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Lewis Hamilton emergies as record-tying 5th British Grand Prix winner

Lewis Hamilton emergies as record-tying 5th British Grand Prix winner

Lewis Hamilton executed a clinical performance at the Silverstone circuit to claim a record-tying fifth victory at his home British Grand Prix. He is now tied with Jim Clark and Frenchman Alain Prost for a record five British GP wins. Hamilton started from pole position after a brilliant qualifying lap on Saturday, and was clear of the pack by 1.6 seconds after the first lap. He lost his lead after the security car came out following a collision between the Toro Rosso drivers, but the restart in the fifth lap say Hamilton rebuilding his lead in to a healthy 3.1 seconds after 12 laps and 5 seconds after 18. Hamilton made a pit stop at lap 24 and came out with a five second deficit to Ferrari’s Raikkonen, but the next lap had Ferrari calling Raikkonen to a pit stop and Hamilton pulled ahead by 10 seconds to practically finish the race barring a crash. However, it was bad luck for the Ferrari drivers when Sebastian Vettel, who came into the race leading the championship table by 20 points, suffered a front-left tyre failure when running third with two laps to go, dropping to seventh. Raikkonen had the same issue a lap before, and that helped Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas take the second spot to finish with a Mercedes one-two. Raikkonen recovered to finish third. The British driver’s 57th career victory cut Vettel’s lead on the championship table to just one point, and Mercedes has taken the fight to Ferrari with today’s performance.

Red Bull also did well for themselves, with Daniel Riccardio and Max Verstappen finishing fourth and sixth respectively. The Sahara Force India Team F1 was right behind them, with Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon finishing seventh and eight, and the drivers would be keen for the fans to calm down on Force India’s proposed change of name, namely to remove the ‘India’ part. Esteban Ocon had recently taken to Twitter to appeal for a truce.

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Aiman

Keenly interested in sports of all sorts, I am a physicist by training and curious about everything.