Ferrari punctures see Hamilton within one point of Vettel after fifth British GP win

Lewis Hamilton closed the gap to just one point at the top of the Formula 1 championship after leading every lap to take victory at the British Grand Prix, as Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen suffer late failures.

The Mercedes driver produced a faultless race, opening up a comfortable lead ahead of Kimi Raikkonen at the start, team-mate Valtteri Bottas made excellent progress from ninth and would pass Sebastian Vettel for third as he used the reverse tyre strategy.

But fortunes at Ferrari turned dramatically with three laps to go as both cars suffered punctures on consecutive laps. Raikkonen was struck first dropping to fourth, but Vettel suffered a more severe tyre failure along the Wellington Straight dropping multiple positions to finish seventh.

With this result, Hamilton almost erased the German’s championship lead with the Briton now just one point behind the Ferrari driver at the halfway point of the season.

The race started with a double formation laps after Jolyon Palmer’s Renault came to a halt with hydraulic problems. When the race began, Toro Rosso suffered a team’s worst nightmare as both cars collided at Becketts with Daniil Kvyat again judged to have caused the incident, after taking out two cars on the first lap in Austria, this time taking out team-mate Carlos Sainz through the high-speed corners.

That would cause a Safety Car, however, when the race resumed Hamilton was untroubled out front maintaining the pace and enjoying his home race with the huge crowd supporting him. Bottas made moves passing both Force India’s and Nico Hulkenberg for fifth after his gearbox penalty had dropped him down to ninth.

Max Verstappen was able to get a good start overtaking Vettel before the duo had a tense battle that kept the fans entertained while ruining the 30-year-old’s hopes of victory. The four-time world champion was able to undercut the Dutchman in the first pit-stops before Max was able to regain fourth despite his own late pit stop.

Daniel Ricciardo would initially move up to 11th on the opening lap after starting 19th but would drop to the back again after the Safety Car restart giving himself all the work to do again.

He would build another amazing comeback passing cars almost every lap it appeared through Brooklands and Stowe with the Australian eventually finishing just one place behind Verstappen in fifth.

Nico Hulkenberg had a positive race for Renault finishing sixth in a clean race and stayed comfortably ahead of the two Force Indias, who were involved in another example of not using team orders to their advantage.

Vettel would finish seventh, but Sergio Perez appeared to have the pace that would have allowed the Mexican to challenge much more strongly had he not had to sit behind team-mate Esteban Ocon for the entire race.

The Frenchman would finish eighth with Perez ninth as Felipe Massa completed another decent recovery after a horrible qualifying session to take the last available point and complete the top 10.

Stoffel Vandoorne nursed his McLaren to 11th after not able to hang in the top 10 battle with Haas struggling as Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean only managed 12th and 13th respectively.

Marcus Ericsson was involved in a near race-ending duel with Sauber team-mate Pascal Wehrlein through Stowe and Vale at one point but would eventually finish three places ahead in 14th.

Daniil Kvyat hailed his damaged Toro Rosso into 15th, after a drive-through penalty as Lance Stroll had a weekend to forget down in 16th after a struggling drive. He only had Wehrlein behind in the second Sauber as an alternative strategy failed.

Fernando Alonso suffered was forced to retire after losing pressure in the fuel system joining Palmer and Sainz for an early bath.

Race Result – 51 Laps: