What a difference a day makes for Lewis Hamilton

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On tap this week:

• Hamilton is back
• Winning Brits in F1
• Sports cars at CTMP
• Brembo's chefs bake brake cakes
• Quote of the Week: Boos for happy man Ricciardo
• Carpenter's Hinchcliffe obsession

After taking the chequered flag Sunday's British Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton was heard singing on the radio. It was difficult to hear the words, it would have been fitting if the ditty was the 1959 Dinah Washington single What a Difference a Day Makes.

The Mercedes driver jumped back into the 2014 Formula One title fight with a dramatic victory in his home race, roughly 24 little hours after a massive blunder in qualifying saw him start sixth on the grid.

The error lost its sting after teammate Nico Rosberg suffered a gearbox failure about halfway through the race and retired, allowing Hamilton to inherit the lead and cruise to an easy win.

"I think this weekend really just showed that, for one, you never give up," said Hamilton, whose 25 points for the win combined with Rosberg's retirement has him just four markers behind his teammate in the title standings.

"Yesterday was a really difficult day. Obviously, you never think situations like that would come up the way they did and I really felt – I went away feeling terrible for the fans."

Sitting on provisional pole in the dying seconds of Saturday's qualifying session, Hamilton abandoned his last timed effort after rain slowed his progress, only to see five drivers gain ground in an almost dry final sector and bump him down the grid. To make matters worse, Hamilton even pulled over to let Rosberg pass and the German used the politesse to snatch pole.

At the time, Hamilton rued the decision and worried that it dealt a massive blow to his title hopes, with championship rival Rosberg staring at the front and already having a 29-point lead in the standings.

Now the 2008 world champion wants to refocus as the second half of the 19-race season gets under way.

"We'll draw a line under the last nine races and now it's attack mode, start again and now, utilizing that pace and utilizing the car's pace," Hamilton said.

"The pressure is high, but I really feel that now we're back."

By the Numbers: With his win in the British Grand Prix on Sunday, Hamilton has tied three-time world champion Jackie Stewart for second overall among British drivers with 27 victories.

Although Hamilton's 19 per cent win rate (27 victories in 138 starts) sounds impressive, it pales in comparison to Stewart's record. The Scotsman started only 99 races in just nine F1 seasons between 1965 and 1973, standing on the top step of the podium 27 per cent of the time and taking three world titles.

And Stewart did it in an era where drivers who lasted five years in the sport had a 50-50 chance of dying in a racing incident. Stewart's survival in such a deadly era was in part due to his push for safety in F1 and his insistence on using safety devices such as seatbelts long before they became mandatory in the sport.

Stewart's last F1 race was the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix at the Mosport International Raceway (now Canadian Tire Motorsport Park), which was the second last event that year. The Scotsman withdrew from the season finale following the death of his protégé and teammate François Cévert in practice for the U.S. Grand Prix Watkins Glen. A few weeks earlier, Stewart had clinched his third title at the third-last race of 1973 in Monza, Italy.

The British wins leader is 1992 world champion Nigel Mansell, who scored 31 wins in 187 starts between 1980 and 1994. With Mercedes dominating so far in 2014, it's more than likely Hamilton will surpass Mansell sometime before the end of the season.

Random Thoughts: The new Tudor United SportsCar Championship makes its first Canadian appearance at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park this weekend for the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix, with three of its four competing car classes tackling the legendary 3.957-kilometre circuit in Bowmanville, Ont.

The Tudor championship is in its inaugural season after being created by last year's merger of the Rolex Sports Car Series and American Le Mans Series.

In addition to the sports car championship event, there's also Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) GT3 Cup Challenge, Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America and Mazda MX-5 Cup races. The Prototype Challenge class skips the weekend because of paddock and pit lane space limitations at CTMP.

