{"id":189922,"date":"2014-07-07T11:23:52","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T10:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/race_report\/2014-british-gp-report\/"},"modified":"2020-11-24T10:24:35","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T10:24:35","slug":"2014-british-gp-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/single-seaters\/f1\/2014-british-gp-report\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 British GP report"},"content":{"rendered":"
With Lewis Hamilton\u2019s victory the Silverstone crowd got what it came \u2013 and expected \u2013 to see. Kimi R\u04d3ikk\u04e7nen\u2019s first lap accident made them wait for an extra hour or so under a hot sun, but that just heightened the anticipation. While that crowd may have been convinced they were going to see their man win regardless of his qualifying\u00a0faux pas<\/em>\u00a0the day before, it was difficult logically to see how that might transpire, what with his only rival starting from pole five places ahead of him and all.<\/p>\n But actually, most of those five places weren\u2019t especially significant \u2013 given that the Mercedes W05 had a stunning pace advantage over everything else around Silverstone\u2019s high speed sweeps and the DRS zones worked well enough to get you easily past slower cars. Lewis was up to second early-doors and only 5s behind Rosberg. Phase one of Hamilton\u2019s assault on the race was complete. The crucial phase was set to come later as their differing strategies played out.<\/p>\n As it happened, Nico Rosberg finally suffered the mechanical retirement the waves of probability were always due to deliver and offset what they did to Hamilton in Melbourne. And that was how Hamilton actually won the British Grand Prix. But he might have been going to win it anyway. With Mercedes\u2019 favoured offset tyre strategy, it was expected that into the second stint the hard-tyred Hamilton would have lost time to his medium-tyred team-mate and that it would all come down to the final stint in what was expected to be a standard two-stop race.<\/p>\n But actually, in the heat of the day, with a track temperature hovering around 40-deg C, the hard was working beautifully \u2013 particularly on a Mercedes with all that downforce. Hamilton was chasing Rosberg down at 1s per lap and it seemed inevitable he would catch \u2013 and probably pass him \u2013 in the middle stint. He\u2019d presumably then have been left defending in the final stint when Rosberg finally got onto the hards. But that wasn\u2019t what fate had in mind.<\/p>\n Tyre performance was only part of the reason the gap to Rosberg had been reducing so fast. He was suffering gearbox issues from as early as lap 20 on the downshift. A few laps later it was also hesitating on the upshifts and on lap 28 around the Village loop it didn\u2019t change gear at all. In a flash of silver onto Wellington straight, the lead \u2013 and the momentum Rosberg\u2019s been enjoying since Monaco \u2013 evaporated like a mirage. A few corners later, he was pulling off onto the Maggotts\/Becketts grass. That crowd had been right all along, damn the logic.<\/p>\n Aside from the speed of the hards, the other tyre surprise was the durability of the options (medium). This allowed most of the field to switch from planned two-stop races to one-stop. The exceptions were Hamilton \u2013 just because he could, with a 41s advantage over Valtteri Bottas\u2019 Williams \u2013 and Sebastian Vettel.<\/p>\n In Seb\u2019s case it was because he\u2019d made his first stop as early as lap 10, as Red Bull had tried to undercut him past a McLaren before the general possibility of one-stopping came onto everyone\u2019s radar. It was this that made it one-stopping Ricciardo, and not Vettel, the Red Bull driver on the podium, desperately eking out his tyre life in keeping the newer-tyred McLaren of Jenson Button behind him.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like I\u2019d let everyone down yesterday,\u201d said Hamilton after his error in the final Q3 run that left him on the third row. With sector three having been wet in the previous Q3 runs, but the rest of the track dry, it was tricky slicks territory \u2013 and there was potentially up to 4s of lap time available in that final sector (from half-way down Hangar straight to the finish line) if it dried quickly. The rain had stopped, the wind was up and as the first few cars ran through, they found an enormous increase in grip. So in hindsight it didn\u2019t really matter if you made a bit of a mess of turn three by locking a brake \u2013 as Lewis did, this triggering him into unnecessarily abandoning the lap and also springing Rosberg free from behind him to allow him to complete the pole lap. By a margin of 1.6s from Vettel.<\/p>\n \u201cI was getting wheelspin in fifth gear in the early part of the lap,\u201d said Button, who qualified the McLaren a superb third, \u201cand I got on the radio and said we should probably abandon, but they said, \u2018no, keep pushing there\u2019s a lot of time on the table in sector three.\u2019 So I pushed hard. It was an aggressive lap.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosberg had figured this all out beforehand. \u201cI knew I had lost four seconds [to a dry time] in that final sector on my previous run, so even if I was slow on the rest of the lap, I still had a chance of going a lot quicker in those last three corners even if it was only halfway dry \u2013 and that\u2019s the way it turned out.