Would Hamilton have won the British GP anyway?

Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton had been here before. Waging their own private war for victory, they were on a collision course that would have left them disputing the same piece of track before the chequered flag flew at the end of the British Grand Prix. The only difference to the Bahrain and Spanish Grands Prix earlier in the season was that this time the winner was simply the last man standing.

The bare facts reveal that Rosberg had control of the race when he first detected a minor downshift glitch on lap 20 that was the harbinger of a terminal problem. With Hamilton breezing past his team-mate, who was by then wedged firmly in fourth gear, to take the lead nine laps later, it suggests a win inherited.

But did Rosberg's problem hand Hamilton victory, or did it just hasten the moment when the home favourite would hit the front?

The only way to answer that is to roll the clock back to the end of lap 19, before Rosberg had any inkling of the problem that would force his first retirement of 2014 and slash his world championship lead to just four points.

THE RACE THAT DID HAPPEN

Mercedes had no serious opposition at Silverstone. The half-minute gap to second-placed Valtteri Bottas at the finish - even though Hamilton spent the second half of the race cruising - is proof of that.

Rosberg suffered his first retirement of the season while leading the race © LAT

And with Hamilton down in sixth place on the grid thanks to his injudicious decision to abort his final qualifying lap in the misguided belief that the damp track would not allow anyone to better his time, the way was clear for Rosberg.

In such situations, the pattern has been for the lead Mercedes driver, in this case Rosberg, to follow the optimum strategy. The chaser then takes the slower alternative. At Silverstone, Rosberg's planned medium/medium/hard approach was reckoned to be around four seconds faster than Hamilton's path.

Hamilton's strategy was to switch to the hards for the middle stint, then return to the faster mediums for the run-in, in the hope of being able to attack in the closing stages.

"In terms of the offset strategy of letting him [Hamilton] run in the middle with the prime, they would have been together at the end of the race, in the last 10 laps," said Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff. "This is what we were expecting in theory."

This was, of course, dependent on Hamilton making progress early on, which is exactly what he did. He jumped Nico Hulkenberg off the line, then went around the outside of front-row starter Sebastian Vettel at Turn 3, surviving some wheelbanging with the Red Bull at the exit of the corner before his charge was put on hiatus for around an hour by Kimi Raikkonen's barrier-demolishing, race-stopping accident.

When the race got back underway, Hamilton wasted no time in dispensing with the McLarens. A look up the inside at Copse that Hamilton had no intention of following through led to Kevin Magnussen making a mistake and running wide, giving him third on lap three. Button then fell at Brooklands a lap later. This was a great performance by Hamilton, more impressive than his leap from ninth on the grid to fourth and onto the back of Rosberg in Austria two weeks ago. Without such incisiveness, the prospect of a battle with Rosberg might never have materialised.

But thanks to his attacking virtuosity, the stage was set. At the end of lap four, Hamilton crossed the line five seconds behind Rosberg. Race on.

Initially, the gap was relatively consistent, although Rosberg did have almost 5.8s in his pocket by the end of lap nine. Then Hamilton started to attack. Over the next eight laps he was an average of 0.323s per lap faster which, combined with the six tenths he sliced off Rosberg when the German was on his in-lap, closed the gap to 2.244s.

Rosberg was controlling the race and knew his team-mate couldn't attempt to undercut him thanks to the Mercedes rule that the leading driver gets to pit first. But this period of the race, when both were on medium rubber of identical age, is evidence that the pace advantage Hamilton had in practice carried over into the race.

Not only that, but he seemed to be looking after the rubber better as well as using a little less fuel. While Rosberg pitted on lap 18, Hamilton did not head in until lap 24, circulating quicker in the extra six laps of his run than Rosberg had in the final six of his stint.

Hamilton had Rosberg in his sights before his team-mate's gearbox failed © LAT

Hamilton's stop was 1.3s slower than Rosberg's thanks to a slow left-rear change and he re-emerged around six seconds down.

But by then Rosberg had been battling the early stages of his gearbox problem for four laps and the die was cast.

Hamilton passed Rosberg, who was now stuck in fourth gear, at the Loop on lap 29, thereafter instantly dropping his pace by a second per lap and cruising to a hugely popular second British GP victory.

THE RACE THAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED

In the parallel universe we have now moved into, Rosberg didn't have the gearbox problem and continued at full pace after his first pitstop. It's difficult to say how much further behind Hamilton would have been when he emerged after his second stop in this scenario.

Rosberg's real-world times were inhibited by the car occasionally jumping into neutral, but taking the fuel effect (based on the FOM graphic stating his fuel usage was an average 1.57kg per lap) into account, and comparing his early laps on medium tyres during his first run and his second run, he potentially should have been around a second per lap faster in this phase. The real-world gap from first to second was six seconds after both had stopped, so let's say it ended up being 10-12s in our 'virtual' world.

