On lap 24, Raikkonen pitted for soft tyres and re-emerged behind Bottas but still ahead of Vettel. Hamilton pitted a lap later, and re-emerged still in the lead, with a pit stop of 2.3s. Bottas was yet to pit, and his engineer was encouraging him to push on, saying: "Critical stage - anything you can do will benefit us later...". At this point, it seemed that the Mercedes guys believed Bottas would be quick enough to overtake Sebastian Vettel (who Bottas would have re-emerged behind after his pit stop).

Bottas eventually pitted on lap 32, switching onto the super-soft tyres, re-emerging behind Vettel (as expected) but crucially ahead of Max Verstappen, with Bottas being 5.3s behind Vettel albeit on fresher tyres. Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso seemingly had an engine issue and claimed to have no power, and the McLaren team told him to retire. At this point, the order was: Hamilton, Raikkonen, Vettel, Bottas, Verstappen, Hulkenberg, Ricciardo, Magnussen (who had yet to pit), Ocon and Perez. Hamilton was complaining of tyre blisters.

Bottas was really closing in on Vettel, and now the gap to Vettel was down to just 2.6s. With just 10 laps to go, the gap was down to 1.9s, and a lap later Bottas took a second out of Vettel, and then Bottas and Vettel went wheel-to-wheel, but Vettel held on, although he locked up and this had a severe effect later on in the race, as Vettel had a flatspot on his tyre. One lap later, Bottas managed to get the move on Vettel done for third place, and he was gradually beginning to close up to Kimi Raikkonen in second place.

However, the drama was not over there. On lap 49, Kimi Raikkonen began to slow down with a sudden delamination (puncture) on his left front tyre. Max Verstappen also pitted, despite him not needing to (this was ultimately a precaution to prevent him from suffering the same issue). If you decided to make yourself a cup of tea after this, you would have missed out on further drama, as suddenly Sebastian Vettel suffered the same issue as Kimi Raikkonen on lap 50, and this dropped him down to seventh place. However, there was no stopping Lewis Hamilton from taking his 5th British Grand Prix victory, and he crossed the line on lap 51 to take his 4th consecutive British Grand Prix win, and his 4th win of the season. Valtteri Bottas crossed the line in second place to make it a Mercedes 1-2, despite him starting from 9th on the grid. Kimi Raikkonen crossed the line to ultimately finish in third place and on the podium, though he was extremely disappointed as he was heading for an almost-certain second place. Then Max Verstappen finished fourth, whilst Daniel Ricciardo managed to overtake Nico Hulkenberg for fifth place, with the latter finishing in 6th. World Championship leader Sebastian Vettel crossed the line in 7th, with the two Force Indias of Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez following in 8th and 9th respectively. Felipe Massa crossed the line in 10th to collect the final point. The rest of the classified drivers were: Stoffel Vandoorne, Kevin Magnussen, Romain Grosjean, Marcus Ericsson, Daniil Kvyat, Lance Stroll and Pascal Wehrlein. Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz were the two retirees, whilst Jolyon Palmer did not start the race.

World Championship standings:

Sebastian Vettel - 177 points

Lewis Hamilton - 176 points

Valtteri Bottas - 154 points

Daniel Ricciardo - 117 points

Kimi Raikkonen - 98 points

Max Verstappen - 57 points

Sergio Perez - 52 points

Esteban Ocon - 43 points

Carlos Sainz - 29 points

Nico Hulkenberg - 26 points

Felipe Massa - 23 points

Lance Stroll - 18 points

Romain Grosjean - 18 points

Kevin Magnussen - 11 points

Pascal Wehrlein - 5 points

Daniil Kvyat - 4 points

Fernando Alonso - 2 points

Jolyon Palmer - 0 points

Marcus Ericsson - 0 points

Stoffel Vandoorne - 0 points

Antonio Giovinazzi - 0 points

Constructors' Championship standings:

Mercedes - 330 points

Ferrari - 275 points

Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer - 174 points

Force India-Mercedes - 95 points

Williams-Mercedes - 41 points

Toro Rosso - 33 points

Haas-Ferrari - 29 points

Renault - 26 points

Sauber-Ferrari - 5 points

McLaren-Honda - 2 points


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