There was late drama at Silverstone, as first his Mercedes teammate, Valterri Bottas’ tyre burst and then Hamilton’s on the last lap, however, a badly timed pit stop by Red Bull denied Max Verstappen his first win of the season.

This saw Hamilton become the first man to win his home Grand Prix seven times, while it was also his 87th career victory.

Hamilton said it came very close to the end as Verstappen nearly caught up.

“I’ve definitely never experienced anything like that on the last lap and my heart nearly stopped. That’s how cool it was because my heart nearly stopped.

“Until that last lap everything was relatively smooth sailing, the tyres felt great, Valtteri was really pushing incredibly hard, and I was doing some management of the tyre and he looked like he wasn’t. “When I heard that his tyre went, I was just looking at mine and everything seemed fine, the car was still turning, no problem, I was thinking, ‘Maybe it’s okay' and those last few laps I started to back off and down the straight it deflated and I just noticed the shape just shift a bit.

“That was definitely a heart-in-the-mouth feeling because I wasn’t quite sure it had gone down until I hit the brakes. And then you could see the tyre was falling off the rim. Just driving it trying to keep the speed up, sometimes it will take off and break the wing I was just praying it would get round and it would not be too slow, I nearly didn’t get round the last two corners.

“But thank God it did. I really owe it to the team, ultimately we should have stopped towards the end once we saw the delamination.”

The drivers will remain at Silverstone this week for Sunday’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.

@MorganPiek OFM Sport