Hamilton knew he was sacrificing time by running long before his first stop, but the aim was for it to pay him back late in the race. It also gave him two options. In reality, he made his final stop to switch to hards with 11 laps to go, but against a healthy Rosberg there was a choice of pursuing the planned strategy of taking mediums at the final stop and attacking in the final stint, or switching to a one-stop plan.

Whether he could have one-stopped and gained track position over Rosberg with a realistic chance of holding it is a moot point. But it was certainly possible that he could have rolled the dice, safe in the knowledge that the gap to Bottas meant it was possible to bail out and make an emergency stop without losing second place.

"That was a safety option," said Wolff of Hamilton's final stop. "I think we could have gone to the end. Many teams were caught by surprise at how long the tyres lasted. You could have pushed it to a one-stop strategy."

There are two factors that go against the one-stop approach. Firstly, while Hamilton's hards in the real world would have stood up, he had backed off significantly once Rosberg had retired, so who knows what the degradation would have been had he done a full 28-lap stint needing to manage the gap to Rosberg?

Given the gap that Rosberg should have had at the start of the second stint, Hamilton needed to push as hard as he could to close the gap to ensure he was close enough to capitalise on the pace advantage of the mediums in the closing stages.

Secondly, even if he had gained track position, he would not have had too big an advantage late on. Rosberg would not have needed to extend his advantage too significantly in the middle stint to have given himself a shot at emerging ahead of Hamilton.

Hamilton's lead over the chasing pack was so big he pitted again to be safe © LAT

Given that Hamilton had a pace advantage, the planned two-stopper might have been the safer option. After all, he had the speed and a clear tyre-management edge. So, just as Wolff predicted, it would likely have come down to a final-stint shootout, with Rosberg ahead but Hamilton on the faster tyre and attacking.

There's no clear indication of how Rosberg's pace on the hard tyre would have compared to Hamilton's, although the Briton's stint proved that the Mercedes worked well on that compound. Hamilton himself railed at the situation that he had in any way lucked in, stressing his absolute certainty that he would have been able to take the lead.

"Today wasn't lucky," he said. "I feel confident I would have been on his tail and I had a different tyre strategy. There is at least half a second between soft and medium and hard. In previous races, you saw him on my tail. Today, I was pretty good at attacking..."

As Hamilton points out, in Bahrain and Spain it was Rosberg who was on the faster rubber late on and piling on the pressure. But on neither occasion was the German able to make a move. So there is no way to be sure whether or not Hamilton could have made the pass. While Hamilton would have had the pace, Rosberg would have had the all-important advantage in terms of track position.

Rosberg could also point to his superbly measured run to the chequered flag at Silverstone last year, when he just kept Mark Webber out of range and crossed the line three quarters of a second clear. But roll the clock back to a year earlier, and Webber showed that the combination of a faster car plus the DRS can be an irresistible force by passing Fernando Alonso for victory with four laps remaining.

You can make a case for either scenario. And that makes it all the more frustrating that a gearbox problem denied us the chance for another battle between the world championship protagonists. With Rosberg having been the pursuer in both Bahrain and Spain, and Hamilton - at Sakhir in particular - showing good defensive nous, not to mention a willingness to be very forceful in trying to keep his team-mate at bay, it would have been fascinating to see whether Hamilton could prevail with the situations reversed.

While Hamilton was sure he would have won, Rosberg was equally certain that he had a second successive British GP victory in the bag.

"I'm very confident I would have won the race, yeah," he said shortly after Hamilton had taken the chequered flag. But he also must have known that he would have had a very close fight on his hands.

SO WHO WOULD HAVE WON?

Both Mercedes drivers believed they were going to win the British GP © XPB

There's no way of saying with any certainty whether Rosberg would have held on, or whether Hamilton would have found a way past. All we can be sure of is that it would have been close and likely down to a very simple equation: would Hamilton have proved better in attack than Rosberg was in defence, or would it be the other way round?

The only thing that we can be confident of is that track position has always conferred an advantage and that to win, Hamilton would have had to be at the top of his game. And for the home fans, while grateful to see Hamilton prevail, the tantalising possibility of him doing so with a genuine overtaking move in the final few laps tells you what F1 missed out on when Rosberg's gearbox went sick.

The bottom line is that both drivers left Silverstone able to tell themselves that they would have won anyway. And it was close enough that it's impossible to say that either is wrong.

If you were fond of a bet, you'd probably set the odds as being slightly in Rosberg's favour because Hamilton still had a lot to do, but you'd probably then put your money down on Hamilton.

But one thing is certain. Had Hamilton not made his qualifying misjudgement and started on pole position or at least on the front row, he had all the tools he needed to win with relative ease.