Here’s Giles Richards’ report on a British Grand Prix of rare late drama.
Here’s the final placings, overall standings to follow but Hamilton is 30 points clear from Bottas.
🏁 CLASSIFICATION 🏁
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
After an absolutely crazy final two laps, confirmation of Lewis Hamilton's seventh win at Silverstone
And the first one by crossing the line with a puncture!#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/ueDrd5BwOo
The podium trio speak.
HAM: "Down the straight the tyre deflated and that was a heart in the mouth moment... I was just praying to get it round. I was really chilled at the end. Bono was giving me the info (about Max). I've definitely never experienced something like that on the last lap"#BritishGP pic.twitter.com/svd9QYVb57
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
VER: "The tyres didn’t look great with ten laps to go. I pitted to go for the fastest lap but then Lewis got his puncture! But P2 is a good result for us and I’m happy with that"#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/oagaHvEENP
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
LEC: "It was a very tricky race - we got the best result that we possibly could have today. The car is not running to its potential but we are happy with this podium"#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/NuXsySE8dV
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Charles Leclerc, the forgotten man who came third speaks
It was a very, very tricky race. We have been very lucky. We have done the best of what we can do today. The performance of the car is not where we want it to be but I am very happy.
The British and German national anthems ring out, as full-mask order is obeyed across the board.
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Max Verstappen speaks
It’s lucky and unlucky. The tyres didn’t look great. Then Valteri got a puncture Then Lewis got a puncture. I am very happy with second. It was pretty lonely trying to look after the tyre.
Lewis Hamilton speaks
When I heard his [Bottas’] tyre went mine seemed fine so maybe it’s ok. The last few laps it was OK, and down the straight it deflated. It was definitely heart in the mouth. You could see the tyre was falling off the rim. I praying to get round, it nearly didn’t get round the last corner.
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Hamilton has a peek at his tyre. It was hanging off the wheel. That was close.
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That was a seventh British GP win for Hamilton, surely headed for his seventh world title, but it was a close-run thing. He almost suffered a similar fate to Bottas here. It’s a 30
LAP 50/52
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Disaster for Bottas as he's forced to limp back to the pits from P2 with damage to his wheel
He emerges all the way down in P12!#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/PwgYFUfVxR
🏁 TOP 10 FINISHERS 🏁
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Hamilton 📸
Verstappen
Leclerc
Ricciardo
Norris
Ocon
Gasly
Albon
Stroll
Vettel#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/Eqzj8C2FmB
Verstappen takes second as he takes the fastest lap. Leclerc took third and disaster for Bottas as he drops to 11th. Ricciardo was fourth, and Norris fifth. Ocon is sixth, Gasly seventh. Albon had eighth. Stroll ninth.
The big question is whether Verstappen could have won that without that pit stop? It seems his tyres were OK. He got the fastest laps but surely could have overtaken Hamilton on the last lap.
Lewis Hamilton wins the British Grand Prix!
52/52 Sainz has tyre problems. Hamilton is told to protect his car as his tyres are in a similar problem. Can he hang on? Verstappen is four corners behind. Hamilton grinds home. Verstappen is unlikely to catch him. Hamilton’s tyres hanging off the wheel.
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51/52 Verstappen come in to pit to see if he can set a fastest lap. Bottas’ problems gave him a free hit. Bottas pits as Leclerc and other pass. Bottas is in 12th. Albon is 10th. Will Hamilton’s car do the same?
50/52 Bottas has gone. Oh no. His car is all over the place and Verstappen has overtaken him. Drama! Bottas is back in third, the tread is off his tyre.
49/52 Stroll and Gasly are at each other and Gasly goes into ninth. Bottas is really struggling, and Verstappen has under six seconds to make up.
48/52 Bottas, who was complaining about his tyres, has dropped back on Hamilton. Is Verstappen going to be able to take advantage. Raikkonen has a problem and a bit’s dropped off his car.
47/52 Stroll has a black and white flag for that Ocon clash. Albon sets a fastest lap as he chases Vettel.
