VETTEL WINS THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN!
FERRARI TOPS A SILVERSTONE THRILLER
Lewis Hamilton might not have been able to claim a record-breaking sixth British Grand Prix victory, but one day he will surely rank his charge from the back of the field to second place at Silverstone among his most accomplished drives.
Hamilton had dug deep to secure pole position at Sebastian Vettel’s expense on Saturday, but a combination of wheelspin away from the grid and a tap from Vettel’s Ferrari team-mate on the opening lap meant that effort was squandered. Lewis would later describe that manoeuvre as “interesting tactics” but the damage was done.
Over the course of an incidentpacked and dramatic 52 laps, Vettel had to fight for the lead with Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas before the second Mercedes’ tyres let go, finally enabling Hamilton to get close – but not close enough – to the victory he craved.
Qualifying
One driver was guaranteed to be eliminated in Q1: Brendon Hartley. His Toro Rosso’s suspension collapsed at high speed during practice and pitched him into the wall, damaging his car badly enough for him to need a new one built up overnight around a new tub. After a precautionary suspension change his team-mate Pierre Gasly was cleared to run in qualifying and duly escaped the Q1 drop zone, leaving the usual suspects fighting to heave themselves out.
Claire Williams buried her head in her hands as both her drivers exited Q1 messily. Lance Stroll lost his FW41 under braking at the end of the Wellington Straight and skated off through the gravel in full view of the no-doubt disapproving denizens of the BRDC clubhouse, briefly bringing out the red flag so the car could be recovered. Barely had the action restarted than Sergey Sirotkin went off dramatically at Stowe, requiring a precautionary visit to the garage. He rejoined with three minutes on the clock but was unable to hustle the truculent Williams around quickly enough to proceed to Q2.
Both Williams drivers’ incidents were consistent with the effects of the FW41’S main vice: a rear diffuser that’s prone to stalling, making it highly unstable under deceleration. A new rear wing spec for this weekend was having the unforeseen effect of rendering this behaviour even more destructive, so overnight the team elected to revert, meaning both cars would start from the pitlane.
Elsewhere in the midfield, teammates’ fortunes were considerably less intertwined. Fernando Alonso described his performance for Mclaren as “beyond the limit” and “without a doubt the best qualifying of the year”, even though he’d made Q3 in
Spain and Monaco and was destined to miss out here. Alonso was almost a second faster than his team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne, who clouted one of the ‘sausage kerbs’ that guard against track limit violations and appeared to dislodge part of his Mclaren’s floor. That left him 17th, the second slowest, and Vandoorne later described his car as “undriveable”.
Carlos Sainz’s Renault was the surprise casualty of Q1 after he was inadvertently held up by Kevin Magnussen’s Haas on his fast lap. He ended the session 16th, 0.057s away from making it through to Q2 at the expense of Gasly, while team-mate Nico Hulkenberg cleared the bar with a late surge that left him safely in the top 10.
Only one Force India and one Sauber would escape Q2. Esteban Ocon squeaked through to Q3 as Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez, Alonso, Gasly and Marcus Ericsson all failed to usurp him from 10th place in the dying moments of Q2. Hulkenberg was just a tantalising five hundredths short, while once again the remarkable Charles Leclerc left his Sauber team-mate Ericsson in the shade (to the tune of half a second), earning himself a place in the top-10 shoot-out.
For Q3 all eyes were naturally on the much-anticipated battle for pole between Hamilton and Vettel. Could Ferrari summon the pace to challenge Mercedes? And was Vettel in a position to unlock that pace, since he’d sat out the final moments of practice with what Ferrari described as a “neck nuisance”?
In the first Q3 runs Vettel came out on top, setting a new track record of 1m25.936s to edge Hamilton into second place by 0.057s, well clear of the chasing pack led by Bottas. But the home crowd still believed, and Hamilton fed off their energy to unleash a simply devastating lap on his second run. He set a new personal best in the first sector and went fastest of all in the second over the course of a mighty final flying lap, neatly quelling a rear-end slide at Vale to cross the line in 1m25.892s, a new record. It was, crucially – and perhaps appropriately, given his race number – 0.044s faster than Vettel, who was unable to better his own time on his second run.
Kimi Raikkonen did summon more speed on his final run and came within a tenth of Hamilton’s time, but by this point the crowd were thoroughly torn between remaining in their seats to congratulate Lewis and scarpering towards the nearest big screen showing the England vs Sweden game. His feat passed almost unnoticed. Bottas, too, improved on his final run, but a moment at Club left him 0.325s off the pole time.
“It was so close,” said a visibly shaking Hamilton after he climbed out of the cockpit to acknowledge the crowd. “I gave it everything for you guys [the home crowd]. The Ferraris pulled something out for Q3 and without you guys we couldn’t have done it.
“For me it felt like one of the best laps I’ve ever been able to produce, the most pressurised lap that I’ve had.”
“It was a very difficult session for us actually,” said Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, resolutely seeing the glass as half empty. “We thought we might have a little bit more of a margin, and having two Ferraris behind us is not good for the race start.”
While Bottas was adrift from the leading trio in terms of pace, he had plenty in hand over the Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo in fifth and sixth, particularly Ricciardo, whose malfunctioning DRS system cost him half a second to his team-mate and left him close to the Haas duo of Magnussen and Romain Grosjean in seventh and eighth.
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