Lewis Hamilton felt his “heart in mouth” when he got a flat tyre on his W11 during the final lap of British Grand Prix.
Nevertheless, he managed his nerves and car through the final lap and to the surprise of many he stood victorious Silverstone paving his way for Formula 1 title championship title.
The Brit started from pole position at his home track. He led the race through-out and his team-mate Valtteri Bottas remained on his tail.
Bottas found himself in hot waters when his tyre got punctured on 50th lap. This stirred the Red Bull, acting proactively, to call-in Verstappen for a fresh soft tyres. It helped Dutch to score an extra point for fastest lap.
However, it helped Hamilton with a 32 second gap when he entered the final lap.in It helped him in managing the flat tyre through the last lap.
The British crossed the line when Verstappen closed the gap to 5.8 seconds. He claimed a stupendous victory for seventh time on his home track.
“Up until that last lap, everything was relatively smooth sailing,” said Hamilton.
“The tyres felt great. Valtteri was really pushing incredibly hard. And I was doing some management of that tyre and he looked like he wasn’t doing any.
“When I heard that his tyre went I was just looking at mine and everything seemed fine. The car was still turning. No problem. So I was thinking maybe it’s ok.
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“Those last few laps, I started to back off and then down the straight, it just deflated. I just noticed the shape just shift a little bit.
“That was definitely a heart-in-the-mouth kind of feeling. Because I wasn’t quite sure if it had gone down until I hit the brakes. And you could see the tyre was falling off the rim.
“Then just driving it, trying to keep the speed up, because sometimes it will fly off and break the wing and all these different things. Oh my God, I was just praying to try and get around and not be too slow.
“I nearly didn’t get around the last two corners, but thank God we did. [I] really owe it to the team.
“I think ultimately maybe we should have stopped towards the end once we saw the delaminations.”
Pete Bonnington, race engineer, helped Hamilton to focus on the dragging the W11 to chequered flag while he kept an eye on Verstappen.
