Hamilton heroics

Lewis Hamilton led from lap four for McLaren to win his first British Grand Prix on Sunday and take the lead in the world drivers' championship which is getting more exciting with every race.

Hamilton lapped all but two of the field in an eventful race of spins and near misses at rain-soaked Silverstone and finished over a minute ahead of Nick Heidfeld's BMW

Sauber. Honda's Rubens Barrichello was third for his first podium in four years and Honda's first of the season.

Hamilton, dogged by penalties and a collision in his previous two races as he slipped from first to fourth in the drivers' championship, completed an almost faultless race in very difficult conditions.

"It is by far the best victory I've ever had," Hamilton said after waving to the 90,000 fans who gave him a standing ovation after his runaway 68.5 second victory.

"The conditions were bad and as I was driving I thought, 'If I win this, it will be the best race I've ever done'. On my last lap, I could see the crowd starting to rise to their feet, and I was just praying, praying, praying I could get the car round.

"You could never imagine the emotions that were going on inside. I wanted to push, I wanted to get around. It was so extreme out there. I was having big problems with my visor. I couldn't see a thing."

Hamilton's third victory of the season gives him a total of 48 points, level with Ferrari's Felipe Massa and fourth place finisher Kimi Raikkonen in a drivers' championship which is neck and neck at the halfway stage of the campaign with 10 more races to go.

Robert Kubica, who dropped out after 39 laps after spinning off the circuit in his BMW Sauber, is only two points behind with 46.

But there was nothing close about this victory for Hamilton, who should have won the title in his rookie season last year but tossed away a 12-point lead with two

races to go. After that experience, he's saying little about this season's chances.

"It's a work in progress we're doing a good job and I just want to keep on building on it," he said. "I would have been happy with a point."

Barrichello had been in the points only twice before this season, placing sixth at Monaco and seventh in Canada. "It's fantastic. I've never lost the belief I have in me," said the Brazilian, who has been racing in F1 for 15 years, longer than any of the other 19 drivers and has won nine races.

"I've this great feeling. It's like I'm young, I just love the sport. I just love the speed. I can't live without that. But I love the wet weather conditions. It was a perfect race."

Massa, who spun at least five times in the race, finished last of the 13 finishers and failed to pick up a point.

Hamilton takes the lead because of their head-to-head finishes in other races. Although he and Massa each have three wins, a second, a third and a fifth, Hamilton has a better finish in races where they weren't among the points. Raikkonen, the defending world champion who won this race last year, has only two victories this season.

In an eventful beginning to the 60-lap race in soggy conditions, Hamilton, who started fourth on the grid, burst past both Mark Webber's Red Bull and Raikkonen's Ferrari straight from the start. Hamilton also tried to overtake pole-starter and McLaren teammate Heikki Kovalainen on the inside of the first bend but the Finn responded and the two McLarens almost touched as Kovalainen held the British driver off.

Also on lap one, Massa, Webber and Kazuki Nakajima went into a spin but rejoined the race. David Coulthard, in his last British GP before retirement at the end of the season, and Sebastian Vettel both slid into the same gravel area at the sharp left hand Priory bend and were out of the race.

Seven of the 20 starters failed to finish. Two points clear in the drivers' standings at the start of the race, Massa failed to recover from his early spin and slipped to the back of the field, more than a minute behind the leader after only 13 laps.

The Brazilian finally overtook Nico Rosberg on lap 17 and then Giancarlo Fisichella up into 15th but more trouble later in the race meant he was lapped twice by the leader and finished at the back.

At the front, Hamilton overtook Kovalainen on lap four with a brave manoeuvre going into the fast Stow right hander, powering ahead and then timing his braking just right to keep the lead and the position. The British driver then opened up a six second gap only for Raikkonen to cut the lead down to less than a second when they both came into the pits for the first time on lap 22.

Although Hamilton changed tyres, he kept the same intermediate style while Raikkonen made no change, which was to prove a mistake.

Although Hamilton left the pit line just ahead of the Finn's Ferrari, he began to pull away and opened up a lead of almost 25 seconds halfway through the race.

Struggling on a still wet track, Raikkonen slowed lap after lap. He dropped back to fourth coming out of the Luffield right hander when Nick Heidfeld overtook both Finns to move up from fourth to second, and Kovalainen also went past Raikkonen into third.

With rain falling again, Raikkonen made another pit stop on lap 29 to change his tyres to suit the conditions and came out in 11th place with little chance of becoming the first back-to-back British GP winner since Coulthard in 2000.

But Hamilton stayed out of trouble and increased his lead steadily to more than a minute.