Lewis Hamilton sealed an eighth British Grand Prix victory on Sunday afternoon at Silverstone, beating Charles Leclerc and Valtteri Bottas after recovering from a first-lap crash with title rival Max Verstappen.

Picking up from Saturday evening's Sprint, Verstappen and Hamilton once again went wheel-to-wheel on lap 1 but this time with far more dramatic consequences.

The two tangled at Copse, sending the Dutchman hurtling into the barriers whilst Leclerc would take the lead from Hamilton, just before the red flag was fluttered as work was needed on the track infrastructure and checks were needed on Verstappen.

The Red Bull man, unsurprisingly, clambered and walked away from his mangled car gingerly, and headed to the medical centre and then a local hospital, though he was at least conscious throughout.

hamilton verstappen

For Hamilton, a 10-second time penalty to be served at his first pit-stop, which would come in due course once we got back underway.

The Merc man needed to try and get in front and build a lead to negate the penalty, but Leclerc in the Ferrari held him off at the restart and then kept him at bay, showing good pace and fantastic tyre management in the first stint, even though he was clearly battling a few mechanical gremlins.

Behind them, Lando Norris had jumped Valtteri Bottas to take third, with Daniel Ricciardo impressing in fifth - it was one of the strongest weekends the Aussie has had this season, hands down.

lando norris

In the blistering heat, looking after your tyres was paramount here but, given the soaring temperatures, further jeopardy was added at the stops themselves with a number of drivers enduring slower-than-normal trips to the pitlane as wheel-guns jammed in the Silverstone sunshine.

Norris was one of the men to suffer, with Bottas able to move back in front of him, whilst the other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz also had difficulties, dropping him down to sixth when he had looked good to get in front of Ricciardo as he, like Leclerc, had nursed his tyres wonderfully well to move up to second for a short period.

No such issues for the front two, meanwhile, with Leclerc's stop at 2.6 seconds and Hamilton's obviously a fair deal longer thanks to his early penalty - he would return to the action in fifth behind Sainz who was about to stop, Bottas and Norris.

leclerc

The recovery drive was on for the Briton, then, as he looked to make waves in the title race and he'd quickly usurp Norris to take third place before promoting himself to second on lap 40 as Mercedes invoked team orders to see his Finnish teammate Bottas wave him through at Stowe.

The hunt was on with Hamilton turning his Mercedes up to 11, setting fastest lap after fastest lap to close down the Monegasque who was, it must be said, setting his own fastest times of the Grand Prix so far but in a car that clearly wasn't quite as quick.

With three laps to go, amid a host of back-markers, the pair were within a second of one another, with Hamilton enjoying the extra horsepower a Silverstone crowd can give a driver from these shores.

hamilton

Indeed, it was on lap 50 or 52 that the inevitable came to pass, Hamilton, again at Copse, sent his Mercedes up the inside and, this time, there was no coming together as he took the lead from Leclerc, allowing him to close the gap to Verstappen in the standings down to eight points.

A hugely dramatic weekend in Silverstone, then, with Hamilton the man to pick up all the pieces and, boy, were there a few pieces to be swept up here...