British driver Lewis Hamilton won the July British Grand Prix in front of his home crowd, driving a McLaren. "I've had a couple of bad races, and coming here I was just thinking it would have been nice to get some points and maybe a win. I thought a one-two would be possible."
Less than perfect racing conditions made the race more difficult. Hamilton said, "It was one of the toughest races I've ever done." During a post-race interview he said, "This would definitely go down as my best win, not only because it was history and my home ground, but because I drove one of my best ever races."
Hamilton dedicated his win to his family saying, "Because as you can see I've had some troubles over the last couple of weeks and it's been really tough. But as always your family are there when you need them." He said, "Just before the race I spoke to my brother and said I just hope I keep it on the track, and he said 'don't worry about that, you're a master in the wet.' That was great to hear that."
Hamilton's previous two races had been riddled with bad luck, and the 23-year-old was losing his grasp on the championship title. After Sunday's win, he's tied with Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa for the number one position in the Formula One championship. He attributes the previous two races poor finishes to a heavy workload and personal commitments.
"The last couple of weeks I've been flat out with working very hard, just a lot of traveling, many different things and different emotions building," he said. "To be honest, the most draining thing was not wanting to let down the fans, that whole build-up. You try to contain it, but there's so much excitement." The fans were not let down, indeed. Hamilton drove fast and hard even after what he considered "a terrible job" qualifying.
BMW's Nick Heidfeld completed the race in second position. Heidfeld drove a very smooth race and was able to defend second position from Rubens Barrichello. Barrichello passed Heidfeld and gained second position during lap 43 but was forced into another pit stop during lap 46. Heidfeld quickly took, and secured, second position for the duration of the race.
Barrichello quickly retook third position and maintained it quite comfortably for the remainder of the race. "There was a moment when I almost hit the wall at Club that I decided on the extreme," he said. "Because I thought it might be only five laps but in those five laps you can make 10 seconds on people and that's what happened, isn't it?"
Kimi Raikkonen spun out twice during the race. During the final laps of the race, he was able to climb back up to fourth place and maintain it. Fernando Alonso fought to take fourth back from Raikkonen, but in the end finished in sixth after also battling Heikko Kovalainen for fifth.
The current World Championship 2008 standings as of July 6, 2008 are: Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen with 48 points each. Robert Kubica is close behind with 46 points. Nick Heidfeld has 36 points, Heikki Kovalainen has 24, Jarno Trulli has 20, and Mark Webber, Fernando Alonso and Rubens Barichello round out the top 10 with 18, 13 and 11 points respectively.
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