2014 British Grand Prix

  2014 British Grand Prix

Race details
Race 9 of 19 in the 2014 Formula One season
Layout of the Silverstone Circuit
Date	6 July 2014
Official name	2014 Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix[1]
Location	Silverstone Circuit Silverstone, United Kingdom
Course	Permanent racing facility
Course length	5.891 km (3.661 mi)
Distance	52 laps, 306.198 km (190.263 mi)
Weather	Mostly cloudy with maximum temperatures reaching 21 degrees during the day.
Attendance	122,000
Pole position
Driver	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes
Time	1:35.766
Fastest lap
Driver	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes
Time	1:37.176 on lap 26
Podium
First	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes
Second	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes
Third	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault
Lap leaders

The 2014 British Grand Prix (formally the 2014 Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix)^[1] was a Formula One motor race held on 6 July 2014 at the Silverstone Circuit in Silverstone, United Kingdom. It was the ninth round of the 2014 Formula One season, and the 69th British Grand Prix. The 52-lap race was won by Lewis Hamilton for the Mercedes team, from a sixth position start; the lowest position he has ever won from. Valtteri Bottas finished second in a Williams car, with Daniel Ricciardo third for the Red Bull team. This race was the first to be red-flagged on lap one since the 2000 Monaco Grand Prix.

Report

Background

The Grand Prix was contested by eleven teams, each of two drivers. The teams, also known as "constructors", were Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus, Sauber, Force India, Williams, Toro Rosso, Caterham and Marussia.

Before the race, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg led the Drivers' Championship with 165 points, his team-mate Lewis Hamilton was second on 136 points. Behind them in the Drivers' Championship, Daniel Ricciardo was third on 83 points for Red Bull, with Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel on 79 and 60 points respectively.^[2] In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes were leading with 301 points and Red Bull were second on 143 points, with Ferrari third on 98 points.^[2]

Practice and qualifying

Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted 90 minutes. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour.^[3]

Susie Wolff took part in the first free practice session, driving for Williams in lieu of Valtteri Bottas. In doing so, she became the first woman to take part in a Grand Prix weekend since Giovanna Amati failed to qualify for the 1992 Brazilian Grand Prix.^[4]

Felipe Massa had a large crash at Stowe corner in first practice, but did manage to continue in second practice, and Lewis Hamilton's car broke down on track in the middle of second practice.^[5][6]

Saturday afternoon's qualifying session was divided into three parts. The first part ran for 18 minutes and eliminated the cars from qualifying that finished the session 17th or lower. During this session, the 107% rule was in effect, which necessitated each driver set a time within 107% of the quickest lap to qualify for the race. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 16. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position.^[3]

Following the first few runs in Q3, Hamilton was on provisional pole position by 0.194 seconds from Rosberg on a damp track.^[7] Track conditions began to worsen as rain started to fall with increasing severity, and all the runners pulled into the pits as it looked unlikely that they would be able to improve their previous bests with track conditions as they were. In the last few minutes of Q3, several cars (including both Mercedes) emerged from the pits for a final attempt at improving their laps, though some drivers who had already set quick times earlier in the session (including Pérez and Ricciardo, who were both faster than their teammates at that point) stayed in the pits, as it looked unlikely they would be able to improve their times. During his final Q3 lap, Hamilton was over a second down on his best time through the first two sectors, and so he decided that the track was too wet to improve, and pulled into the pits. However, the final sector had dried considerably, and the cars who completed their final laps managed to improve by several seconds in the final sector alone. The final sector had dried to such an extent that Hamilton's provisional pole time was beaten by every car that completed a lap in the dying moments of Q3, pushing him down to sixth. In his final flying lap in Q3, Nico Rosberg took the pole from Sebastian Vettel with a time of 1:35.766.^[8]

Race

Kimi Räikkönen crashed on the opening lap of the race. Crash barrier damage forced the race to be suspended for almost an hour.

The race began with a crash on the first lap leading to a safety car and subsequently a red flag. Kimi Räikkönen ran wide on the Wellington straight and lost control on a bump as he attempted to rejoin, crashing heavily into the barriers before spinning back across the track and through the passing traffic. Massa attempted to swerve away from the Ferrari but spun and made contact, seriously damaging his car. Both drivers retired from the race.^[9]

Race control decided that the serious damage to the guardrail had to be repaired before the race resumed. The race restarted exactly one hour after the initial start time.

Esteban Gutiérrez, while braking late on lap 10, made contact with Pastor Maldonado who flew into the air but continued in the race. Gutiérrez damaged his front right tyre and front wing forcing him to retire.

