At the half-way point of the season, the British Championship leader has won seven out of ten races. He now has 80 victories to his credit and Michael Schumacher’s once insurmountable tally of 91 victories looks well within reach.
After losing pole position to teammate Valtteri Bottas by six-thousandths of a second, Hamilton seemed fully determined to steal the lead from the Finn in the opening laps. Once the Drag Reduction System was enabled, on lap three, he made his move on the outside entering Luffield corner after building up momentum through the corner sequences.
This British Grand Prix will be remembered for many exciting moments. Bottas versus Hamilton, Leclerc versus Verstappen, the two HAAS cars of Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean taking each other out of the race, Daniel Ricciardo versus Carlos Sainz Jr., Hamilton claiming the fastest lap point on the ultimate lap on worn hard tyres or even Kimi Raikko-nen’s brave P8 finish.
But, the most spectacular of them all was the strange error from Sebastian Vettel that saw him rear-ending the Red Bull of Verstappen into the gravel trap at Club corner and out of a podium finish.
The German was outclassed all weekend by teammate Charles Leclerc and has generally not been in the groove since Canada.