46/52 Ocon and Stroll clash again and Ocon goes into eighth. It could have been nasty, but Ocon pulled back. Albon takes Giovanazzi and has poor Vettel in his sights. In tenth is Gasly.
45/52 Albon takes on Russell and Giovanazzi in an attempt to climb from 14th into 12th, and he gets into 13th as Russell is struggling.
44/52 Grosjean and Ricciardo’s incident will be investigated after the race. Grosjean is still last so it will not have too much effect on his race - or anyone else’s.
43/52 Bottas’ tyres do look blistered. Just like Hamilton. Cause for concern? It’s probably down to Verstappen to put the cat among the pigeons.
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42/52 Stroll and Ocon’s battle continues to be the one to watch. Vettel is back in 11th, and struggling. He’s had a nightmare weekend. He might get 10th, but only because Gasly was a naughty boy.
41/52 Hamilton’s right front a cause for concern? Seems to be a blister. That seems to be a potential cloud on the horizon. Bottas also seems concerned. Verstappen now has the fastest lap. Could there be drama in the last ten laps?
FASTEST SECTORS 🚀
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Albon = P17
Hamilton = P1#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/XweXLexICM
40/52 Stroll is worried and telling his team so, and Esteban Ocon can overtake him soon, it seems likely. That’s the battle for eighth.
39/52 Vettel is back in 11th but seems to have been held off by Gasly. More business for the stewards to deal with.
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38/52 Kevin Magnussen is talking, and sounds hugely disappointed by that crash. He is rooting for Grosjean his Haas teammate. “Just gutted,” he says.
37/52 Grosjean, who has been running on old tyres, comes in to the pits. Footage of the Ricciardo overtake puts him in potential lumber. The pit was not great either, and he’s now in last place.
36/52 Antonio Giovinazzi of Alfa Romeo has a five-second penalty for a safety-car infringement. Grosjean passed by Ricciardo finally as the Frenchman does his best - and somewhat naughtily - to hold off the Aussie. It doesn’t work and that might have set the stewards’ nose twitching.
35/52 Max Verstappen is asking his team to keep drinking. He’s bored as he has had something of a lonely race in third. He is nailed on, barring a blow-out, to finish in that position. Romain Grosjean is holding off Ricciardo in seventh and having great fun out there.
34/52 Hamilton takes back the fastest lap. He and Bottas have been swapping those all race. Mercedes have the race all to themselves.
33/52 It’s not been a classic so far. Twelve laps of a safety car will do that.
32/52 Bottas sets a fastest lap again. He’s within 1.4 seconds of Hamilton.
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31/52 Some footage of Hamilton shows just how fast he is flying. Albon comes in for his five-second penalty and then has his tyres to come on. He drops to last place in the field - 17th - we have lost three for this race.
30/52 Verstappen is in third, way ahead of Leclerc. There is not much action happening up on the front two rows.
29/52 Mike Bowen on the safety car: “We’ve got quicker Tuk tukks here on Diani Beach Kenya!” Bottas has just set a fastest lap by contrast, and shaved almost half a second off Hamilton.
28/52 Nico Hulkenberg is talking. “It’s disappointing, we didn’t manage to start the car.” With any luck, he gets a run-in to the 70th anniversary race held here at Silverstone. “It is what it is,” he says, using the champion glib phrase du nos jours.
27/52 Stroll and Ocon clash again. Ocon takes the long way round and Stroll holds him off.
26/62 Grosjean has been warned over his clash with Sainz - a black and white flag - any more messing and he may well find himself getting a penalty.
25/52 Grosjean was passed by Norris to swap sixth for seventh. Hamilton is opening up his gap on Bottas - it’s up to two seconds now.
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24/52 Lando Norris fancies a crack at Grosjean and gets past him at Stowe corner. Ricciardo is holding off Stroll with some ease despite the Australian not being happy with his tyres.
23/52 Hamilton’s advantage on Bottas is dropping a little but the Mercedes are still imperious. It’s around 1.2 seconds at the moment and he has just set a fastest lap so all is well with the world champion.