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, he almost didn\u2019t get across the line to begin the lap in time. There was a backstory to why \u2013 and it concerns the ongoing competitive psychology between the two Mercedes drivers. With the seconds ticking down before they needed to get out, the two Mercs were sitting side-by-side in the garage. It was Lewis\u2019 choice this weekend of who went out first and he\u2019d chosen himself. But he was making Rosberg sweat, leaving it as late as possible. Eventually Rosberg\u2019s crew cracked, began taking the tyre blankets off \u2013 and at this moment Hamilton\u2019s blankets were removed quicker and Lewis got out ahead.<\/p>\n At the very back of the queue it was marginal whether Rosberg was going to get across the line and he had to do so sitting right on Hamilton\u2019s gearbox. It would have been easy enough for Lewis to have got himself \u2018accidentally\u2019 crossed up enough to get himself across the line but denying Nico \u2013 but he chose not to.<\/p>\n Hamilton then only needed to stay in front of Rosberg for the lap and Nico couldn\u2019t have done a better one, given how close to Hamilton he\u2019d had to cross the line. But instead Lewis locked up early in the lap \u2013 enough of a moment under normal circumstances to have ruined it, and so Lewis backed out of it, abandoned the lap and let Rosberg past to set pole, and for Vettel, Button, Nico H\u00fclkenberg\u2019s Force India and Kevin Magnussen\u2019s McLaren all to slot themselves between the two Mercs.<\/p>\n Lewis was distraught. It was an incident that betrayed a certain lack of clarity of thought in the heat of the moment \u2013 but also a lack of guidance from his side of the garage. Saying to him, \u2018if you abandon this lap, take care not to delay Nico,\u2019 was introducing a concept that was inappropriate, in that abandoning was just about the only way to mess up.<\/p>\n Hamilton had been fastest throughout the weekend \u2013 all the way up to the very last lap of qualifying. It seemed a massive own goal. But not as big as that at Williams and Ferrari; all four of their cars failed to make it through Q1 after an attempt at getting the best of a drying track by going out late backfired on them when the rain hit, unspotted by their radars.<\/p>\n Had it not been for that, the race would probably not needed to have been red flagged on the first lap, for Kimi R\u04d3ikk\u04e7nen wouldn\u2019t have been trying to fight his way past Caterhams onto the Wellington straight, wouldn\u2019t have got onto the run-off there and wouldn\u2019t have hit a big rain gulley as he rejoined, sending the Ferrari tank-slapping into the Armco just by the bridge.<\/p>\n It was a heavy impact, the car bouncing back onto the track, with Kamui Kobayashi\u2019s Caterham and the Williams of Felipe Massa collecting it. Massa, unsighted, reacted wonderfully well to a potentially lethal situation, effectively spinning his car to avoid t-boning R\u04d3ikk\u04e7nen, the actual impact much less than it might have been. The race was red flagged.<\/p>\n Kimi was taken off to the medical centre with bangs and bruises to his legs and ankles after his 47g<\/em>\u00a0impact. Massa limped back but with fatal rear suspension damage to the Williams from his hit with the Ferrari. He\u2019d only been so far back because the Williams had virtually stalled from its 15th place grid slot and got away a solid last.<\/p>\n The first race lasted only a few corners, but was crucially important in determining the shape of the Grand Prix. Rosberg had blasted away into an unchallenged lead, helped by fellow front-row starter Vettel bogging down on the second part of the clutch release. Button vaulted from his third place grid start to second, with Magnussen following him through past Vettel. Seb\u2019s lost momentum out of Abbey on the way down to Farm had Hamilton swarming all over him and going around the outside into that corner, banging wheels as he did so. As they passed through there, so the grid order of the restart was determined.<\/p>\n It took an hour and five minutes to replace the damaged Armco and get the race underway again with a single lap behind the safety car. A few took the opportunity of changing tyres on the grid, including both Red Bulls, which were switched from the option to the prime tyre, as both had already lost places and standing start traction was no longer a factor. Alonso went in the other direction.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were sitting on the grid for all that time we were discussing possible strategies,\u201d he explained, \u201cand we thought that because of going out early in qualifying we had lots of fresh tyres available and that this could make it possible to extend our stint lengths enough to maybe do a one-stop. We\u2019d assess it as we went on.\u201d Having started on the prime, by switching to the option he could be on the more durable tyre throughout, enhancing the one-stop feasibility.<\/p>\n Rosberg sprinted away from the McLarens as the safety car pulled off, with Hamilton, Vettel, Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat\u2019s Toro Rosso following. Bottas in the Williams was immediately flying. The FW36 was nip and tuck with the Red Bull as the second-fastest car but the events thus far had disguised this. As well as good high speed balance, its combination of aero efficiency and the sheer relentless grunt of the Mercedes engine made it fantastically raceable; pretty fast onto the straights, comfortably fastest of all by the end of them.<\/p>\nQualifying<\/h2>\n
The first start<\/h2>\n
The restart<\/h2>\n
Race results<\/h3>\n