The opening laps were run behind the safety car after a heavy downpour shortly before the start, but once it had peeled off it was non-stop action as the track gradually dried, prompting the field to switch first from wet to intermediate tyres, and then to slick rubber from around one-third distance.
As Hamilton controlled from the front, Rosberg and Verstappen were locked in battle for much off the afternoon, both men pulling off superb passes on the other. Barely a second separated them at the flag, as Rosberg held on despite late transmission issues which required him to avoid using seventh gear - although the positions were subsequently reversed.
Daniel Ricciardo was a distant fourth in the second Red Bull, with Kimi Raikkonen an even more distant fifth in what was a dismal afternoon for Ferrari. Team mate Sebastian Vettel was ninth after picking up a penalty for forcing another car off track.
The Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg took sixth and seventh places, with the top ten completed by the Toro Rossos of Carlos Sainz and Daniil Kvyat in eighth and tenth respectively.
After the heavens had opened 15 minutes before the start, and the first five laps run behind the safety car, the track was ready for intermediate Pirelli tyres in place of the mandatory wets on which everyone had started.
Once the wholesale pit stopping was over, and the racing began again after a brief Virtual Safety Car deployment on Lap 7 as Pascal Wehrlein aquaplaned his Manor off into retirement, Hamilton was 4.8s ahead of Rosberg, who was initially struggling for a while in the slippery conditions.
For the next eight laps the Silver Arrows were running one-two, until Rosberg made a mistake and the ever-threatening Verstappen went round the outside of him in a brave move at Chapel to snatch second place.
As Hamilton continued to lead after the next round of pits stops saw everyone switching to the medium Pirellis, Rosberg had a real battle on his hands to repass Verstappen, and that’s where he lost his chance of victory. The Dutchman not only stayed in front for lap after lap, but kept Hamilton honest at the same time. Both he and Hamilton had lurid off-track moments at Abbey and Farm, as did many others as the track remained greasy, but time and again the Red Bull driver resisted the second Mercedes at Stowe.
Eventually Rosberg found a way by there on the 38th lap, just as a very distant Vettel, down in ninth, eased Felipe Massa’s Williams off track and earned himself a five second time penalty.
Finally freed to push hard, Rosberg then launched a flurry of fastest laps as he cut the gap from 8.7s to 6.1s by lap 45. But then on the 46th lap he reported gearbox problems and was instructed by his crew to change through sixth to eighth gears, without using seventh. Remarkably, he still managed to close the gap to Hamilton, who was simply doing what he had to do to manage his race. By the finish the gap between the two Mercedes was 6.9s.
However, Rosberg`s subsequent 10-second post-race penalty - which Mercedes intend to appeal - dropped him behind Verstappen, who was just 1.3s behind at the flag. The latter’s performance was hugely popular, and he finished 17.9s ahead of team mate Ricciardo.
Behind them, a terrible day for Ferrari yielded a best finish of only fifth for Raikkonen who overtook Perez’s well-driven Force India with six laps to run. By the flag, the Mexican had team mate Hulkenberg right on his tail, as Sainz gave Toro Rosso more points with eighth. Vettel retained ninth place by 0.9s from Kvyat once his penalty was applied.
It was a tough day for Williams and McLaren too, with Massa 11th from Jenson Button, and Fernando Alonso 13th after a huge, high-speed spin through the gravel at Abbey, ahead of Valtteri Bottas.
Both Manors spun off and both Renaults retired, with Jolyon Palmer having picked up a stop-go penalty after his crew released him from a pit stop with his right-rear wheel not properly attached.
Sauber’s Felipe Nasr and Haas’s Esteban Gutierrez took 15th and 16th as their respective team mates Marcus Ericsson and Romain Grosjean failed to go the distance.
Hamilton’s hat-trick - his 47th F1 win - makes him the first three-in-a-row British Grand Prix winner since the legendary Jim Clark in the Sixties, and the gap to points leader Rosberg is now down to just one point - 168 to 167 - with the notional seasonal midpoint coming up in Hungary in a fortnight.
-A brilliant drive in mixed conditions gave Lewis Hamilton his fourth win of the season, his 47th career victory and his fourth triumph in Great Britain, drawing him level with Nigel Mansell for wins on home soil. Only Alain Prost has won more times at Silverstone than Hamilton, and only Prost and Jim Clark have won more times in Britain as a whole.
-Hamilton is also just the second driver – after Jim Clark – to have won three British Grands Prix in a row.
-Hamilton led 51 of the 52 laps on Sunday to help move Mercedes ahead of Red Bull and into fifth on the all-time list for laps led by teams. Only Ferrari, McLaren Williams and Lotus have led more.
-Nico Rosberg claimed his fifth fastest lap of the season to deny Hamilton a British Grand Prix hat-trick. However, subject to appeal, the German became the first driver to lose second place in a Grand Prix because of a penalty since Daniel Ricciardo lost second place at the 2014 Australian Grand Prix over a fuel flow issue.
-Max Verstappen scored his second podium in as many races - the first time in his career he has scored successive rostrum finishes. The young Dutchman has now stood on the podium three times – once more than father Jos managed in his 106-start F1 career.
-Verstappen`s tally of 18 points - he inherited second due to Rosberg`s penalty - means he has scored 77 points since joining Red Bull in Spain. Lewis Hamilton (on 110 points) is the only driver to have scored more points over the same period.
-Kimi Raikkonen celebrated his 100th start for Ferrari with fifth place - a result that helped him maintain his grip on third in the championship.
-Daniel Ricciardo meanwhile leapt ahead of Sebastian Vettel for fourth in the standings with his fifth fourth-place finish in ten races. The Australian has now scored points in six successive races, extending the longest current points streak in F1.
-Force India celebrated their home Grand Prix by collecting their fourth double points finish of the season, with Sergio Perez sixth and Nico Hulkenberg seventh.
-Carlos Sainz bagged eighth place for the second race in a row. The young Spaniard has failed to finish in the top ten just three times this season.
-The British Grand Prix weekend was one to forget for Sebastian Vettel. Disregarding mechanical or tyre issues, Vettel’s ninth place represented his worst finish since the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2012 when he was 11th.
-With Raikkonen coming fifth, it was just the second time this season (when both drivers have reached the chequered flag) that Vettel has finished behind his team mate – and the result came just a day after he was out-qualified by Raikkonen for just the third time this season…
-It was also a poor race weekend for Williams who failed to get either car home in the points for just the second time this season.
-Toro Rosso, in contrast, registered their first double-points finish since Spain, when Daniil Kvyat rejoined the team. The Russian matched his finish in that race at Barcelona by finishing 10th, less than one second behind Vettel, while Sainz was two spots up the road in eighth.
-Williams lost their grip on the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award, failing to register the quickest tyre change for the first time this year as Mercedes took the spoils with a 2.33s stop for Lewis Hamilton.
-After celebrating their first points of the season in Austria, Manor recorded their first double DNF of the season at Silverstone with both Pascal Wehrlein and Rio Haryanto spinning into the gravel at Abbey.
-For the second time this season, the race started behind the safety car. That helped ensure that for just the second time this season – following on from Austria – Lewis Hamilton led the first lap of the race. Will he lead the first lap in Hungary in two weeks’ time? The odds look good – the Briton has claimed pole there in three of the last four years…
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