22/52 Sainz fancies taking fifth off Grosjean. He’s not happy with Grojean’s changing of direction in the braking zone. Sainz eventually speeds by.
21/52 Albon is up for a penalty - five seconds - as the stewards have decided he was responsible for the Magnussen crash. It’s not been a good day for him.
20/52 Romain Grosjean, who didn’t swap tyres during the safety car delay, is in fifth but will need to pit at some point. He’s just enjoying the ride for the moment.
19/52 Back racing: Hamilton goes away from the front. The battle is between Ricciardo who holds off Norris who then attempts to go past Sainz. Sixth to ninth is where the action is. Sainz, Norris and Ricciardo are all involved in the fight for sixth. Stroll and Ocon are fighting over ninth.
18/52 Procession moves on, the shouting is over. The next lap will see the safety car take its leave.
17/52 The recovery job on that Haas car is taking a while; there is plenty of debris. Should have called the RAC. Hamilton still whingeing about the safety car. Leclerc is also complaining to the Ferrari garage about the same thing when they ask him to protect his tyres.
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16/52 Lewis Hamilton not happy about the speed of the safety car it seems. He’s not allowed to overtake them, of course, but he’s clearly getting antsy.
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15/52 This may take a while to clean up so another safety car delay will curb the action. Meanwhile, the teams try and work out their tyre strategy. Kyyat’s crash saw his tyre deflate as he launched himself into the side. That he walked clear said much of the safety modern cars have. His car is banjaxed.
14/52 Hamilton comes in for a pit stop, as do Bottas and Verstappen to keep the top three in order. Bottas has set the fastest lap at a certain point. Kyvat is very unhappy with himself and pushed the camera away.
13/52 Oh no! Wheels bouncing all over the show as Daniil Kvyat’s Scuderia AlphaTauri crashed into the fence at Maggott’s, and that’s it for him. He’s OK. The rest of the field heads in for a pit stop. It looked like a tyre went. “I am so f***king sorry,” he tells his team.
12/52 Lando Norris says he is struggling to keep Stroll off his tail.
11/52 It’s compressed out there as Lance Stroll and Lando Norris take on each other for seventh and eighth. Soft tyres are ruling out there for the moment.
10/52 Lewis Hamilton has the freedom of Northamptonshire. Seems like McLaren have targeted just one pit all race. It’s very tight in midfield.
9/52 Sebastian Vettel’s valedictory season at Ferrari continues to be troublesome. He is currently holding on to 10 under pressure from Pierre Gasly in the Scuderia AlphaTauri.
8/52 Hamilton has taken the fastest lap, and he’s lapping a second or so quicker than Verstappen. He has almost 1.5 seconds on Bottas too. The layman’s prediction looks likely to come in.
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7/52 Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon clash in midfield over eighth and ninth as Albon pits, perhaps to check the damage from that earlier prang but he has been put on a harder tyre.
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6/52 Off we go again, as Hamilton speeds away, fully eight car lengths of Bottas.
LAP 4/52
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Frustration for Magnussen as he is out of the British Grand Prix following that big collision with Albon 👀
We are still running behind the Safety Car as the Haas is cleared from the track #BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/6stxHQJKfY
5/52 Another lap on the safety car but it’s coming to an end at the start of the sixth.
4/52 The safety car keeps going as the drivers try to warm up their tyres by weaving. It appears it will take two more laps for them to have time to remove the Haas car.
3/52 Hamilton had a huge lead but that’s been wiped out by the safety car. Albon is trying to test out the suspension on the front of his car but Red Bull seem happy enough for him to continue. We are down to 18 racers.
2/52 Safety car in session as Kevin Magnussen of Haas spins off into the dirt after coming off Albon’s Red Bull. Magnussen’s race is over.
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And they're off
Vertstappen away well but Hamilton holds off him and Bottas. Leclerc goes well too. Hamilton leads. Leclerc and Verstappen change position. Hamilton-Bottas-Verstappen-Leclerc. Ricciardo overtakes Norris who is also behind Sainz. Hamilton is well clear.
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The tyre covers are off and the formation lap can begin. The engines are revving and off they go for a final look at Silverstone before it’s business time.
