Webber wins GP of Great Britain

F1 Grand Prix, GP Great Britain, Silverstone Circuit

Mark Webber has won the Grand Prix of Great Britain for the second time in three years after a late charge on Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard suffered in his final stint and lost the win 5 laps from the end. With Alonso second, Sebastian Vettel finished third to make this a great result for Red Bull Racing.

Already during the warm-up laps 30 minutes before the start, an engine failure occurred on Vitaly Petrov's Caterham F1. The team still managed to recover the car into the pit box where a terminal engine failure meant the end of Petrov's race weekend at Silverstone.

Meanwhile, all other cars went on to position themselves on the grid. The track is dry for the start and with the sun shining the track temperature is now 29°C. Rain is possible at around the halfway mark, but so far no clouds are in sight.

Alonso is on pole, ahead of Webber, Schumacher and Vettel. Lewis Hamilton is 8th, Button 16th. Vergne start from the back of the grid after a 10-place grid penalty for a collision in Valencia.

As the starting lights went out, Alonso made a great start and immediately took several lenghts of advantage to Webber. Schumacher keeps third while Vettel had a troubled start and gets passed by Massa and only nearly fends off Raikkonen. The Finn then gets under pressure from Maldonado.

The next two laps are impressively close fought in the midfield, with Button moving up from 16th to 14th. Grosjean had a very bad start and touched with Di Resta. He pits from 12th position at the end of lap 2. Pérez meanwhile moved up 6 places to 9th while Vergne gained 8 places from the back of the grid.

Di Resta's race is over after 2 laps after the puncture caused by Grosjean caused unrepairable damage.

Of the top 10 started, only Alonso and Hamilton chose the harder prime tyres. It seems though that these tyres are performing well as Alonso initially appears to have no problem maintaining his advantage to Webber.

By lap 7 it is clear that Schumacher is holding up the cars behind him. Massa has to be careful though not to overcook a passing move on Schumacher as Vettel, Maldonado and Raikkonen would all be eager to take that place.

At the start of lap 10, Alonso is 1st, followed by Webber (+3), Schumacher (+4), Massa (+0.4), Vettel (+0.9), Maldonado (+0.8 ), Raikkonen (+0.7), Hamilton (+0.5), Pérez (+0.3).

At the end of that lap, Vetel is already in the pitlane, changing his options. One lap later Massa finally gets past Schumacher while Maldonado and Pérez make their first stops as well.

On lap 12 Perez attempts a pass outside of Maldonado at the end of the DRS zone. Maldonado however lost control of his own car, resulting in both cars getting off the track. Pérez immediately abandons while Maldonado continues with the puncture to get new tyres at the end of that lap.

In lap 14 Raikkonen and Massa are pitting as well after Schumacher pitted one lap before. Webber pits on lap 15 while Alonso keeps running competitively on the prime tyres.

On lap 16 Alonso pits as well, taking on another set of prime tyres. He rejoines the track behind Hamilton who has yet to stop. One lap later Button changes to the softer Pirelli tyres and gets back on track in P10, right behind Rosberg.

3 laps later Alonso passes Hamilton for the lead after a very interesting battle, braking into corners side by side.

After Lewis Hamilton's pitstop to change primes for options, positions are ALO, WEB, VET, MAS, SCH, RAI, HAM, GRO, KOB, HUL. 2 laps later though Schumacher drops behind Raikkonen and Hamilton after two great passing moves.

On lap 28 Hamilton pits for the second time, chaging the set of options to primes. Interestingly, he only completed 8 laps on the options. Hamilton has 23 laps to go and he is aiming not to stop again during this race.

2 laps later Alonso gets past Rosberg and Grosjean who is right behind him benefits and slips through the gap created by Hamilton to gain a position himself. One lap later it's the exact same story with Button, as Hamilton gets past first at Copse while Grosjean follows the line in the next corner. This means Hamilton is now 10th, Grosjean 11th.

It also seems that Grosjean is actually faster than the McLaren ahead of him.

On lap 34 Webber pits for a new set of primes while at the same time Grosjean gets past Hamilton on the DRS straight.

As Webber is approximately half a second a lap quicker than Alonso is on worn primes, Ferrari call Alonso in for his final stop. They key for Alonso was to make his final stint on options as short as possible to make sure he doesn't lose out due to tyre graining compared to Webber who is completing his final stint on primes.

Meanwhile Kobayashi comes into the pits way too quickly and knocks over a number of the Sauber pitcrew. Seemingly nobody got seriously injured but of course it cost Kobayashi a lot of time.

By lap 45 Webber is massively quicker than Alonso. At the start of lap 46 the gap is down to 1 second, allowing Webber to use DRS. Alonso is struggling with left front tyre graining on his option tyres, an issue that Webber of course does not have to worry about on his prime tyres.

In lap 48 Webber passes Alonso in the DRS zone. The Red Bull's traction was considerably better out of the turn before the DRS straight. This means that after 48 laps of leading the race, it is now likely that Webber will win this race.

Senna then finally gets past Hulkenberg and moves up to 9th. Hulkenberg's attempt to come back at the Williams even cost him his 10th place as he ran off the track. Button likely said thank you for that single point.