Lewis Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix, his home race held at Silverstone, inheriting the lead of Nico Rosberg following his gearbox failure. Valtteri Bottas is on the podium again in second place while Daniel Ricciardo completes the podium in third.
Personally, I find it unclear whether him gaining on Nico was to do with pace, or Nico's failure progressing. He certainly did start gaining a lot after a few laps though.gray41 wrote:Lewis was faultless today, got some luck but I think he had Nico anyways.
Good point, I think right after Lewis came out Nico's gearbox issues hadn't gone critical as they were doing pretty similar lap times. If Nico didn't retire I'm sure Lewis would have passed/won as he was on a 1 stop and Nico 2. The gap was only 5 seconds?beelsebob wrote:Personally, I find it unclear whether him gaining on Nico was to do with pace, or Nico's failure progressing. He certainly did start gaining a lot after a few laps though.gray41 wrote:Lewis was faultless today, got some luck but I think he had Nico anyways.
Still Vettel could hardly keep up on the straights. That makes overtaking very difficult even with newer tyres. Being able to drive faster in fast corners means zilch when you are stuck behind another car that is, however, faster on the starights and especially in acceleration.heidenreich27 wrote: Vettel had newer tyres, there was nothing equal about the fight, and Alonso had issues with the rear wing, the team told him to go slower in the fast corners, they even talked about retirement.
I think there might have been a bit more fuel in Hamiltons car than Rosbergs, because they couldn't really predict how fast he could get to 2nd, that could be the reason why he wasn't closing in as fast when he got to that 2nd place, also the tyre strategy - it looked like he was stretching his 1st stint to have a bit more tires/fuel left at the end of the race to mount a serious offensivebeelsebob wrote:Personally, I find it unclear whether him gaining on Nico was to do with pace, or Nico's failure progressing. He certainly did start gaining a lot after a few laps though.gray41 wrote:Lewis was faultless today, got some luck but I think he had Nico anyways.
to me it didn't look like a 1stop for HAM, it was argued that the 1stop was ~6sec slower over the whole race60DShim wrote: Good point, I think right after Lewis came out Nico's gearbox issues hadn't gone critical as they were doing pretty similar lap times. If Nico didn't retire I'm sure Lewis would have passed/won as he was on a 1 stop and Nico 2. The gap was only 5 seconds?
I don't think that's it - Lewis's car is usually fueled less than Nico's, and even was at the last race where he started ninth. If anything, starting low on the grid, you want a light car at the start to help passing.jz11 wrote:I think there might have been a bit more fuel in Hamiltons car than Rosbergs, because they couldn't really predict how fast he could get to 2nd, that could be the reason why he wasn't closing in as fast when he got to that 2nd place, also the tyre strategy - it looked like he was stretching his 1st stint to have a bit more tires/fuel left at the end of the race to mount a serious offensivebeelsebob wrote:Personally, I find it unclear whether him gaining on Nico was to do with pace, or Nico's failure progressing. He certainly did start gaining a lot after a few laps though.gray41 wrote:Lewis was faultless today, got some luck but I think he had Nico anyways.
Me too. At first, Rosberg was able to ever so slightly increase the gap on Hamilton.beelsebob wrote:Personally, I find it unclear whether him gaining on Nico was to do with pace, or Nico's failure progressing. He certainly did start gaining a lot after a few laps though.gray41 wrote:Lewis was faultless today, got some luck but I think he had Nico anyways.
That's pretty normal for this pair, Rosberg always tends to start to overheat the rear tyres when pushing hard. That's why Hamilton generally gains on him at the end of a stint.henra wrote:
Me too. At first, Rosberg was able to ever so slightly increase the gap on Hamilton.
Then, suddenly he started losing half a second in just one lap.
Yeah he was.FoxHound wrote:True that.bhall II wrote:He wasn't out there on foot, yanno?
However, are you not impressed with the way he used his car?
Lewis was gaining on Nico for pretty much all of the race.henra wrote:Me too. At first, Rosberg was able to ever so slightly increase the gap on Hamilton.beelsebob wrote:Personally, I find it unclear whether him gaining on Nico was to do with pace, or Nico's failure progressing. He certainly did start gaining a lot after a few laps though.gray41 wrote:Lewis was faultless today, got some luck but I think he had Nico anyways.
Then, suddenly he started losing half a second in just one lap. Either the tyres started to give up at that point or the Gremlins already started their work in his gear box. That was a couple of laps before he mentioned gear box woes on the radio. Later in the race same Scenario. First opening up the gap, then suddenly, out of the blue losing half a second and then 1s and 2s the next laps. I find it hard to rule out that this was due to the gear box malfunctioning.
That was epic, man. I was shouting no no no no...bhall II wrote:Oh, hell, yeah. I don't know what corner number it's considered now on the new layout, but I got a little moist when Alonso pantsed Vettel around the outside of old turn-1.
