Five-time Formula 1 ꩲworld champion Lewis Hamilton believes he would have won the British Grand Prix even without a Safety Car due to the strategy ꦏhe was running.

Hamilton shadowed Mercedes teammate and polesitter Valtteri Bottas du🦩ring the early stages of the race before Bottas pitted on Lap 16. Hamilton remained out and found himself in the lead of the race having opted to pit under a Safety Car period on Lap 20.

The Briton took on fresh Hards and was ൲able to complete a one-stop strategy to cla꧂im a record sixth British Grand Prix victory at Silverstone, while Bottas was locked into a two-stopper and ended up over 20 seconds adrift in second place.

“I was going to do a one stop and [Valtteri Bottas] was on a two so it wouldn’t have made any difference,” Hamilton🉐 said.

“The Safety Car wouldn’t have made a difference. When he pitted on lap 16, I think it was, my plan was to offset as as much as I could. And so I think I went fourꦗ laps or something and I p𓂃robably could have done another lap or two.

“At the time he was not catching me. He sho꧃uld have been catching me but he was not catching me and I was keeping the gap generally the same.

“So he was only thinking he came out the pits seven-tenths inside my window - so I would have pitted and he would have been seven-tenths ahead - and then it came to o𒀰ne, then one-and-a-half but it stayed around one-and-a-half to two.

“If I’d done another lap it probably would have got to two-and-a-half maybe and I would have come out on my fresh hards and I could have jℱust sat behind him if I wanted to and then he would have had to pit.

“So I would have still had that 21-second gap. So it didn’t really make a difference. Even If I was behin𝔉d him, I would of course try to overtake him, but in hind💙sight I didn’t actually need to do that.”

Hamilton said Mercedes’ ori🃏ginal plan was for both drivers to run a two-stop, adding he “chose to do a one”.

“It wasn’t agreed, it was said that we could,” h🧸e explained.

“So I looked at the options and of course I want to always try and offset. So when Bono [race engineer Peter Bonnington] came on the radio and said ‘what tyre do you want💃?’ I said ‘I want the hard’.

“Did we know that we could do a one-stop with🌱 it? Not really. But as soon as I got onto it, it was quite strong and didn’t look like it was particularly starting to give up any time soon. So I decided to stay o𝄹ut.”

Explaining Mercedes’ strategy further, team boss Toto Wolff added: “In our strategy meeting in the morning, actually the drivers brought up whether there was an offset strategy possible for the guy running second, because if you put th🐈em on the same tyre, this is probably how the race is going to e🐭nd.

“So picking up on the suggestion, we decided that the second-placed driver would run an offset strategy with💙 the hard tyre in the middle.

“We weren’t quite sure whether one stop would ജmake it, probably rather thinking it would be a two, also 🎉because of a lack of data on the hard, and this is exactly how it panned out, and obviously both of them drove a brilliant race.

“Both of them would have d🎶eserved to wi𓆏n the race, and in that instance, the Safety Car swung in the favour of one driver.”