Alonso wins British Grand Prix

You can always trust Silverstone to serve up a good race.

The British fans as ever were out in force and although it wasn't the winner they would have hoped for, they still had a great race to watch, something that Formula One needed after the dull affair at Valencia and the politics of Saturday.

The start of the race would have seemed bizarre to anyone turning over to BBC 1 bang on 1pm, all the drivers lined up on the grid on wet intermediate tyres despite the new Silverstone start line being bone dry!

The early morning rain had left half the track soaking wet and half the track completely dry, it certainly made for an interesting start to the race.

So the lights went out in front of the brand new Wing complex and Vettel jumped into the lead past Red Bull team-mate Webber, while Massa lost fourth to Button.

Lewis Hamilton had a storming opening two laps, a disappointing qualifying left the British favourite tenth on the grid, but by lap two he had passed Button and was beginning to race with the Ferrari's and Red Bull's.

By lap 15 Lewis Hamilton showed why he is an exciting and aggressive racing driver by getting passed both Massa and Alonso to take third position.

Further back down the pack and Michael Schumacher was once again using his Mercedes as a battering ram as he crashed into Kobayashi. Due to the short pit lane, FIA Steward Nigel Mansell decided to give Schumacher a stop/go penalty for the incident.

The first round of pit stops came with Ferrari being the big winners, with Alonso not only getting past Hamilton but also taking the lead after mistakes for Webber and Vettel's stops.

Hamilton also benefited from those mistakes with the McLaren getting into second position and this gave Lewis the chance to show what a good driver he is defending a position as well as the gun-ho attacking manoeuvres keeping Vettel behind for numerous laps.

The writing was on the wall that the faster Red Bull's would get passed the McLaren on the next set of pit stops, but the amount of time Hamilton kept Vettel behind him enabled Alonso to pull out a significant lead.

Soon after Vettel got passed Hamilton the McLaren driver was told to go into fuel saving mode, while it was even worse news for team-mate Jenson Button' whose front right wheel was missing a wheel nut and he was forced to immediately retire.

Webber soon got past the helpless Hamilton who was beginning to lose around three seconds a lap to the Ferrari of Felipe Massa.

In the closing stages of the race Mark Webber was also closing in on Red Bull team mate Vettel and was clearly the faster man, but despite Red Bull's defending World champion enjoying an 80 point in this seasons championship, Red Bull boss Horner said on the radio 'Mark maintain the gap', the Australian driver appeared to ignore those instructions but in the end they finished second and third without incident.

That couldn't be said for the battle for fourth with Hamilton and Massa. The Ferrari driver fired his car down the outside and cutting in across Hamilton, Hamilton took to the curb but couldn't avoid the collision with little room, both cars got around the final corners side-by-side almost wheel banging coming to the line and Lewis took the photo finish for fourth by 0.024 seconds.

Rosberg, Perez, Heidfeld, Schumacher and Alguersuari rounded out the points positions.