Those uninterested in racing may still have a reason to make the trip to Bowmanville, as television's "Dr. McDreamy" is one of the racers in the series. An accomplished racer, actor Patrick Dempsey is a co-driver of the No. 27 Dempsey Racing Porsche 911 in the GT Daytona class.

The four days of action gets underway on Thursday with several practice sessions.

*Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that all four competing classes will participate this weekend, but the prototypes won't race.

Technically Speaking: Creating a rotor for a Formula One or IndyCar is akin to baking a layer cake, only it takes months and costs thousands of dollars.

The brake discs are made of what's called "carbon-carbon" because layers of an acrylic-like carbon tissue are laid over a carbon fibre matrix to form the raw disc used for the braking system. The chemical vapor deposition process is done in a carefully controlled oven which keeps the same temperature and pressure over the entire process. It can take between six and nine months to make one disc.

"The process is quite long because the deposition of the carbon takes time — you basically build the structure of the carbon on what is called a pre-form," said Mauro Piccoli, Brembo racing director.

"Then it's like cooking a cake in the oven."

Brembo supplies brakes to all IndyCar teams and seven of the 10 Formula One outfits, including a partnership with Ferrari which began in 1975.

After the disc is formed, it is ground and then goes back into the oven for heat treatment, which sets the final performance of the disc when it comes to conductivity and friction.

While the discs in IndyCar are standard, the ones Brembo supplies to its F1 teams are all different due to the variations in the design of the brake cooling on each car.

"The design of the disc generally starts with the mass flow that is guaranteed from the air ducts with the target being to use it in the most efficient way," Piccoli said.

"Each team has their own idea of the best approach to cooling the disc, so every team has their own custom design."

With the F1 brake rotors peaking at a sizzling 1,200 Celsius during races at hard braking tracks like Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, making sure the discs don't overheat is critical.

Cooling is helped by more than 1,000 holes drilled into the carbon layers lengthwise from the outside edge that help dissipate heat. The brake pads are also drilled with heat dispersing holes but they usually only reach about 200 C, even on the most extreme braking circuits. The calipers can heat to about 230 C.

Quote of the Week: "He was coming, so I was thinking, yeah, probably for once I've got a lot of people booing me and cheering on the local lad, but obviously for me it was good. I think for him as well — they haven't had a great season so a fourth is — yeah, it's not a podium, but he'd still be fairly pleased with that result, so hopefully we're all happy."

— likable driver Daniel Ricciardo on fending off a late challenge by Jenson Button in the British Grand Prix and robbing the Briton of a podium finish in his home F1 race.

The Last Word: Okay, maybe he was trying to be funny, but Ed Carpenter really needs to let go.

In a pre-race bit on the IndyCar broadcast Sunday, a bunch of divers including Carpenter were asked to give himself a grade for the 2014 season so far. Carpenter suggested that he likely rated a "B" but then quickly added that he would have an "A if Hinchcliffe hadn't messed up Indy for us."

The Oakville native was in the room as a smattering of what seemed to be uncomfortable snickers broke out.

Of course, Carpenter was referring to the crash that involved the pair with 25 laps to go in May's Indianapolis 500. The accident happened in the first corner on a restart when the Canadian went for a gap on the bottom as another driver, Townsend Bell, and Carpenter and touched, causing he and Hinchcliffe to tangled and end their race in the wall.

Fans might also recall Carpenter's less-than-classy post-accident comment that he would have punched Hinchcliffe in the face if the Canadian hadn't suffered a concussion in the previous race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Hinchcliffe was struck in the visor by another driver's front wing end plate.

The problem is that Carpenter left a gap on the bottom and any racer would have filled it. That makes the Indy crash "one of those racing deals," as drivers like to call them. Besides, if Carpenter really wants to be mad at someone, it should be himself, because he lost his car for a split second on the entry to Turn 1 at Indy which started the whole thing.

Then again, that accident happened six weeks and six races ago, and is ancient history. Jokes or not, it's time to forget it and move on.

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