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The race is imminent, though there will be no Nico Hulkenberg.
CONFIRMED: @HulkHulkenberg will not take the start of the #BritishGP after an issue was discovered with his car leaving the garage to head to the grid. 😢
— BWT Racing Point F1 Team (@RacingPointF1) August 2, 2020
Michael Cosgrove emails in: “How does the layman think of F1 these days’ you ask. From a dedicated layman here in France. I’d love to see much more competition for the podium of course, and I fully understand the frustration of the many aficionados who are demanding rule changes, the finer details of which I would not understand may I add, but at the end of the day, for people like me it’s all about simply watching these beautiful machines in action, admiring the drivers’ skills, enjoying the odd thrills and spills, trying to understand the finer tactics of the teams as the race progresses, and generally enjoying the experience in our little way. That’s just what us laymen do. We might not know everything, and we may not have expert opinions to offer, but I would venture to say that without us F1 wouldn’t be the same.”
The Racing Point team are working hard on Nico Hulkenberg’s car. The bottom is off the car. Will he be able to take his place on the grid? It seems unlikely....oh, it’s off. That was a wasted journey. What a disastrous few days for Racing Point.
The British national anthem is sung by one lone singer, which is something of a poignant sight. A Spitfire has just done a fly-past to thank the NHS. What better way to thank the NHS than a warplane?
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Before the race begins, the drivers have released this video, and are taking the knee ahead of the start with Lewis Hamilton prominent.
END RACISM #WeRaceAsOne #F1 pic.twitter.com/pOKDuM8eYa
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Nico Hulkenberg, who has stepped in for Sergio Perez as he self-isolated after a positive test for coronavirus, seems to have a problem with his Racing Point car in the garage. Much of the rest of the drivers’ cars are now in situ on the grid. Hulkenberg was due to start 13th on the grid but he seems likely to have start the race from the pit lane. He had to make a mad dash from Germany to take Perez’s seat and it would be a nightmare if he wasn’t able to start at all.
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Giles Richards spoke to Red Bull’s Alex Albon this week.
This event is the first British GP since the loss of Stirling Moss.
From the archive: David Coulthard on driving Silverstone.
There is no faster sequence anywhere in the world than the run through Copse, Maggotts and Becketts. You have to have the bit between your teeth in order to get hooked up and drive quickly. It all starts at the very first corner of the lap and it pays to watch the cars going through Copse and appreciate their speed. Even for me as a driver, when I take a moment to watch, I think, ‘Fuck, that’s impressive.’ There aren’t many corners like Copse in the world. And Silverstone has four.
You approach Copse at 180mph in seventh gear. The only reason you come off the power is to get the deceleration necessary to accept sixth. The corner itself would be seventh gear, but the reduction of speed through the actual cornering forces means you would be too low on revs on exit if you stayed in seventh. That’s one of the difficulties for the driver.
Sky Sports talking of having the fans back at Silverstone next year. Does that seem hopeful? A little at this stage but let’s hope they are right. Some nice footage of Nigel Mansell with the fans in any case. Those who couldn’t make it this year can at least rest their eardrums.
Preamble
How does the layman think of F1 these days? Lots of expensive cars rev their engines and then Lewis Hamilton speeds away and wins the race. That’s been about the size of it for the last few years. Still, though, this is the British Grand Prix, in the first half of a double-header at the venerable old track; remember when it was going to get banished from the schedule? Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas tied up the front row of the grid for Mercedes in qualifying with Max Verstappen for Red Bull in third and then Charles Leclerc in fourth, which was a better performance from Ferrari.
It’s a cloudy and windy day in Northamptonshire, and it’s the midfield battle which may well throw up the most intrigue with Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari at tenth on the grid. Lando Norris, Britain’s latest petrolhead ingenue, is in fifth in his McLaren. That’s where the action is likely to be.
STARTING GRID: BRITISH GRAND PRIX 🚦
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 2, 2020
Here's how the drivers will line up when the lights go out at Silverstone on Sunday 👀#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/b4UnBrPVag
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