British Grand Prix Review: Hamilton Creams the field

It's amazing what a little rain can do to spice up a Grand Prix these days. The weather separated the men from the boys in terms of the drivers and most importantly for the changing conditions, the strategists and in that respect Ferrari got it spectacularly wrong while Honda, McLaren, and BMW got it impressively right. It seems to me that the strategy woes we saw from Ferrari today would not have happened a few years ago when Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher ran the show and despite the fastest car in F1 this year they are throwing points away needlessly with silly strategy mistakes and in Felipe Massa's case, absolutely awful driving in the wet. But at the front, one can't go anywhere without heaping praise on Lewis Hamilton and McLaren. Lewis was simply brilliant right from the getgo making a great start going from fourth to second and then sweeping past teammate Kovalainen, the polesitter on lap four and setting off on his way. World Champion Kimi Raikkonen drove very well and closed right on Lewis coming up to the first pitstops, where McLaren got it right and Ferrari got it horribly wrong. The conventional wisdom was that more rain was coming and that new Inters was the way to go. ITV had talked to Ross Brawn who predicted rain and numerous radio contacts were predicting rain, which logically should have meant that new Tyres were the way to go. McLaren went for it, but Ferrari reckoned that it would dry out and kept Kimi on the same tyres. The result was that two laps later it started to rain (as predicted) and Kimi was suddenly left horribly screwed on worn out tyres lapping 6-7 seconds slower than those on new rubber. This led to the next strategy error on Ferrari's part where if they pitted again for new tyres then Kimi could start to recover, but instead they kept him out as he continued to lose truckloads of time before his stop. Martin Brundle reckoned that he lost forty seconds in the course of this. Kimi later pitted and drove brilliantly to recover to fourth, but without those crucial strategy mistakes a podium was probably on offer for the world champion. While Ferrari were tripping over themselves to lose the race, the door was opened for other drivers to step up to the plate, something that both Nick Heidfeld and Rubens Barichello did. Nick did not have a good first few laps and has not been great in the last few races but here he was awesome, scything through the field with some brilliant passes to get up to second by the end, just the confidence boost Nick needs. Rubens was, after Hamilton, undoubtedly the driver of the day who started from 16th and cut through the field with the help of some strategy genius from Ross Brawn pushed him up to the podium, and he could have been second had he not had a problem with his second stop and had to make a third. Rubens' first podium since 2005 was just what the doctor ordered for Honda. With Rubens dialed in this year at Honda and with Jenson Button spinning off again, the pressure may be getting to the Englishman and he may find himself on the outside looking in at the end of the year....... After Raikkonen came polesitter Kovalainen, who had a much more eventful race than he and McLaren would have liked. He had a couple of spins, he had to battle his way back, including a ding-dong battle with Fernando Alonso at the end, ultimately winning out over the two time champion. Jarno Trulli ended up seventh, after another solid performance. Jarno kept out of trouble and passed Kaz Nakajima at the end to take the two points. After years of inconsistent driving and of drivers stuck behind the "Trulli train" Jarno has really settled in this year and has kept picking up the points. Kaz Nakajima kept the car in one piece and ended up eighth to score a point. The Japanese driver had a few hairy moments with a few spins but didn't hit anything and ended up in the points at the end, beating his teammate Rosberg again (who made mistakes and DID hit something). Nico is supposed to be the undisputed star of Williams, but he has continually blotted his copybook with mistakes and shunts while the supposedly wilder Nakajima has kept the car on the road and keeps picking up minor points. Maybe everyone just assumed that Nakajima would be a wild driver due to the reputation of other Japanese drivers over the years, but Kaz has really shown himself to be a good choice this year. With Rosberg and Nakajima tied on 8 points, Nico's star is waning badly at the moment. 10th place went to Mark Webber, but that could have been much better had the Aussie not made a series of errors. The first and most dramatic was on the first lap when he spun in front of the field and was lucky not to have been run over. He was then last and proceeded to drive spectacularly through the field, overtaking drivers left and right, but another spin and some strategy issuses left Mark back in the pack, battling still with Seb Bourdais. Speaking of Bourdais, the Frenchman had another unremarkable afternoon to finish 11th. He only had one spin, which in such circumstances should have helped him get to the points but the fact is that he was just plain slow. Maybe his time in Champ Car and limited wet weather running was a real detriment in the race or maybe Vettel has just been that good and overdriving the car. He did finish ahead of Timo Glock, who had numerous spins and Felipe Massa, the championship leader. Where does one begin with the horror show that was Massa's race. OK, so we all know that Felipe is not great in the wet, but he was spinning more times than I can remember from him since he was driving a Sauber in 2002. Felipe, in my mind, drove absolutely terribly and it was not just a case of bad tyre strategy that hampered him, he was simply slow and error prone all day. This type of off day is one reason why most pundits, myself included, don't rate his chances of the World Championship very highly. Felipe is brilliant when everything goes his way, but facing adversity he still often collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane and with Kimi working hard to recover and with Lewis driving the balls off his McLaren in adverse conditions, the Brazilian seems to find himself on the back foot again, despite being still tied for the championship lead. He will need to be better in wet weather and adverse conditions if he ever wants to be World Champion. The fact that only seven drivers retired despite all the spinning race cars is a credit to the safety of silverstone. The first out were David Coulthard in his final British Grand Prix, and Sebastien Vettel, who qualified an excellent ninth. These two collided on the first lap in an incident that looked to be DC's fault. Not the way the Scot wanted his final British Grand Prix to end. The only contender to retire was Robert Kubica, who spun off on lap 39, but he was being beaten by teammate Heidfeld. This was a chance for RObert to pick up some quality points but he threw it away. He has been virtually mistake free all season while the other top guns were busy screwing thing up so he can be forgiven this time, but this is the kind of race that Robert needs to capitalize on if he wants to compete for the championship. Nelson Piquet and Jenson Button also went off, with no-one really expecting the rookie Piquet to do well in such conditions, but spinning off will do nothing to ease the pressure on him while Button threw away a potential points paying position in a silly manner, with Rubens now on 11 point so his 3, Jenson may be starting to feel the heat. The less said about Force India the better. Sutil, who thrives on these conditions, was up to 12th, before having a dramatic spin that could have led to a massive accident with Bourdais had Seb not reacted well, while Fisichella had a lazy spin while being lapped by Lewis. A chance at potential valuable points wasted.

All in all it was an exciting and dramatic race and everyone seemed to have a good time, everyone except Ferrari that is. The modern Ferrari team is not the dream team that we were used to seeing under Michael Schumacher. This team is one that lets it's Italian emotions get ahead of cool heads and sound decisions. Since Brawn and Schumi left the team we have seen a marked increase in strategic errors from the Prancing Horse while Ross has taking his strategic genius to Honda, who despite a lousy car are picking up valuable points when the come on offer and now Rubens has a solid 11 points and the team has 14, one behind Renault. I still reckon that Kimi Raikkonen is the championship favourite, but Lewis and McLaren can still pinch it if the team continues to throw away points like this, exactly in the way that Kimi pinched the title from McLaren last year. With three driver tied at the top on 48 point we could be in for another grandstand finish to the world championship. F1 has not been this exciting since the days of Senna, Prost, Piquet, and Mansell.