The five-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, is surely back to business in front of his home crowd in Silverstone as he and teammate Valterri Bottas dominated Formula One’s latest race, disallowing any possible entry from other teams and drivers.
The battles were (1) between the Mercedes team mates; and (2) Ferrari versus RedBull. And yes, RedBull’s Pierre Gasly included.
Although Bottas was last Saturday’s pole winner, (and he had openly admitted during the post-race press conference that he is hungry for a podium win) he only bagged the second position with a huge grim. He was ultimately looking forward to another triumph in this year’s British Grand Prix, but Hamilton unwillingly paved to win as he is focused on making his recent success a historical, even considered legendary.
What’s going on with Mercedes?
What difference did the team mates make that made the other come in first? The tyres.
Bottas started with medium, and then he went on with his first pit stop using another set of medium, but finally he concluded the race with soft tyres. On the other hand, Hamilton started with medium and ended with hard. Besides skills, experience and performance, technical aspect separated the drivers.
Why difference in tyres? This is obviously to test Mercedes’ construction performance. Their speed was outstanding, a far cry from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, with 5.189 seconds away from the second (Bottas); he tried to split the Mercedes team mates but failed.
And Ferrari?
Sebastian Vettel started at position six, which is atypical for the four-time world champ. Then at lap 37, the German collided with RedBull’s Max Verstappen sending both to the gravel due to late braking by the former. As a result, Vettel was slapped with a ten-point penalty. He did not even recover emotionally from the crash, sending him to a dreadful position of 16. Many speculated that without such collision, the Dutchman might have finished second. Of course, a race is a race. We could only assume.
On the other hand, his team mate, Leclerc, continued to maintain his confidence and successfully secured the third spot against his adversary Verstappen until the very end. The entertaining rivalry between the two 21-year olds kept F1 fans on the edge. Eyes were focused on both despite Mercedes’ domination. They were overtaking each other, wheel-to-wheel not only in the tracks but even during pit stops. In fact, Verstappen’s team broke the record of the fastest pit stop in F1 history. In the end, the Monagesque maintained his initial position; and both have kept their strife very clean.
Where is Haas in all this?
Team mates, Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen, made contact damaging each other due to the latter not allowing enough room to the former as early as lap one resulting to their inability to continue the race. Of course, their outrageous driving has sent them to the team principal’s office and has got Guenther Steiner disappointed and upset.
And Alfa Romeo?
Antonio Giovanazzi spun out of control during lap 20 ended up in the gravel, which as they say, helped indirectly Mercedes’ Hamilton to win the race. Do you agree with this incident?
