Lewis Hamilton managed a fantastic victory in home soil at the Silverstone Grand Prix. After a tiny but costly bad call on the qualifying session that left him on the 6th grid spot, Hamilton recovered well to 2nd place by the 4th lap of the 52 lap race to hunt down team mate Nico Rosberg. He pushed hard and it seemed clear the gap was minimizing towards that 1st position while there was a lot of action behind him in the fight of the last podium position between no less than six drivers including Vettel, Alonso, Bottas, Ricciardo, Button and Magnussen.
Rosberg lost the gap to Hamilton while his tires were running out earlier than his team mate and while coming towards a Marussia to be lapped perhaps the gear change que made provoked the gearbox to let up so he had to park the Mercedes. Hamilton was catching up pretty fast and perhaps the pressure had something to do with it. It´s clear the Mercedes is faster than the rest, clearly faster, to the point that by the time Roseberg had to abandon, Hamilton had a time advantage of more than 40 seconds to third place Valtteri Bottas in the Williams Martini. Still, some reliability issues are still haunting the Mercedes drivers and today was the German´s turn which means the advantage he had over Hamilton was reduced to 4 points. We are still yet to see a close fight between these two excellent drivers in the silver arrows.
Williams on the other hand suffered in qualifying with the rain and started way back in the field and then Massa had no way to avoid spinning Raikkönen in the Ferrari after he ran wide and then lost control coming back to the racetrack. Still, it was really impressive the way Massa avoided a collision which could have been totally more serious for the Iceman and himself. On the other hand, Bottas entertained us all with impressive maneuvers with the other Williams while he made up ground passing car after car and all the good names of the sport on them, this young driver has really made an impression on the grid this year. We only hope they can bring the fight to the Mercedes but yet have to riddle out the qualifying. Bottas ended 2nd overall today in his second podium in F1 and a consecutive one after Austria.
Australian Daniel Ricciardo, holding on to his tires, grabbed 3rd place in style with the Red Bull beating local Jenson Button with the McLaren by less than a second to the checkered flag. Strategy paid off for Ricciardo, a nice complement by the team, I guess, after they weren´t ready to send him out again for a second lap in the final session of qualifying yesterday since they thought conditions wouldn´t improve, which they did… Button was left podium-less once again at his home Grand Prix but left the fans satisfied with the McLaren being probably under paced compared to other teams at the moment. Fifth went to Vettel who had a pretty enjoyable brush with Ferrari´s Fernando Alonso, and I mean enjoyable for the audience because from the constant waning from both drivers, especially Alonso, on the radio, it seems they are there to drive and the sport is not fun anymore…. well, at least we (the fans and viewers) get excited… And I don´t mean by this to offend any Alonso or Ferrari fans, on the contrary, what Alonso did with the Ferrari coming from 13th, with the 5 second sanction imposed, managing tires and all, it was a remarkable work… for the people who race, the way he managed his racing lines understanding he didn´t have a good top speed to defend or attack it was simply brilliant, but his comments on the radio and after the race that Vettel was going off the track, even using DRS… I think they just express his frustration of the moment. Kevin Magnussen finished 7th behind the Spaniard, consolidating another good driver by the rookie that brought the second McLaren home with some good points to the championship which keep them in the fight for the 3rd place in the Constructor´s Championship 16 points behind Ferrari, 13 to Williams and 1 to Force India.
Apart from that, Lotus´ Pastor Maldonado somehow managed to finish 50 laps of the 52, after being airborne for a moment after a collision with Sauber´s Esteban Gutiérrez which looked like payback to many of us, and which was also sanctioned by the FIA with 3 grid positions for the Mexican. Next race will be held at Rosberg´s home Grand Prix, Germany at Hockenheim on July 20th.
- Copyright @ Wise Racing World
