Five-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton believes he would have won the Br﷽itish Grand Prix even without a Safety Caಞr due to the strategy he was running.

Hamilton shadowed Mercedes teammate and polesitter Valtteri Bottas during 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 La🌃p 20.

The Briton took on fresh Hards and was able to complete a one-stop strategy to claim a record sixth Britis♒h 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 [V൲altteri Bottas] was on a two so it wouldn’t have made any difference,” Hamilton said.

“The Safety Car would🍬n’t have made a difference. When he pitted on lap 16, I think it was, my plan was to of🎃fset as as much as I could. And so I think I went four laps or something and I probably could have done another lap or two.

“At the time he was not catching me. He should have been catching m♑e 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 wou💫ld have pitted and he would have been seven-tenths ahead - and then it came to one, then one-and-a-half but it stayed around one-and-a-half to two.

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

“So I would have still had that 21-second gap. S❀o it didn’t really make a difference. Even If I was behind him, I would of course try to overtake hi💯m, but in hindsight I didn’t actually need to do that.”

Hamilton said Mercedes’ origin෴al 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,” he e🐈xplained.

“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 w🎃as quite strong and didn’t look like it was particularly starting to give up any time soon. So I decided to stay out.”

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 them on the same tyre, this is probably how the race is going to end.

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

“We weren’t quite sure whether one stop would make 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 b𝔉oth of them drove a brilliant race.

“Both of them would have deserved to win the race, and in༒ that instance🦋, the Safety Car swung in the favour of one driver.”