After a rainy Saturday Qualifying, the weather at Silverstone on Sunday may have been dry and sunny but the race action was wild and unpredictable. Come with me below the fold to find out how it all went down at the British Grand Prix…

Hamilton storms to win as rival and teammate Rosberg suffers gearbox failure; Bottas a strong second and Ricciardo scores yet another podium

After miscalculating by staying in the pits at the end of Saturday Qualifying and falling to 6th on the starting grid, British driver Lewis Hamilton put the bit between his teeth on Sunday and powered his Mercedes to victory at his home Grand Prix. Making the victory even sweeter for Hamilton and his countrymen in the stands, his Championship-leading teammate Nico Rosberg suffered terminal gearbox failure on lap 29 and the German failed to score any points. That catapulted Hamilton back into contention with a 25 to zero score and he now trails Rosberg by a mere 4 points, 161-165. With no other chassis able to consistently challenge Mercedes this season it seems inevitable that the Drivers’ Championship will come down to these two talented pilots. And after several weeks of setbacks for Hamilton, it now leaves Rosberg hoping his previously perfect luck has not suddenly turned bad going into the critical second half of the season.

After out and out disastrous Qualifying for Williams and Ferrari, with both squads failing to get any of their cars out of Q1, the race got off to an even more frightening start for those teams. Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari ran wide on the opening lap and when the Finn tried to re-enter the circuit at speed his rear suspension hit a ditch and broke, sending the car careening across the track and into the Armco at a fearsome velocity. Thankfully, while the shunt looked quite scary, the veteran driver suffered only a badly sprained ankle and bruised knee. However, as his Ferrari bounced back from the safety barrier and onto the track for a second time he collected Felipe Massa’s Williams, who despite a very quick avoiding move suffered race-ending driveshaft damage from the contact. That incident led to a one hour Red Flag period to repair the barrier and left Williams and Ferrari with but one driver each to contest the rest of the Grand Prix.

Fortunately, both Williams’ Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso of Ferrari were up to the challenge. In Bottas’ case, the young Finn bettered his 3rd place finish two weeks ago in Austria by coming home 2nd at Silverstone yesterday. That puts the second year man a very impressive 5th in the Drivers’ Championship just behind Fernando Alonso and ahead of Sebastian Vettel. And speaking of those two veterans, they dueled for what seemed like an eternity mid-race to try and secure 5th place, with Vettel desperate to get by the Ferrari and Alonso hard-nosed in keeping the 4-time World Champion behind by any means possible. After many laps of hair-raising attempts and complaints by Vettel that he was being forced off track, the German former-wunderkind was able to finally nip by for the position. Considering that Alonso started from 19th after Saturday’s debacle and also had to serve a stop and go penalty during the race for lining up too far in front of his grid spot at the start, the Spanish former double champion should still be well pleased with his 6th place finish.

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo grabbed the last spot on the podium with his 3rd place finish, another sterling drive in the young Australian’s fantastic 2014 campaign. Englishman Jenson Button also had a good race for McLaren in front of the home fans, finishing a strong 4th. The good result came after being criticized by team boss Ron Dennis during the run up to the Grand Prix for not pushing hard enough when, in fact, the MP4-29 has been nowhere all year. The 2009 champion also wore a special pink helmet in tribute to his late father John, who passed away in January. Button’s rookie teammate Kevin Magnussen came home a solid 7th, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg had another quietly effective run for good points at 8th and the Torro Rosso’s of Daniil Kvyat and Jean-Eric Vergne finished 9th and 10th respectively.

Top 10 finishers for the British Grand Prix below:

Complete race results via Formula1.com.

The next race weekend is in two weeks for the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim — hope to see you then!