HAMILTON HOLDS ON FOR ‘HEART IN THE MOUTH’ SILVERSTONE GLORY
Mercedes-Benz racer proves that to finish burst, burst you must finish…
Lewis Hamilton has acknowledged his survival instincts after dragging his crippled Mercedes- Benz home on Sunday for a seventh victory in the British Grand Prix.
The world champion led from pole and was set for an assured triumph until his front-left Pirelli failed with half a lap remaining in the Silverstone race.
He hauled the machine to the finish line to beat Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc inherited third place. Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas came home in 11th place after suffering a tyre failure of his own with two laps remaining.
Hamilton, who took his third 2020 win on the bounce to establish a 30-point buffer at the head of the points table, said: “In the heat of the moment you have the adrenaline flowing and the fight-for-survival instinct comes out and I was able to stay calm and measured and try to bring the thing home.
“But, of course, I was thinking of all the things that could have happened. If the tyre gave up in a high-speed corner, it would have been a different picture.”
Pirelli has pledged to investigate the spate of late-race tyre failures that almost robbed Lewis Hamilton of his seventh British Grand Prix triumph at Silverstone on Sunday.
A series of failures at the end of the race afflicted the front-left tyres of McLaren’s Carlos Sainz and the Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton. Hamilton’s rubber failed on the last lap of the race, and he was forced to wrestle his machine home.
Second-placed finisher Max Verstappen had stopped with two laps remaining in an effort to wrest fastest lap. If he had not pitted, the Red Bull man would have inherited the victory.
Pirelli will assess whether the punctures were due to debris on the track from earlier crashes or from Alfa Romeo driver Kimi Raikkonen’s front wing failure later on in the race.
World champion Hamilton, who pushed his advantage at the top of the table out to 30 points with his third grand prix win in a row, said: “It will be quite interesting to see what [Pirelli] come back with, because obviously they can see the tread in terms of what caused the failure.
“I’m convinced that it probably was debris. There was a lot of debris on the track, there was one car ahead of me that lost his wing, came off right in front of me on one of the laps.”
The tyre firm’s F1 boss Mario Isola said that running the tyres for a longer stint – up to 38 laps after an early safety car prompted many drivers to pit early – could be a reason for the dramas.
He said: “It could be high wear, because tyres with 38 laps or more on this circuit are quite worn, but I’m not saying that the wear is the cause of the issue. It can be debris, because we had the pieces of the front wing of Kimi that were on track, but also some other debris.
“So that’s why we want to investigate not only the tyres with a failure, but all the tyres used in the last few laps of the race, to understand if we find any other cut or any other possible indication on what happened.”
The late-race drama gifted third place to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, while Daniel Ricciardo’s Renault was able to pick up fourth place after Sainz’s puncture.
McLaren’s Lando Norris was fifth, while Alex Albon recovered to eighth in his Red Bull-Honda after an early-race collision and a penalty. British Williams driver George Russell was 12th.
Results
1 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-Benz) 1h28m01.283s; 2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull-Honda) +5.856s; 3 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari); 4 Daniel Ricciardo (Renault); 5 Lando Norris (McLaren- Renault); 6 Esteban Ocon (Renault); 7 Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri-Honda); 8 Alex Albon (Red Bull-Honda); 9 Lance Stroll (Racing Point-Mercedes); 10 Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari). Championship: 1 Hamilton 88; 2 Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes-Benz) 58; 3 Verstappen 52; 4 Norris 36;
5 Leclerc 33; 6 Albon 26.
Next race: 70th Anniversary
Grand Prix, Silverstone, August 9