Sebastian Vettel claimed the 2018 British Grand Prix after a dramatic race, in which Lewis Hamilton missed the chance to set a new record and had to settle for second.
Hamilton had won the previous four British Grand Prix, and had been particularly dominant in 2017 when he qualified in pole and cruised to victory despite having been inconvenienced by a restart. And the reigning World Champion was made the favourite for the 2018 race by BigBetBookmakers.com according to implied probability. But Hamilton was never in contention in the race itself, which meant that he remains on five British Grand Prix wins along with Jim Clark and Alain Prost.
Going into the 73rd running of this famous race, the battle for the Drivers’ Championship could hardly have been closer, with Vettel holding a slender one point lead over Hamilton after his third place finish in the preceding Austrian Grand Prix – a race in which Hamilton had been forced to retire.
But the weekend had promised much for Hamilton who secured pole position after a dramatic final qualifying session. Ferrari had dominated most of qualifying, thanks to improvements made to the outboard edges and diffuser and after the first Q3 practice runs, Sebastian Vettel had a narrow 0.057 second lead over Hamilton. But the British driver pulled out all the stops in his final run to secure a 76th career pole, and record sixth in this race, by 0.044 seconds.
Hamilton had a tougher time of it in the race itself. Although Vettel was suffering from a neck problem, he blasted away at the start, leaving Hamilton trailing and the British driver lost further momentum to teammate Valtteri Bottas in the other Mercedes before suffering a collision with Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn was penalised for the incident, but Hamilton, who had managed to keep his engine running, dropped to the back of the field and was forced to try to make up ground.
There was more drama to come, however, on lap 32, when Marcus Eriksson in the Sauber-Ferrari crashed, leading to the race being halted and restarted behind a safety car. Ferrari opted to bring Vettel into the pits, but Mercedes gambled, leaving their two drivers out, and Bottas led the field, as Hamilton worked his way through the pack. The strategy appeared to be working until five laps from the finish when a brilliant manoeuvre took Vettel into the lead. On the following lap, Hamilton moved into second, but the gap was too much to make up and the German held on.
Raikkonen eventually finished third, claiming his 27th podium finish without a win, while Bottas clung on for fourth, and Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull was fifth. The victory for Vettel, his fourth of the season, took him eight points clear of Hamilton in the Drivers’ Championship, while Ferrari extended their lead over rivals Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship to 20 points.
