Twelve months ago, the Silverstone crowd roared with delight when Nico Rosberg swept into the lead at the British Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull Racing car, which had been in front, pulled to the side of the track with mechanical problems.
Some of the reaction was attributable to the sheer relief that someone other than the dominant Vettel was going to prevail, but regardless, Rosberg was a very popular winner at the 2013 event.
Fast forward to Sunday and the crowd of 120,000 were again punching the air in celebration as the leader's car slowed down at the start of Lap 29, but this was time it was Rosberg who was losing out when his Mercedes-GP car suffered a terminal gearbox issue.
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It was not that Rosberg had become massively unpopular in the past year among the British folk. It was simply that his misfortune was of huge benefit to his teammate and home favourite Lewis Hamilton, who inherited the lead and went on to win his fifth race of the season.
It had been a remarkable transformation in fortunes for Hamilton, who had been at his lowest ebb on Saturday after his misjudgement of the conditions in qualifying had left him down in sixth, with Rosberg on pole.
After the race was delayed for an hour for barrier repairs to be undertaken after Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen crashed heavily on the first lap, Hamilton quickly cleared the cars in front of him to move into second, though Rosberg was five seconds down the road by this point.
What followed for the next 20 laps was a fascinating duel, the pair rarely more than three-tenths of a second a lap apart on pace, with Hamilton slowly reeling in his teammate.
In the opening laps, the pair were two seconds faster per lap than anyone else, making fanciful the claims that the pack were beginning to close on the German manufacturers.
Hamilton made his first pit stop later than Rosberg and had gone to the harder of the two tyre compounds available, and he immediately began to erase close to a second per lap from his teammate.
However, all was not well with Rosberg’s car. He had already complained of a problem downshifting through the gears following his pit stop, and the problem proved terminal as he ground to a standstill on the 29th circuit of the track.
Such was the pace advantage Hamilton and Mercedes had, he was able to make an additional pit stop to avoid the risk of late tyre wear and still finish half-a-minute ahead of Williams driver Valtteri Bottas to win his home race for a second time.
“At the beginning, I allowed him to get a good gap and look after the tyres,” Hamilton said. “But we came out on the harder tyre and could not believe I had that kind of pace.
“I don’t want to see a teammate fail, I want a one-two, but I really needed this result.”
He is not kidding. If the race had finished at the end of Lap 28, Rosberg would have owned an imposing 36-point lead in the standings.
Instead, they will go to Germany in two weeks with Hamilton just four points adrift, thanks to his score of 25 points and Rosberg’s failure to finish for the first time this season.
“It’s definitely disappointing as it is a lot of lost points,” Rosberg said. “I felt something before the start and then around Lap 21. When I got the problem, I thought I’d go into some safety setting and get it to the end of the race, even if I let Lewis by, but it wasn’t possible.”
While the result was unfortunate for Rosberg, who lost a sizeable haul of points, Hamilton was due for some luck, given the mechanical failures in Australia and Canada that led to him not finishing either race.
Given that the season finale in Abu Dhabi on November 23 will be held under the new double-points rule, falling 36 points behind would technically not have been the end of the world for Hamilton, given that 50 points would be available for the winner at Yas Marina Circuit.
But this was as much about slowing Rosberg’s momentum, a run in which he had won two of the past three races, and it gives Hamilton his first win since the Spanish Grand Prix in May.
“There’s a lot of pressure, not just in the championship, but you want to win this race so much more,” the 2008 world champion said.
“I’ve been on the back foot all year, as my car stopped twice. So to catch those points up, you feel you have to give a bit more. I plan to make this the start of a new chapter.”
While the majority of the crowd at Silverstone will have gone home happy after seeing their compatriot prevail, they were denied a duel between the championship protagonists in the second half of the race.
Hamilton looked as if he had the edge on raw pace over Rosberg, but whether that would have been enough to get him ahead on the track, we can only wonder. This was something Hamilton seemed to regret, too.
“I was looking forward to a wheel-to-wheel battle, but I’m sure we’ll get more in the future,” he said.
There should be plenty more opportunities during the final 10 races to find out who truly has the upper hand, starting at Hockenheim in Germany on July 20.
Given that Mercedes’ speed advantage appears to be as large as ever, it is going to be one of their two men who will leave Abu Dhabi as the champion, yet we are still nowhere near knowing who it will be.
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