LEWIS HAMILTON banished his Silverstone qualifying demons to win the 50th British Grand Prix held at the course.

The 29-year-old erred before the main race, meaning he started in sixth but worked his way up the field to take the lead as is Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg ran into technical problems.

The German’s gearbox started to play up, seeing him retire from the lead with 21 laps to go.

Hamilton cantered to his fifth win of the season and his second career victory in front of a home crowd to move to within four points of Rosberg, while Williams overcame a miserable weekend to seal a memorable second place through Valtteri Bottas.

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo took third ahead of Jenson Button, who ran out of time as he closed in during the final laps, finishing within a second of the Australian.

Hamilton had slowed down on his final hot lap in qualifying on Saturday having mistakenly thought the track would not dry out sufficiently to produce a faster time.

That saw him drop from pole to sixth and left him despondent afterwards but the 2008 world champion said on the podium that he still felt he could take the chequered flag in the race.

“This weekend really shows that for one, you never give up,” he said.

“Yesterday, it wasn’t a case of giving up I just didn’t think I could do the lap — I was shocked the last sector was so fast

“Coming here today, I had my family with me and the focus, the support of the fans really spurred me on, I couldn’t have done it without them.”

With Rosberg’s retirement giving Hamilton a push in the tilt for the title, the Briton admitted it was the perfect result for him.

“At the beginning he got quite a good gap,” Hamilton said.

“I just tried to look after the tyres but after that I came out on the harder tyre and I was catching him a second a lap at the time and I couldn’t believe I had that kind of pace.

“Obviously you never want to see a teammate fall behind, we wanted to go up and get those one-twos but at the end of the day I really needed this result.”

Rosberg had led for the majority of the race until his problems and felt he was in charge and on course to build on his championship lead.

“The first problem started around lap 20 after the first pit-stop and just got worse,” he said.

“I was trying to see if there were some safe setting we could put in and get to the end of the race — There was nothing I could do or they could suggest to save the gearbox.

“It is always a good battle but I was very much in control until then, which is why it is all the more disappointing.”