A historic weekend, a historic and yet another historic win: that is how Lewis Hamilton’s time at Silverstone could be summed up. The Britisher pocketed his sixth win at the colloquially named “Home of the Grand Prix”, making him the first racer ever to achieve the feat. And boy, did he deserve to win the race!
What was Hamilton’s strategy?
Having suffered an unfortunate loss at Austria, Hamilton was determined to rewrite the history books in front of his home crowd. His strategy was audacious and something that only he could have pulled off. While everyone else was convinced that Silverstone was a two-stop race, Hamilton was certain that he could do it in one stop.
This was a bold move to predict and execute, especially given the fact that he did not have the pole position on Sunday, that went to teammate Valterri Bottas. However, despite all the analysis and data, the five-time World Champion was certain that he had better race pace and tyre management than Bottas, and so he decided to finish the race with just one pit stop.
How did Hamilton go about in the race?
The genius of the plan was that Hamilton was not counting on the advantage of one-stop, he had decided that he would race fast from the go. He slipstreamed Bottas on Wellington Straight and kept him under pressure continuously. Eventually, the continuous strain caused Bottas’ front-left to suffer, forcing him to take a pit stop. As Hamilton took the lead with his tyres still going strong, a safety car was deployed at Lap 20 which aided Hamilton’s cause.
Lewis Hamilton at British Grand Prix 2019
He pitted then, with the rest of the cars at the safety car delta speed and managed to shave off an almost 10 second loss. At about the end of the 23rd lap, he pulled away from Bottas and took a solid lead. At the end of the 44th lap, however, he got an engine mode to compensate for a suspected blister at the front-left and he let it roar hard in the last lap. He set a lap record on Silverstone in the last lap, thus underlining his class and ability in a way only Lewis Hamilton can.
Explaining his strategy to the media after he had won, he specified the state of the race when Bottas got his first pit stop after 17 laps. He said,” Valtteri came out of the pits 0.7sec inside my window. It crept up to 1.5sec then 2sec. If I’d done another lap maybe it would have crept out to 2.5sec. I wanted to go as long as possible – and I told them I wanted the hard tyre when I stopped.”
As he went out crowd surfing with adulating home support, he added, “I had to figure out how to get past this guy and I’d decided before this morning what I was going to do.”
Author’s take
A legend at his finest. Hamilton did what most pro racers would not dare do, challenge the data and trust nothing but his guts and even override his team’s strategy to do so. No wonder he will go down as one of the finest racers of our time.
