The crucial factors that took Hamilton to the brink of disaster

For so long the ending of the 2020 British Grand Prix story seemed known: Lewis Hamilton triumphs for the seventh time. The on-the-flag reports were written, post-event columns planned, questions ready: how did the world champion feel about taking a comfortable, record-extending win at Silverstone without the usual support from the fans?

But that ending ultimately never came into existence, even though it had been foreshadowed for 49 largely insipid tours of last Sunday's 52-lap race. It was replaced, instantly, when Valtteri Bottas's left-front tyre gave way just as he approached the final corner on that 49th lap.

And that second new ending was replaced by the third and finally real one, as Hamilton too had a left-front blowout - in his case on the final tour. Hamilton crawled to the line, Peter Bonnington calmly telling him the ever-decreasing gap to Max Verstappen: "30 seconds behind" then "25s", "20s", "16s" at Chapel, "10s" at Stowe "nine" and then "seven" at the final, desperately slow final corner. But he did it, taking victory by 5.856s, agonising and brilliant all at once.

The final three laps may be the story of the 2020 British GP, but there were several significant factors in the largely lifeless majority that came before, which all led to the last-gasp drama (and inevitable accompanying cliches).

1. The second safety car

The story of the opening phase of the race was dominated by two heavy crashes. The first was that of Kevin Magnussen, who slammed into the wall on the outside of the final corner after a clash with Red Bull's Alex Albon.

The approach to Club had been giving the drivers headaches all through the weekend, and Magnussen made a mistake by hitting the kerb at the first apex. He slid and lost momentum, which meant Albon took a look to the inside. He went for the gap, then tried to back out and hit the kerb at the second apex, striking the Haas driver, who went off to the scene of the accident.

The safety car was brought out - and Albon was later penalised five-seconds - but this neutralisation did not have an impact on the late-race drama. It was the second safety car period that did, after Daniil Kvyat had suffered a frightening accident going through Maggotts.

The AlphaTauri driver lost the rear of his car as he shot through the rapid left turn - he said later "something happened out of my control", possibly a right-rear puncture - and he slammed into the barriers beyond Becketts.

"Certainly they were pushing each other maybe a little bit beyond what we would have wanted as a team but I guess you need to let them race" Toto Wolff

As the wreckage was removed and the track cleared, the field piled into the pits on lap 12 - for those who had time to react, led by Daniel Ricciardo in sixth - and lap 13 for the leaders. Crucially, everyone apart from Romain Grosjean (and Albon, who had already stopped for hards on lap six) moved onto the white-walled rubber - the C1, the hardest in Pirelli's range.

Pirelli had estimated before the race that a stop on lap 18 would be far enough in to run to the flag on one-stop. This meant the teams felt they could try and get to the end - "nobody wanted to stop for the last two or three laps with a risk of losing positions" explained Pirelli's motorsport boss Mario Isola.

"Doing these laps with the hard was not something that was completely unusual, so we didn't take any risks," Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said later.

2. Bottas's pace

"Valtteri was really pushing incredibly hard," Hamilton said after he'd climbed from his car, put his head in his hands and then inspected the tyre damage in parc ferme. "I was doing some management of that tyre; he looked like he wasn't doing any."

Bottas made a pretty good fist of this race - but this arguably contributed to his tyre failure. After Hamilton had made a stunning turnaround in the final stage of qualifying, it looked as if things just weren't falling right for Bottas. He'd done his best, but Hamilton had found another level when it mattered, and that story has already been written so many times before.

But Bottas started strongly, getting away better than his team-mate from their shared front row, even if Hamilton did sweep pretty imperiously across at Turn 1 to seal a lead he would actually never lose. Hamilton did indeed scamper out of DRS range, but Bottas was an ever-present threat until the very final laps.

After the restart from the second safety car at the start of lap 19, the gap between them fluctuated ever so slightly (with a low of 1.185s on lap 22), but it did not go beyond 2.310s (on lap 26) until lap 40. Here it had eked out to 2.743s and then didn't get much worse until four more tours were done and it became 3.395s on lap 44. This is when Bottas's tyre troubles - evident by visible blisters on both Mercedes cars - really started to bite as his pace finally dropped off considerably relative to Hamilton.

For so long they'd each been pressing on - their lap times gradually going from the 1m30s bracket and into a relentless series of 1m29s, which for Hamilton was laps 30-48, and Bottas 30-46. Wolff acknowledged the cars "had a little bit left" in terms of pure engine performance, but not by much: "You would always hold back a little bit, because there isn't simply so much allowance for the spicy modes".

"Certainly they were pushing each other maybe a little bit beyond what we would have wanted as a team but I guess you need to let them race," Wolff said later. "We warned them - that the tyres 'need to make it to the end'.

"They were both aware that they could lose P1 or P2 with a failure and they are very experienced, so it's then down to their decision once they get all the input from us. I don't want to interfere in the racing. We can't say to Valtteri 'back off, let's cruise home' and we didn't do that.

"So whatever the reason for the failure was, certainly the front-left was hammered and under heavy duty cycle, but ultimately the debris didn't help either."

3. Did debris cause tyre disasters?

Kvyat's crash had left carbonfibre detritus across the track at Maggotts/Becketts. But there was another incident at that famous complex late in the race that may have been a major factor in what went wrong for the Mercedes drivers - and Carlos Sainz Jr, who was cruelly denied what would have been a fourth place finish by his own blowout on the Hangar straight on the penultimate lap.

