Mark Webber won the British Grand Prix for the second time after hunting down long-time leader Fernando Alonso in the closing laps of the race at Silverstone.
After a weekend turned upside down by torrential rain and flooded spectator car parks, race day was bright and sunny, and although some showers were forecast for the Northants area, none fell on the circuit during the race.
Although the 52-lap event wasn't an out-and-out thriller, an interesting tactical battle emerged between Ferrari, which had started Alonso on hard tyres, and Red Bull, which got the soft tyres out of the way early in the event and switched to the harder sets, which proved to be more competitive on race day.
Alonso maintained a lead of about five seconds for the majority of the race, but when he switched to the soft-compound Pirellis for his final stint, he had no answer for the pace of Webber's hard-shod car.
Sniffing his second grand prix victory of the season, the Australian caught and passed Alonso with four laps to go and pulled away, leaving the world championship leader to concentrate on staying ahead of third-placed Sebastian Vettel, who had a subdued race.
Webber's win means he's cut Alonso's championship advantage to 13 points as the second half of the season with more than half the season still to go.
There wasn't much joy for the British drivers in the race; Paul di Resta was an early retirement after his Force India suffered tyre and suspension damage following a collision with Romain Grosjean's Lotus.
McLaren duo Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button struggled to extract the maximum performance out of their tyres. The team put Hamilton on an aggressive pitstop strategy in a bid to vault his rivals, but he could finish no higher than eighth.
Button, meanwhile, made strong early progress as he sought to recover from a disastrous qualifying performance, but couldn't break into the top ten until the closing stages of the race, when he nipped past a gripless Nico Hulkenberg to grab a solitary world championship point.
Felipe Massa enjoyed one of his strongest runs of the season to finish fourth, ahead of Kimi Räikkönen and the recovering Grosjean, who mounted an impressive charge through the field.
Michael Schumacher (seventh) and Bruno Senna (ninth) were the other points scorers.
Provisional results
British Grand Prix, round 9/20, 8 July 2012
1 Mark Webber, Red Bull
2 Fernando Alonso, Ferrari
3 Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull
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Ahoy there!!!!
Going to interesting?, an understatement, i know,a chance for Schumi to get on the podium again?......a possibility,no, my money is on Alonso.
Peter Cavellini wrote: ...a
I don't think Alonso is going to take up the entire podium, Peter
The same podium as the last race would be fine by me. It'll be interesting to see how Grosjean and Rosberg try to cut through the field. I think Hamilton may put on a charge too, but he is sandwiched between Messrs Maldonado and Grosjean - hardly reassuring at the start of a GP!