HAMILTON WINS EPIC BRITISH GP

Sunday 6 July 

The World Championship fight is back on. Lewis Hamilton has won the British GP to close within four points of the summit after World Championship leader Nico Rosberg retired from the lead of the race.

Finally, Britain has a success story to celebrate this summer. But while a jubiliant Silverstone crowd applauded their home hero, the pity was that Rosberg’s broken gearbox had denied them a grandstand finish with a fast-charging Hamilton rapidly closing in on his team-mate prior to his retirement.

Albeit in part due to the worsening condition of Rosberg’s gearbox, a pumped-up Hamilton had eaten five seconds out of Rosberg’s lead in as many laps before the German's stricken Silver Arrows crawled to a halt.

It was Rosberg's first retirement of the year - Hamilton has already had two - and left Hamilton able to cruise to the chequered flag twenty seconds of Valterri Bottas after the Williams driver produced one of the drives of the day to claim second after starting from the second-last row on the grid. 

The only disappointment for the Silverstone crowd was the failure of Jenson Button to score his first-ever podium finish in his home race, the McLaren driver narrowly denied third place by the latest in a long line of outstanding drives by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo. 

It was a race which started, and then stopped, in the most dramatic and heart-stopping fashion as Kimi Raikkonen slam-dunked his Ferrari into a guardrail after just four laps. With both car and barrier – but not, fortunately, the Finn despite the 47-G impact - suffering crippling damage, the result was a red-flag stoppage and a delay of one hour as the track marshals repaired the damage.

What followed was worth the wait as Alonso, Bottas, and to the most popular acclaim, Hamilton all produced inspired drives to render the topsy-turvy events of qualifying all-but an irrelevance.

Starting out from just sixth, it took Hamilton just four laps, punctuated by the hour's delay while the guardrail was patched-up, to claim second place behind Rosberg as he sought a rapid repair of his own to his qualifying disaster.