Lewis Hamilton takes 4th British Grand Prix Victory as Rosberg receives Penalty

By: S. Harding, Xiro Xone News  July 10, 2016  Updated: 5:22 PM 

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, showing why he is a genius  when driving in mixed weather conditions, cruised to a third consecutive British Grand Prix ahead of Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg who,  after receiving a 10 second time penalty for a breach of radio regulations was moved to third leaving Red Bull's Max Verstappen to take second.

“Best weekend of the whole year! I couldn’t believe it started raining at the beginning of the race. I thought: “are you serious?” It makes it so much harder for everyone when that happens. I couldn’ t really see the safety car either. It was going really slowly and my rear brakes were getting way too cold, so I was trying to heat them up and before I knew it I’m heading straight for the back of the thing! Thank goodness I could turn! Luckily it was okay and from there I was feeling great in the wet conditions,” said Hamilton.

Rosberg's second place finish was stripped away after his engineer gave him instructions on how to manage a gearbox issue in the final laps of the race. Earlier Rosberg had been battling Max Verstappen for second position.  Verstappen showed no fear of the silver arrow and overtook Rosberg on the outside of Becketts on lap 16, but Rosberg managed to regain his second place position on lap 38.

Rosberg then tried closing in on Hamilton, but on lap 46 he lost three seconds after getting stuck in seventh gear.

"Gearbox problem!" Rosberg said, before he was told "Chassis default 001" by race engineer Tony Ross.

He was later told to "avoid seventh gear" and when he asked what that meant, Ross added "you need to shift through it".

The first message was deemed to be in compliance with the regulations, but he was then told to "avoid seventh gear" for the rest of the race. The stewards deemed the second message to be in breach of Article 27.1 of the Sporting Regulations, which states the driver must drive the car alone and unaided.

With Hamilton having a near problem-free race aside from when he lost the rear of his car at Turn 1 on Lap 28, he went on to have a perfect weekend, taking his fourth win of the season and his fourth career win at Silverstone, his home track. 

Verstappen, who also had a very impressive weekend, finished second ahead of his Red Bull teammate Daniel Ricciardo who finished fourth. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen took fifth from Sergio Perez for Force India and now sits third in the driver’s championship, 65 points from Nico Rosberg. Perez finished sixth ahead of his teammate Nico Hulkenberg in seventh and Carlos Sainz in eighth.

“I felt like I had great pace today so once the track dried up I just tried to have a go. In the beginning I had a lot of spray so it was hard to see where I was going, especially in the first sector. Once I passed Nico I felt like I was closing on Lewis but then he pitted for slicks. We maybe stayed out one lap too long but in the end the race was great and the car was working really well,” said Verstappen.

Sebastian Vettel had a very unhappy weekend after a gearbox penalty had him starting from start 11th and only managing to struggle back to ninth. Daniil Kvyat finished tenth, giving him his second point since returning to Toro Rosso.

Nico Rosberg becomes the first driver to be penalised under the team radio restrictions introduced this year. The loss of one position closes his lead in the the driver’s championship  over teammate Lewis Hamilton to one point.
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