British GP – THE POINT… by Gian Carlo Minardi

We started the weekend with the wrong strategies at Ferrari’s and Williams’, but then the ninth round of the Formula 1 World Championship turned out to be the best race of the season so far, with plenty of duels and with Bottas – uncontrollable from the very first steps –that conquered the second podium of the season and of his career.

It has been a high-voltage race, with two World Champions, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, ready to perform duels of other times. With the initial ingenuity (resulting in a 5’’ penalty at the pit-stop), Alonso compromised one or two positions for the final results. Perhaps he could have stayed with Button and Ricciardo. The errors on Saturday and Sunday are a sign of the strong tension at Ferrari. Silverstone has been characterized also by the incident of Kimi Raikkonen – that has irreparably compromised the Sunday of Felipe Massa – and by the consequent stop of more than 40 minutes, that however represents a great achievement for safety. It was estimated that the violent impact caused a deceleration of 40G… Fortunately the Finnish driver got away only with a few bruises.

At Mercedes’, the bad luck struck this time Nico Rosberg, thus denying him the satisfaction of putting his signature on the fourth race of the season, in favor of his team-mate that, with this success, is only 4 points far from the top of the ranking. Reliability confirms to be the only Achilles’ heel of the W05, although the technical advantage is so high that the fights remain always “within the family”.

As we announced, with the hard tyres McLaren is reborn, especially with Jenson Button who gives his team an important fourth place. The English driver, on his home track, was able to give something more, proving to be at ease with these compounds.

With any specific technical problem, the two Toro Rosso confirm to be top-ten cars and also at Silverstone Kvyat and Vergne enter in the score-zone with the ninth and tenth place.