Max Verstappen Wins 70th F1 Anniversary Grand Prix

Red Bull lead driver Max Verstappen claimed the historical 70th F1 anniversary Grand Prix for his first race win of the season at Silverstone, shoving the Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas to the second and third position.  

Hamilton and Bottas were in the pole in a one-two lead until Lap 42 when the six-time champion quickly pitted to change all four tyres, allowing the Dutch driver sped by and leaped to the front row. 

Explaining how he was able to outpace Mercedes, the Red Bull driver admitted the victory was possible because he forced his rivals to pit by mounting pressure on them. Meanwhile, before Hamilton pitted, Red Bull instructed the race winner to push on the Hamilton with just eight seconds gap between them in Lap 41. 

"We had a lot of pace in the car. We kept pushing. We had a great day," said Max. "We had the right strategy. I tried to put the pressure on [Mercedes] and they had to pit."

Max raced on through the remaining laps in pole to emerged as the fastest in 1:19:41993 seconds while the Mercedes duo chased down only to make the podium. In the fourth position was Ferrari Charles Leclerc and Alexander Albion claimed the fifth for Red Bull. 

After the race, even Hamilton could not deny Max deserved winning the race telling the Mercedes team in admission to defeat in radio conversation that "It wasn't our day". 

Congratulating Max on his career 9th race win, Hamilton said: "They didn't have the blistering problems on the tyres that we had today. It's unexpected but I'm sure the team will work out what the issues have been. At the end, I was driving with half a tyre.