British GP 2017
Silverstone — 16 July 2017
It was the beginning of a spectacular run of six out of eight GPs, and five out of six consecutive, all wins that put a decisive stamp on the 2017 title chase, when Lewis Hamilton arrived at Silverstone in early summer. That season’s British GP would cement his status as rock star of Formula One. In a year which went on to see Hamilton take a 4th World Championship — his 3rd in four seasons of Mercedes AMG dominance — Hamilton’s pole to flag winning performance was an inflection point, silencing any remaining critics of the sometimes petulant driver. There had been three British Grands Prix since Formula One’s switch to turbo hybrids, and Lewis won every one of them. Gunning for a fourth on the trot in front of a mass of adoring, vociferous UK petrolheads (“you don’t see that anywhere else in the world,” Lewis said), Hamilton started Sunday afternoon by throwing caps into the galleries and ended it borne aloft by a teeming throng of disciples, crowd-surfing the fans like a mosh pit. Nobody besides Jim Clark, killed at Hockenheim in 1968 at the age of 32, the same as Lewis in ’17, has otherwise prevailed in the British GP four times in a row.
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fter qualifying, Hamilton was honored with the gift of a race-worn yellow helmet from the late Ayrton Senna’s family, a fitting tribute to the F1 driver who has made qualifying his own. In the race itself Hamilton was simply masterful. He achieved a “grand chelem,” the 5th of his career: starting from pole position, leading every lap, setting fastest lap and finally winning the race with a 14-second lead over Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton launched away from the grid at the start to open a 1.6s gap on Kimi Räikkönen after just one lap. Calamity stuck Ferrari near the end, as first Raikkonen sand then Sebastian Vettel suffered delamination of their front left tires. But it did not matter, as the conclusion was evident from the opening lights.
fter qualifying, Hamilton was honored with the gift of a race-worn yellow helmet from the late Ayrton Senna’s family, a fitting tribute to the F1 driver who has made qualifying his own. In the race itself Hamilton was simply masterful. He achieved a “grand chelem,” the 5th of his career: starting from pole position, leading every lap, setting fastest lap and finally winning the race with a 14-second lead over Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton launched away from the grid at the start to open a 1.6s gap on Kimi Räikkönen after just one lap. Calamity stuck Ferrari near the end, as first Raikkonen sand then Sebastian Vettel suffered delamination of their front left tires. But it did not matter, as the conclusion was evident from the opening lights.
This was Hamilton’s magnum opus, his answer to Fangio’s 1957 German GP, Senna’s 1988 Japanese GP and Mansell’s 1992 British GP, when the Williams driven by that earlier English icon was surrounded on the Silverstone tarmac by an army of humanity. It was a thoroughly devastating beat-down on the rest of the F1 paddock from which they never recovered, as Lewis streaked on to the championship. In parc fermé Hamilton jumped into the arms of his Mercedes team’s mechanics, high-fiving Bottas and his race engineer along the way. Then he did what all rock stars do, but no F1 driving champion until him would otherwise dare. Yet in a Formula One season during which he also topped the all-time record for pole positions and drew close to Michael Schumacher’s once-unassailable mark of 91 GP victories, Hamilton may just have proved he was entitled to all the adoration. Classifications.