‘Hulkenberg held his nerve for sixth’
Like the Haas duo, Leclerc essayed just one run in Q3 and made it count, going ninth – and over three tenths faster than Ocon. Remarkable on the face of it, but let’s not get too excited: the lap wasn’t as fast as he managed in Q2, and if he is elevated to Ferrari next year at Raikkonen’s expense then such details will be scrutinised more closely.
Race
As the lights went out, Hamilton dropped the clutch and spun up his rear wheels, allowling Vettel to blast through on the inside line into Abbey. Hamilton then ran slightly wide, enabling Bottas to follow Vettel through, and as Hamilton gathered himself under braking for Village, Raikkonen tried to send his Ferrari up the inside line, locking a wheel and tapping Hamilton into a spin.
Thus Hamilton rotated to the tail of the field, and the two Haas cars took to the run-off in avoidance of the spinning Mercedes and then collided with each other, rejoining in 10th and 19th. Raikkonen dropped two places, and although he made short work of Ricciardo (by disregarding track limits, Ricciardo claimed), the stewards subsequently hit him with a 10-second penalty for causing a collision.
Separately from the Village incident, Perez got crowded at the start as Alonso attempted to go around the outside, and the Force India spun violently to the inside and across the pitlane exit, narrowly missing the two Williams cars. The net winner of the first lap was Sainz, who threaded his way through the chaos to move from 16th to ninth as team-mate Hulkenberg gained five places to run sixth.
“Damn,” said Hamilton on the radio. “I think my car’s broken, man.”
Damaged maybe, broken most definitely not. By lap 11 Hamilton had cut through Stroll, Sirotkin, Vandoorne, Ericsson, Grosjean, Gasly, Alonso, Magnussen, Sainz, Ocon, Leclerc and Hulkenberg to run sixth, but with a seemingly cavernous 27-second gap to the leader.
Vettel stretched out his advantage over Bottas to more than five seconds at the head of the field, but as the lap count moved into double figures the leaders were clearly in tyre-conservation mode and the pace began to slacken.
That still wasn’t enough for fourthplaced Raikkonen, tucked in behind Verstappen and complaining that he was unable to pass without access to higher engine modes or a strategic ‘plan B’. Over the course of a number of tetchy radio exchanges, his engineer gently attempted to explain to him that even if he did pass Verstappen on track, the 10-second penalty would nullify the move.
“OK, then I’m not allowed to think any more,” huffed Raikkonen in response.
On lap 15 Raikkonen bolted for the pits to take on medium-compound Pirellis, rejoining 10th on the road after serving his penalty, but he had been far enough ahead of the chasing pack led by Hulkenberg to lose just one net position (to Ricciardo) as the pitstop sequence shook out.
Red Bull responded instantly but Mercedes had its eyes on the other Ferrari, waiting until Vettel pitted on lap 20 to follow suit with Bottas. That briefly enabled Hamilton to run second until he courteously let his team-mate through and then made his own tyres last until lap 25, emerging like the rest of the leading pack on mediums, and in sixth place behind the two Red Bulls and Raikkonen.
Vettel continued to lead from Bottas, with Verstappen and Ricciardo receding – enough for the Red Bull pitwall to begin to fret about what Ferrari might do with Raikkonen, especially when the second Ferrari seemed to be struggling for pace on the mediums. Finally, they elected to pre-empt a Raikkonen stop by bringing Ricciardo in for another set of softs with 22 laps to go.
Whether this was the right move proved academic, for almost immediately Ericsson’s Sauber swapped ends on him viciously as he turned in at Abbey with the DRS flap open, smiting the barrier hard enough for the medical car to be deployed as well as the safety car. Ferrari took the opportunity to stop both of its cars for soft tyres, but Mercedes decided to stay out, promoting Bottas to the lead ahead of Vettel and Hamilton to third ahead of Verstappen, Raikkonen and Ricciardo.
Bottas aced the restart, catching Vettel and Hamilton seemingly by surprise with an early dash at Stowe as the safety car pulled in. Raikkonen made a spirited bid to pass Verstappen at Brooklands, then again at Luffield, and the battle raged on until Copse – Verstappen on the outside, Raikkonen on the inside, and yet the Red Bull driver contrived to stay ahead, albeit by fudging the track limits somewhat. Six cars later, Sainz and Grosjean arrived together, both fully committed. Sainz’s rear-right wheel rolled over the top of Grosjean’s front-left, and at that corner, at that speed, their next destination was the barrier. Out came the safety car again.
The race was green-flagged again with 10 laps to run, and this time Raikkonen made short work of Verstappen for fourth place, aided by a brake problem on the Red Bull that would eliminate Verstappen on lap 47 of the 52.
Up front, Bottas was forced onto the defensive as his tyres went off. With six laps to go Vettel made a millimetreperfect lunge up the inside at Brooklands to reclaim the lead, followed in short order by Hamilton and Raikkonen. Bottas would spend the remainder of the race fighting Ricciardo for fourth place, slithering around on his expiring rubber.
Vettel crossed the line 2.2s ahead of Hamilton, followed by Raikkonen, who mumbled a post-race mea culpa when questioned about the incident on the first lap. Mercedes boss Wolff was more forthright, saying technical director James Allison had mused whether it was “deliberate or incompetence”.
Behind Bottas and Ricciardo, Hulkenberg held his nerve – Renault had put him on the hard tyres at his stop and then kept him out under the safety car – to finish best of the rest in sixth ahead of Ocon. Alonso prevailed over Magnussen in an ill-tempered laterace battle for eighth, describing Magnussen’s defensive tactics as “ridiculous”, while Perez regained 10th place in the stewards’ office after a collision with Gasly for which the Toro Rosso driver was penalised. Leclerc might have been in the mix for a top 10 finish, but he had to retire when Sauber sent him out of the pits with an incorrectly attached wheel.
So the sun set on the British Grand Prix with Vettel now eight points ahead of Hamilton in the drivers’ championship and Ferrari with 20 in hand over Mercedes.
“We take it on the chin,” said Lewis. “We keep pushing hard and we never give up.”