Rosberg wins Silverstone thriller

F1 Grand Prix, GP Great-Britain, Silverstone Circuit

Nico Rosberg has won a thrilling British Grand Prix was that unfortunately dominated early on by three Pirelli tyre failures. Two safety car periods created great racing nonetheless, with Webber just coming short 0.7s to win this race. Fernando Alonso finished third.

The best weather of the weekend greets the racers at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. Track temperature is up to 31°C.

Starting on the orange hard tyre are: BUT, DIR, GUT, HUL, VER, VDG, PIC. The others have gone for the white medium tyre.

As the lights go out, Hamilton has a solid start and easily keeps first place. Rosberg got off the line less well and immediately lost his second place to Sebastian Vettel. Adrian Sutil moved up into 4th, followed by Massa who had an unbelievable start from 12th.

Mark Webber had a very troubled start and dropped down to 12th from 4th. Webber got into contact with Grosjean in the first corner and incurred some front wing damage, similar to the damage for him at the front wing. Alonso also picked up some wheelspin after the start and dropped 1 place, only to gain 2 back in the next two laps.

6 laps into the 52 lap race, HAmilton is still ahead with a 2 seconds margin on Vettel. Rosberg is an additional 1.5s behind. Sutil follows in 4th at 3 seconds. Massa is less than a second behind the Force India, who on his behalf is closely followed by Raikkonen, Ricciardo, Alonso and Grosjean. Perez is a further 2 seconds behind after passing Button for 10th. Webber has meanwhile moved up to 12th and one lap later passes Button on hanger straight with DRS wide open.

On lap 8, Hamilton limps back to the pits with a completely destroyed left rear tyre, very similar to what happened to Sergio Perez during FP3. The entire thread is gone and only the tyre walls are still fixed on the rim. The destroyed tyre structure may have also caused considerable damage to the car's floor, but after a tyre change, Hamilton is back on track in 21st place.

On lap 10 Massa suffers a very similar puncture without an obvious reason. The Brazilian spins off before getting back to the pits. After his stop, he is 22nd.

The punctures seemingly trigger several pitstops as Alonso and Webber both enter the pitlane, followed by Raikkonen, Ricciardo, Button and Gutierrez the next lap.

The next laps show a struggling Kimi Raikkonen who is again on the medium tyre. Grosjean and Alonso on the harder tyre in their second stint have no problems at all to pass the Finn. Alonso then moved on to pass Grosjean and half a lap later also gets alongside Vergne to move up into 5th.

On lap 14 Vettel makes his first stop from P1. Rosberg pitted one lap earlier but the positions at the front remained unchanged.

One lap later Vergne finds himself with a blown left rear tyre, throwing parts of the tyre onto Raikkonen's helmet. While it didn't really cause any problems for Raikkonen who was just passing his teammate again, the debris on track triggered a safety car to allow the marshalls to clean up the track.

At the end of lap 21, the SC is going back in. The car positions at this moment are VET ROS SUT ALO RAI GRO RIC PER WEB BUT DIR HUL GUT HAM MAL VER BOT PIC BIA CHI VDG and MAS.

At the end of the Wellington straight, Webber passes Perez through the outside. The Australian got a new front wing at his last pitstop so is now back up to full speed.

Drivers were meanwhile asked to save their rear left tyres and avoid kerbs. It is not entirely clear to the teams yet what is causing the tyre problems, but it is either a structural problem that comes up when the tyres are getting hot or cutting in the tyres caused by running over curbs.

On lap 30 Raikkonen is the first to make a second stop. He takes on the harder tyre. Alonso follows suit the next lap but lost a place to Raikkonen during that phase. In the next laps both men easily passed Hamilton, half a lap later followed by Webber. Hamilton was closely following Di Resta but suddenly lost pace, probably due to running out of tyres.

On lap 34 Force India pitted both their cars. With that Sutil dropped from 3rd, ahead of Alonso, to 7th, behind Raikkonen, Alonso and Webber.

Rosberg pits on lap 35 and Vettel another lap later, retaining the lead.

At the same time, Webber gets past Alonso and the next laps show that Alonso has trouble following that pace. Webber though is on the softer medium tyre.

On lap 43 Vettel slows down and stops on the main straight. The world Champion lost drive completely and had no other option but to step out of the car and abandon the race. Once again, this triggered a safety car to get the car off the track safely as he stopped in front of the pit wall.

Alonso, Rosberg, Webber among others immediately dove into the pitlane to get fresh tyres for the final laps of the race.

The positions behind the SC are ROS RAI SUT RIC WEB PER BUT ALO HAM GRO MAS MAL HUL DIR PIC BOT BIA GUT CHI VDG. Vettel and Vergne are out of the race, the latter abandoning due to damage to his car's floor following his left rear puncture. Alonso lost considerable places due to his stop as Ferrari effectively pitted him just ahead of the SC period.

At the start of lap 46 the racing is on again. While a lot of action is going on at the front, Perez drops out of the points as his left rear tyre failed. Back in the pits, McLaren decided to retire

Webber meanwhile moved up into 3rd and then has Raikkonen to challenge. Alonso is also on the move, passing Ricciardo. Hamilton followed closely behind in the same move.

On lap 49 Webber moves up into second place as Raikkonen is now suffering on his older tyres. Alonso up to 4th and Hamilton half a lap later also up to 5th after passing Sutil as well.

On lap 51, with 2 laps to go Alonso passes Raikkonen and gets back in a podium position. Webber meanwhile is closing the gap to Rosberg by setting the fastest lap.

The next lap Hamilton passes Raikkonen and sets the fastest final sector time.

At the chequered flag, Rosberg had only 0.7s on Webber, but that's enough to take the win.