After running wide onto the kerbs at Copse on lap 47, Kimi Raikkonen damaged the left-hand side of his Alfa Romeo's front wing. The wing carved into his left-front, giving him a puncture and showering the track with sparks and, likely more pieces. A large chunk of wing then fell off and came to rest in the runoff beyond Becketts.

For Hamilton, this was the reason why his tyre failed, as he felt he had enough performance left at the end as "my tyre management was spot on".

"What is clear now is that the tyres were quite worn and we had some debris on track, that was a fact, that was visible to everybody. When you have a tyre that is completely worn the protection of the tread on the construction is less" Mario Isola

"I am convinced it was debris," he said. "There was a lot of debris on the track. There was one car - I think it might have been Kimi - that lost his wing, came off right in front of me.

"From the [second] safety car, there was debris all the way through into Maggotts and Becketts and I don't think that was cleaned up."

Isola insisted the failures "are not related to the blister" that was evident on the front-right of both Mercedes cars, with Verstappen also feeling his tyres were far from being in great shape come the final laps. But it seems the pace of the race at the front of field, on tyres that were very close to being completely used up thanks to the early timing of the second safety car, left the rubber with little protection from any debris.

At the time of writing, Pirelli is in the early stages of a "360-degree" investigation, according to Isola, to discover if debris was indeed the clinching factor or if the tyres were just taken past their limit.

"What is clear now is that the tyres were quite worn and we had some debris on track, that was a fact, that was visible to everybody," said Isola. "When you have a tyre that is completely worn the protection of the tread on the construction is less.

"If there is any debris, any small piece of carbon on track, it is easier to damage the tyre because you don't have any rubber on the tyre that is protecting the cord, and some cords are visible on the tyres. That's why I'm saying that the level of wear is close to 100%."

4. The Verstappen factor

It may have looked for so long that the Mercedes duo were comfortable at the front, and they were in another league on pace, but Verstappen didn't actually let them escape as much as the lack of time the three cars spent in the same TV shots suggested.

From lap 20, the lap after the restart for the second safety car, until lap 49, the lap before Verstappen and Bottas pitted for the final time, the Red Bull driver averaged 1m30.116s.

This compares to 1m29.757s for Hamilton - a difference of 0.359s on average per lap, which is pretty impressive given the clear performance advantage of the Mercedes W11 and clear challenge the RB16 presents to its drivers, as evidenced by Albon's various struggles last weekend.

Verstappen's pace meant that at the end of lap 49, with Bottas's puncture happening as he ran through the final corners of that lap, he was just 14.1s behind Hamilton.

For context, Charles Leclerc - reaping the benefit of Grosjean staying out and creating a gap to the rest of the midfield that allowed the Ferrari driver to run clear, once he'd navigated a post-safety car tyre warm-up issue - was 43.508s behind.

In short, Verstappen's proximity meant Mercedes couldn't easily bring its drivers in for a simple second stop, and in any case doing so may have interfered in their battle, which Wolff was so keen to avoid.

The finale: questions over final stops

Bottas unquestionably needed to pit at the end of lap 50, but things are less simple regarding Verstappen's stop on the same tour, and why Mercedes didn't then in turn bring Hamilton in one lap later and avoid his late drama.

Red Bull acted quickly. It brought Verstappen in as soon as he had passed the punctured Bottas, switching him to used softs because he was so far ahead of Leclerc and free to chase the bonus point for fastest lap, which he duly took.

"It was right on the limit. We'll be grateful for what we've got rather than what we've potentially lost" Christian Horner

But the stop left him too far adrift of Hamilton to capitalise when the leader was hobbled at the end, closing 28.387s of a 34.243s advantage on the final tour. Red Bull refused to be downbeat about this after the race, with Verstappen saying, "I'm actually not disappointed at all" and team boss Christian Horner stating that his driver was at risk of his own puncture.

"The tyre that came off the car had about 50 little cuts in it, so it had been through debris," he explained. "If we had stayed out, we could have lost a second position with the same failure as Lewis, Carlos Sainz and Bottas. It was right on the limit. We'll be grateful for what we've got rather than what we've potentially lost."

Wolff said Mercedes had a discussion on the pitwall - "Are we pitting or not?" - over whether to bring in Hamilton ahead of the final lap. It opted not to because, "We saw that Lewis's front-left was in a better state than Valtteri's and then it still looked a little bit random [what had happened to Bottas]".

He added: "In hindsight a pitstop would have probably been better but at the end we don't know the root cause of the failure. As well it could have been debris."

One clear winner, one clear loser

After the race, both Verstappen and Leclerc were asked if anyone other than Hamilton can win the 2020 title and both were pretty unequivocal that they cannot.

"I think the guy that has some chances is Valtteri," said Leclerc. "But that's it."

But Bottas is now 30 points behind his team-mate, coming home P11, unable to clear Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari to rescue the final point at the end despite a 38-lap tyre advantage on softs (which were admittedly used from before the race).

"Overall our pace was not that dissimilar," he said when Autosport asked him if different tyre management approaches had caused his tyre to fail before Hamilton's.

"But of course being the car behind another one means that in the corners you lose a bit of downforce. You slide a bit more, that can easily have an effect of a couple of laps of tyre life.

"But otherwise, I was trying to manage the tyres, at the same time trying to put a bit of pressure to Lewis, because otherwise there would no chance for me to win the race. So, I was trying to do it in the right places at the right time, but still that happened."

What happened for Hamilton was that, despite all the late drama, he held on to take a third victory in a row, coming away victorious after "the most dramatic ending [to a race] I definitely remember having".

He has the chance to take an eighth Silverstone win this weekend, where again F1 fans must be absent. How they would have roared those fantastic final laps of the ending that ultimately came to be...