Nico Rosberg had his first retirement of the season following a gearbox failure, allowing Hamilton to move up into first place and win his fifth race of the season. Valtteri Bottas recorded his best Formula One finish; having started 14th on the grid, Bottas made his way up the order to finish as runner-up, half a minute behind Hamilton. Daniel Ricciardo just held off Jenson Button for the final podium spot.^[10]

Classification

Qualifying

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Q1	Q2	Q3	Grid
1	6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:40.380	1:35.179	1:35.766	1
2	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:45.086	1:36.410	1:37.386	2
3	22	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:44.425	1:36.579	1:38.200	3
4	27	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:41.271	1:37.112	1:38.329	4
5	20	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:42.507	1:37.370	1:38.417	5
6	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:41.058	1:34.870	1:39.232	6
7	11	Sergio Pérez	Force India-Mercedes	1:42.146	1:37.350	1:40.457	7
8	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:44.710	1:38.166	1:40.606	8
9	26	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:41.032	1:36.813	1:40.707	9
10	25	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:43.040	1:37.800	1:40.855	10
11	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:43.121	1:38.496		11
12	17	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	1:41.169	1:38.709		12
13	4	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	1:42.082	1:39.800		17^1
14	21	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:43.285	1:40.912		19^2
EX^3	13	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	1:43.892	1:44.018		20^3
16	99	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:42.603	No time		13
17	77	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1:45.318			14
18	19	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:45.695			15
19	14	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:45.935			16
20	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:46.684			18
107% time: 1:47.406
21	9	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	1:49.421			21^4
22	10	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham-Renault	1:49.625			22^4
Source:[11]

Notes:

• ^1 — Max Chilton was given a five-place grid penalty for unscheduled gearbox change.^[11]
• ^2 — Esteban Gutiérrez was given a ten-place grid penalty for unsafe release at previous round and a five-place grid penalty for unscheduled gearbox change.^[11]
• ^3 — Pastor Maldonado was excluded from the results for violating the rules by not having enough fuel to return to the pits, and he was moved to the back of the grid.^[11]
• ^4 — Marcus Ericsson and Kamui Kobayashi failed to set a lap time within 107% of the fastest lap time set by Nico Rosberg in Q1. They were later given permission to start by race stewards.^[11]

Race

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	52	2:26:52.094	6	25
2	77	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	52	+30.135	14	18
3	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	52	+46.495	8	15
4	22	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	52	+47.390	3	12
5	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	52	+53.864	2	10
6	14	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	52	+59.946	16	8
7	20	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	52	+1:02.563	5	6
8	27	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	52	+1:28.692	4	4
9	26	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	52	+1:29.340	9	2
10	25	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	51	+1 lap	10	1
11	11	Sergio Pérez	Force India-Mercedes	51	+1 lap	7
12	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	51	+1 lap	11
13	99	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	51	+1 lap	13
14	17	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	51	+1 lap	12
15	10	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham-Renault	50	+2 laps	22
16	4	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	50	+2 laps	17
17	13	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	49	Exhaust	20
Ret	6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	28	Gearbox	1
Ret	9	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	11	Suspension	21
Ret	21	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	9	Collision damage	19
Ret	19	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	0	Collision damage	15
Ret	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	0	Accident	18
Source:[12]

Championship standings after the race

Drivers' Championship standings Pos. Driver Points 1 Nico Rosberg 165 2 Lewis Hamilton 161 3 Daniel Ricciardo 98 4 Fernando Alonso 87 2 5 Valtteri Bottas 73

Constructors' Championship standings Pos. Constructor Points 1 Mercedes 326 2 Red Bull Racing-Renault 168 3 Ferrari 106 1 4 Williams-Mercedes 103 1 5 Force India-Mercedes 91

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

References

1. "2014 FIA Formula One World Championship race calendar". Formula1.com. Formula One Administration. Archived from the original on 18 June 2014. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
2. "2014 British Grand Prix – Preview". Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 2 July 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
3. "2014 Formula One Sporting Regulations" (PDF). Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 12 March 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
4. Johnson, Daniel (4 July 2014). "British Grand Prix 2014: Susie Wolff has Silverstone howler as her Williams lasts just 20 minutes of practice". Telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
5. "British Grand Prix: Felipe Massa suffers big crash in practice". BBC.com. BBC. 4 July 2014. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
6. Collantine, Keith (4 July 2014). "Hamilton quickest – then breaks down". F1Fanatic.co.uk. F1 Fanatic. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
7. "British GP qualifying as it happened". BBC. 5 July 2014. Archived from the original on 8 July 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
8. Smith, Luke (5 July 2014). "Rosberg storms to Silverstone pole ahead of Vettel and Button". motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com. NBC Sports. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
9. Menezes, Jack de (6 July 2014). "F1 British Grand Prix: Race red flagged on opening lap after heavy crash for Kimi Raikkonen". Independent.co.uk. The Independent. Retrieved 6 July 2014.
10. Johnson, Daniel (6 July 2014). "Lewis Hamilton wins the British Grand Prix after Nico Rosberg retires". The Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
11. "Qualifying Results". Formula1.com. Formula One World Championship Limited. 5 July 2014. Archived from the original on 8 July 2014. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
12. "2014 FORMULA 1 SANTANDER BRITISH GRAND PRIX". 6 July 2014. Archived from the original on 8 July 2014. Retrieved 6 July 2014.

External links

• Official Event Site