By Alan Baldwin
SILVERSTONE, England, July 5 (Reuters) – Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc won a dramatic British Grand Prix under safety car conditions on Sunday as Mercedes’s Kimi Antonelli failed to score for the second time in three races and saw his once-commanding Formula One lead slashed to 25 points.
The win, after a race of changing fortunes and late twists, was Ferrari’s 250th in Formula One and came at the Silverstone circuit where the championship started in 1950 and in front of a capacity race-day crowd of 175,000.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen crashed out four laps from the finish while fighting for third place to trigger the safety car and George Russell got lucky to finish second for Mercedes and close the points gap to his 19-year-old Italian teammate.
Seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton was third for Ferrari in his home race, overcoming what looked like a harsh five-second penalty for jumping the start, with McLaren’s reigning champion and 2025 winner Lando Norris fourth.
“It feels incredible. Unfortunately the end (safety car finish) was maybe not the one I would have dreamt of,” said Leclerc of his first win since 2024, ninth of his career and Ferrari’s second of the season.
“(It was) not great for the fans around the track but in the helmet I was happy that there was not a restart to keep that win.”
ANTONELLI ANGUISH AS WIN HOPES EVAPORATE
In the championship Antonelli, winner of the Saturday sprint, has 179 points to Russell on 154 and Hamilton on 147 after nine rounds. The Italian had a 66-point lead after Monaco in June, when he took his fifth win in a row.
Mercedes lead the constructors’ standings on 333 with Ferrari on 255 and champions McLaren on 179.
Antonelli, who started on pole position and lost out at the start before fighting back to a position where he looked likely to win, slowed and alerted his team to a problem with 11 laps to go.
The Italian finished 16th, desperately trying to salvage something before a five-second post-race penalty for exceeding track limits in his damaged car dropped him out of the top 10.
Mercedes said the problem was caused by a front left wheel shield failure after he ran over the kerb at Copse.
The team initially brought Antonelli into the pits for a front wing change, then pitted him again a lap later to remove debris.
Leclerc had made a lightning start from the front row, with Hamilton following through as Antonelli dropped from pole to third before later reclaiming the position and then leading from laps 26 to 36.
“With Kimi, it would have been close,” said Leclerc. “He was very fast when he was coming towards me. It would have been very difficult to keep that first place. Then I heard he had a problem so I was like ‘Okay, now I have a big gap and it should be straightforward’.
NO FURTHER ACTION AGAINST HAMILTON
Hamilton finished under investigation for a potential yellow-flag breach but stewards decided to take no further action.
He might have been second but for a team decision to pit him when the safety car came out, dropping Hamilton to third and behind Russell who had decided not to come in.
A message on timing screens announcing the safety car would return to the pits, allowing one last lap of racing, turned out to be erroneous and there was no final dash to the line.
The governing FIA said the correct procedures had been followed and the ‘safety car in this lap’ message had been displayed due to a software error.
Russell had already pitted twice by the time of the safety car, the second time due to a slow puncture that meant he had to make his way back through the field.
Isack Hadjar finished fifth for Red Bull with Liam Lawson and British rookie Arvid Lindblad sixth and seventh for Racing Bulls.
Gabriel Bortoleto was eighth for Audi ahead of Alpine pair Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly.
McLaren’s Australian Oscar Piastri missed out in 11th place after a first-lap clash with Lawson that forced him to pit for a new front wing and dropped him to 21st on track.
In a bizarre moment, the virtual safety car was deployed on lap 22 when an umbrella blew on to the track and had to be recovered by a marshal.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Toby Chopra and Clare Fallon)
Comments