Nico Rosberg won a thrilling British Grand Prix for Mercedes-Benz today, but a succession of dramatic tyre failures almost turned the race into a farce and scuppered the prospects of Rosberg's team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton and Rosberg had earned Mercedes a front row shut-out in qualifying, but with Sunday being blessed with sunny, warm conditions, it remained to be seen whether the Anglo-German team would maintain a competitive race pace or fall foul to their usual tyre wear issues.
Most of the leaders started on the softer of the two Pirelli tyre compounds. Hamilton made a perfect start, but Rosberg got too much wheel spin and lost second place to Sebastian Vettel. Adrian Sutil – the highest-placed Force India driver on the grid after team-mate Paul di Resta was disqualified from qualifying when his car was found to be underweight – slotted into fourth ahead of Felipe Massa and Daniel Ricciardo.
Mark Webber, starting from fourth, also made a sluggish getaway and sustained front-wing damage after getting clipped by Romain Grosjean, who in turn was kinking left to avoid Jenson Button as the field streamed through the first right-hander.
It was similar to the damage he picked up in the previous race in Canada, and the team opted to leave him out on track until the first pitstops, when they changed the wing. Up at the front, Hamilton got the hammer down to establish a gap over Vettel, ensuring that the German was too far behind to take advantage of DRS.
Just as the Briton was consolidating his position, however, the left-rear tyre of his Mercedes failed on the Wellington Straight. It left him with almost three-quarters of a lap to complete at low speed before his team could replace the ruined rubber and dropped him right out of contention.
Two laps later, Massa suffered a similar tyre failure on the left-rear corner of his Ferrari, and when Jean-Eric Vergne's Toro Rosso also had a high-speed deflation, it was clear that there was a widespread problem.
The safety car was deployed so that mangled tyre carcasses could be retrieved from the racetrack and the teams, organisers and Pirelli technicians could puzzle over what was going wrong. It was suspected that a kerb on the one of the track's high-speed corners was causing the issues, which was of little consolation to poor Hamilton, who had dropped out of the points by the time he resumed.
After a round of precautionary pitstops from the leaders, Vettel was left leading Rosberg by about three seconds.
That situation remained until, with just 11 laps to go, Vettel's car suddenly slowed with a lack of drive. He ground to a halt near the start-finish line, in a dangerous place, so the safety car was put out to give marshals the opportunity to clear the stricken Red Bull.
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Well done Mercedes / FIA becoming a joke/Tyre gate
Great race, despite tyre gate continuing it was actually good to see some hard racing..
This race really did show that the world class drivers Alonso, Hamilton/ Webber/ Raikonnen/ Roseberg are truly the best drivers in the world. Even with set backs such as tyre blow outs, safety car prieods etc.. they were true racers, fighting through the field with soem great but fair passes. Silverstone is a great track also.
Now to Tyre gate.. the whole reason the Pirelli test was done was to judge the current tyre for improvements deu to excessive wear experienced by some of the teams..red bull was complaining, Merc were complaining as were a few others.. but because of RB/ Ferrari etc.. anger at not being at the test the whole point of improving the tyre on safety as well as performance grounds was wiped out by the whole tribunal and everyone concentrated on trying to screw Mercedes and nail them to the ground.
FIA screwed mercedes- there own man Charlie 'chaplin' Witting said it was okay to do..end of story, he is part of the senior members of FIA he said it was ok. Yet to be honest FIA threw him under a bus too.. saying it Charlie not FIA that said it maybe okay! He bloody well works for you, so he is the FIA. I stil dont understand why Merc had to be the person to tell anyone thye were invited to do the test. They were invited, they didn't invite themeselves! If i am invited to party why do I have to tell others I am being invited it's my buisnesss and the job of the invitee (Pirelli) to tell others if they so wish! The main body FIA were asked and informed of this test.
Also how in gods name did no one notice a F1 car going around a full pelt for 3 days on international circuit.. come on! in 3 days no one outside of Merc and Pirelli got word that a F1 car was going around Barcelona..come on! please...just political games by Horner and Luca. Lets try and gain our own advantage and get Merc disqualified so we can gaurantee one of us wins WDC.
Anyway again as lewis said in his post race interview- The FIA need to do something, take some resposnibilty and sort this tyre issue out once and for all. FIA has become a weak joke since Todt took charge..all the drivers and teams complained yesterday yet still today no word from FIA as to any action..I am sure Pirelli will say the same thing- 'not our faulty' its the track! How can racing to look ater your tyres be called racing.. racing must be hard and aggressive, not a sunday drive. The cars are so competitive this year interms of perfomance that imagine how good the racing could have been without the disintegarting tyre issue...
funny though the team that wanted most to not change the tyre situation Renault, were affected the most yesterday.. Raikonnen went backwards quickly when his tyres went off..Hamilton and Alonson were on the same stratedgy yet they blitzed past Kimi at the end.
OH my!
Five posts up,and only one praising the result!,did nobody listen to Gary Anderson's opinion?,did nobody hear Lewis saying that at that tyre test(?) they had a better tyre(?).There's two big clues as to what should be done........?!
ut this is racing!
Mercedes deserved victory ... after a weekend spent at a different result it was difficult to hope ... of course I really feel sorry for Lewis ... but this is racing! royal race ...