Team chief Martin Whitmarsh said the 23-year-old Briton, who was the first English winner of the race since Graham Hill in 1969, was "lucky to finish" the race after picking up his second puncture in the closing stages.

Whitmarsh said: "He had a puncture on the slow-down lap as well as the one earlier so we were lucky in that regard.

It was a right rear puncture … probably from debris from Nico Rosberg's accident."

The race, normally 78 laps in length, was cut to 76 laps because of the rain and the two prolonged Safety Car interventions to make sure it finished inside two hours.

Had it run the full distance, it may have meant that Hamilton would have been required to pit again for his puncture and not won the race.

Whitmarsh said that Hamilton's historic victory was as much due to the team's quick thinking on strategy as it was the driver's excellence in the cockpit during a prolonged and dramatic race full of incident.

McLaren switched their fuel strategy when Hamilton pitted with his first puncture on lap six and this allowed him to produce a long and fast middle stint which turned the race in his favour.

"The key was having the right strategy, making the right calls and keeping out of the barriers," said Whitmarsh.

"But at the time to make decisions, we made the right decisions.

It was good, and Lewis - apart from that minor mistake, and remember other people made much bigger mistakes - was key to it as well.

"It was fantastic in very, very difficult conditions.

We made the right calls at the right time, the strategy was good throughout the race and Lewis was blinding through most of it."

Whitmarsh said also the stalled engine that forced Heikki Kovalainen to start from the pit lane was not the Finn's fault.

Nampa-Reuters

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