By David Awopetu
Flying Dutchman, Max Verstappen, produced a brilliant drive at Silverstone to win the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix and brought Mercedes’ domination to an end.
The Red Bull victory denied Mercedes victory for the first time in 2020, but they took the podium spots.
Verstappen’s win was founded on his car being kinder to its tyres than the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas and the Dutchman capitalized brilliantly.
Hamilton fought back from early struggles to catch and pass teammate, Bottas, for second place with two laps to go.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was outstanding in taking fourth spot on a one-stop strategy.
It was an unexpectedly thrilling race, a fitting testament to the occasion as F1 celebrated 70 years since the F1 championship started at Silverstone in 1950.
Verstappen had done incredibly well to keep in touch with the Mercedes in the early part of the race, much to the chagrin of his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, who on Lap 11, told his driver to cool his pace to preserve his tyres. “Mate, this is my only chance of getting the Mercedes, I’m not just sitting around like a grandma,” came the response.
He wasn’t. Verstappen had scented blood with Hamilton, and after leader, Bottas, pitted on Lap 14, emerging P6, the Dutchman was all over Hamilton’s rear wing, Hamilton complaining that his rear tyres were “finished”.
The battle was called off, though, when Hamilton was brought in on Lap15, leaving Verstappen in the lead, having crucially started on the hard compound tyres.
Verstappen took the lead with ten laps to go and never looked back, as he cruised to the flag, Hulkenberg finished seventh, while Sebastian Vettel was outside the points in 12th, following an opening-lap spin.
After securing his ninth career win, the Dutchman said, “We had a lot of pace in the car and we kept pushing.”
“We had a great day… we had the right strategy. I tried to put the pressure on [Mercedes] and they had to pit.”
Hamilton offered his congratulations to Red Bull and Verstappen, saying, “They didn’t have the blistering problems on the tires that we had today. It’s unexpected but I’m sure the team will work out what the issues have been. At the end I was driving with half a tire.”
