The 2017 British GP showed us bad fortunes can change within a week. Lewis Hamilton was having a bad time in the past 2 races with an unnecessary pit stop which robbed him a victory and a penalty for gearbox failure putting him 20pts behind Vettel in the driver’s championship standing. But in his home grand prix he was able to put an excellent drive where he took a record breaking pole, led every lap in the race, set the fastest lap and cut Vettel’s championship lead to 1pt from 20pts.
The race started with two formation lap due to an early retirement for the home boy Jolyon Palmer where his Renault stopped in the warm up lap. When the lights went off, Hamilton had a good start and maintained his lead. The race spiced up when Verstappen over took Vettel in the first lap and jumped to 3rd from 4th and Kimi maintained his second spot. In the back of the pack Bottas starting from 9th had a decent start where he jumped to 7th. The first lap had its drama when Kvyat collided with his team mate Sainz which brought the safety car to the track. Kvyat nicknamed the torpedo was punished later with a drive through penalty.
The race continued after the safety car where the battle between Vettel’s Ferrari and Verstappen’s Red Bull gave us a great excitement when Vettel overtook Verstappen and then Verstappen retook his position from Vettel again with some naughty and gritty drive. The Ferrari’s think tank brought Vettel in for an early pit stop at Lap 18 to undercut the Red Bull and succeeded. Vettel took fourth and Max dropped to fifth after his pitstop, meanwhile Valtteri Bottas who was on a longer stint in his soft tyres jumped to third position. Kimi and Hamilton made their pit stop few laps later, and Hamilton came out just ahead of Valtteri Bottas who is yet to pit. Hamilton was asked to let Bottas take the lead if he cannot go faster than his team mate, but Lewis responded immediately and extended the gap between him and Bottas.
Bottas pitted for the super soft tyres on Lap 32, and came out 5 seconds behind Vettel. He was able to put some quick laps and cut the gap to less than a second, giving him the advantage of DRS and faster tyres. On lap 42 Bottas made an attempt to pass but Vettel just managed to hold the Mercedes off. In the process Vettel locked his brakes, badly flat spotting his front left tyre and making it all the more vulnerable to Silverstone’s high loads. On the next lap Bottas was able to close in on Vettel and made a great pass to jump to the third position.
The final 10 laps saw drivers nursing their tyres where Hamilton complained about the blisters in his tyres. Nothing was really serious until with 4 laps to go Kimi tyres went off due to delamination of rubber where the the air pressure in the tubes were fine but the rubber in the tyre completely worn off. Red Bull took no chance and immediately pitted Verstappen. Vettel jumped to third as Kimi came fourth after his pit stop but it was short lived when Vettel’s tyre was also blown and he finished 7th.
Vettel faced similar type of tyre issues with Pirelli and Ferrari in the past too, it started in 2015 Belgian GP, then in 2016 Austrian GP, and now in 2017 British GP. This gave Bottas second position and Hamilton was able to cut Vettel’s championship lead from 20 pts to just 1pt. Lucky day for Mercedes and an unlucky day for Ferrari, especially for Kimi who did everything fine as a driver.
