Despite Formula 1 being one of the first major sporting events to return after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 British Grand Prix was held behind closed doors.
It meant the UK fans weren't there to witness one of Lewis Hamilton 's more iconic triumphs at Silverstone. It was the seventh time the Briton had tasted success at his home track, and the way in which he did so at the end of the race could only have been made more dramatic by the presence of his supporters in the stands.
Few drivers have ever managed to win a race with just three working tyres, but that was the state of Hamilton's Mercedes when he took the chequered flag at the end of the Grand Prix. That's because he suffered a puncture on his final lap, leading to fears he would be caught by Max Verstappen running in second.
He wasn't the first racer to suffer from a front-left failure that day, as the Pirelli rubber took heavy punishment from the demanding circuit. The other Mercedes driver, Valtteri Bottas, had already had his race compromised just a few laps earlier, while Carlos Sainz had also experienced the agony that a late tyre problem can cause.
Both ended up finishing the race out of the points, falling from second and fourth respectively. So when he watched in horror as his front-left tyre failed at Turn 8 on the final lap, just as he should have been strolling to a comfortable victory, Hamilton must have been fearing the worst – even if he did have a buffer of more than 30 seconds to Verstappen.
From the moment his tyre blew, that gap closed significantly. Verstappen was informed by his Red Bull race engineer that an opportunity had arisen ahead of him, and Hamilton's long-term ally Pete Bonnington was helping the Mercedes ace to keep calm and focus on nursing his car across the line, even if he had to do so with one fewer working wheel.
"The gap between Verstappen and Hamilton is closing all the time," screamed Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft as he limped along the Hangar Straight. "You can see Verstappen in the background," he declared as the TV cameras showed the front wing of the Mercedes scraping along the floor as it crept closer to the finish line.
He was having a significant amount of trouble getting his car around corners, especially those which required him to turn to the left. The floppy, useless lump of rubber which used to be his front-left tyre meant he was going far slower than he would have liked, but in the end he had built up enough of a gap to still cross the line first.
In the end, the split between Hamilton and Verstappen had been cut to less than six seconds. Had the puncture occurred even just a few corners earlier, then the Briton might have been powerless to prevent being overtaken by the Red Bull. But he wasn't, and it remains one of the more memorable race finishes of his trophy-laden career.
