Hamilton takes popular home win at Silverstone as Rosberg retires

Lewis Hamilton closed the gap to teammate and title rival Nico Rosberg to just four points after taking a popular home win in front of his home crowd at Silverstone.

Hamilton, who started the race from a lowly sixth on the grid, gained two positions in the opening sequence of the corners before red flags caused by an incident involing Kimi Raikkonen halted the race. The passionate British fans waited nearly for an hour for the action to resume while the armco barriers were replaced.

When the race restarted, Hamilton went past the two McLarens to inherit second place behind Nico Rosberg. On the strategy side, his intention was to do a comparatively long stint on medium tyres before a short middle on the harder tyres, which was presumed to be slower of the two. However, as it turned out, when Hamilton did switched to the primes, he was almost a second faster than his teammate.

Unfortunately, Rosberg soon had to retire his car due to a mechanical problem, devoiding fans of a great battle for the lead of the race. It was a big blow for the German who held a 29-point advantage over Hamilton coming into the race.With Rosberg out of the race, Valtteri Bottas finished in a career-best second place with a heoric drive from 14th on the grid. The result meant that the Grove-based outfit overtook Force India for fourth place in the Constructors standings and are now within touching distance of old rivals Ferrari.Daniel Ricciardo, on a one stop strategy, kept Jenson Button at bay during the closing stages of the race to record his fourth podium of the season. Button, who has never finished on the rostrum on home turf, missed another chance by just 0.9 seconds.Sebastian Vettel came on top in an intense battle between him and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso as they banged wheels around the high downforce Silverstone circuit. Both the drivers were visibily unhappy with each other about the way they went about the racing and track limits.Seventh place went to the second McLaren of Kevin Magnussen who had a lonely second half of the race, with no drivers in front or in his mirrors.Force India had a disapointing afternoon at a track which is next to their factory, with Nico Hulkenberg finishing eighth and Sergio Perez outside of the points in 11th after a first corner spat between him and Toro Rosso’s Jean Eric Vergne put him in 19th place for the restart. Either way, as predicted by us in our Friday Analysis, Force India simply didn’t have the race pace for the second race running, with Hulkenberg losing multiple positions during the course of the British Grand Prix with no apparent mechanical problems.The Toro Rossos of Daniil Kvyat and Jean Eric Vergne finished in their original order of ninth and 10th as they made a swift return to points following their double DNF in Austria.Outside the top 10, Sergio Perez came in 11th, Grosjean took 12th, Sutil finished in14th place while Chilton bagged 15th place after his drive through penalty. Pastor Maldonado was the last of classified finishers in 16th.Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen joined Nico Rosberg in the big names’ list of retirements while Marcus Ericsson and Esteban Gutierrez also failed to make it to the chequered flag.

By Rachit Thukral