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All tied at the top
Monday 07 July 2008
The great British Summer worked its magic at the British Grand Prix, with intermittent showers raising the drama at Silverstone to almost unbearable levels.
With the track alternating between dry and wet, the drivers found it difficult to simply keep their cars on course and choice of tyres became the overriding concern for the teams.
Ferrari got it wrong, leaving their drivers on the same sets of intermediate tyres after the first pit-stop, gambling that it wouldn't rain again. It did and Felipe Massa spun a total of five times.
At least Massa finished - spins put paid to the races of championship hopeful Robert Kubica as well as Jenson Button, Nelson Piquet Jr, Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil.
McLaren could lay claim to the best tyre strategy, but they also benefited from a masterful display by Lewis Hamilton, who took the lead on the fifth lap and never looked back. Looking forward wasn't always possible either, as the British driver revealed his vision had been badly obscured by spray throughout the race. Still, he finished more than a minute clear of second-place man Nick Heidfeld.
Honda were celebrating their first podium finish since 2006 when Rubens Barrichello brought his car in third, his insistence on a set of extreme wets paying off, while Kimi Räikkönen kept himself in the championship hunt with his fourth-place finish.
The race left the Drivers' Championship tantalisingly balanced at the halfway point of the season, with Hamilton, Räikkönen and Massa tied on 48 points and Kubica just two points off the pace in fourth.
Next stop, Germany...
(Photo: Andrew Ferraro/LAT Photographic)
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