Home hero Lewis Hamilton will be borne to the pinnacle of patriotic fervour in his showdown with bitter rival Sebastian Vettel in Sunday’s hotbed British Grand Prix clash at sell-out Silverstone.

The historic circuit will be abuzz with a noisy crowd of more than 140,00 — and I would guarantee the vast majority will be loudly and colourfully demonstrating their backing for the great Briton as he tussles, yet again, with Germany’s controversial Vettel in what is fast developing into one of the most intruiging and hard-fought championships for years.

Memories of the disputes, on and off the track, with warring drivers Ayrton Senna versus Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell against Nelson Piquet, have been reborn with the ongoing feud between 32-year-old Hamilton and current title pacemaker and four times champion Vettel.

Their crash-bang-wallop recent record, with Vettel punished by officialdom but not severely enough according to Hamilton and others in F1, me included, after the German suffered a moment of madness and deliberately and blatantly barged into the Mercedes in Azerbaijan, has set the championship chase ablaze and enlivened it with expectation of further wheel-to-wheel confrontation between the two opponents.

Hamilton, with massive vocal and banner-waving picturesque support, will be especially fired up for revenge of the proper kind… a victory… on home ground and, just as committedly and fiercely Vettel, the villain of the piece, will be intent on humbling the British hope as he strives against the odds for a fourth world crown.

Their F1 animosity, now well in the public domain, is all set to fire up the frenzy of an all-out blast of support for Hamilton from the majority of the massive audience who’ll all be set to spectate at one of the fiercest confrontations not only of this season but of many before it.

On the sidelines and as eager a viewer of the action as any paying customer and bystander, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner just had to have his say on the drivers’ duel and, as a team boss for a decade, he has been faced with a host of controversies and animosities between ruthless grand prix racers. He senses a new-found animosity between Hamilton and Vettel and he reckons the last press conference featuring the pair was merely a PR show to the FIA, the sport’s organisers, happy and content.

“I am sure,” he reveals, “both drivers were under strict instructions.”

And he goes on: “Right now, they hate one another because they are in each other’s way of achieving their goal… the championship. But it would be far better to be upfront about the issue rather than hiding it behind PR-speak. It would be far more entertaining for the fans because there needs to be some rivalry in our sport.”

Up to Vettel’s startling loss of control in a surge of temper on lap 19 of the Baku clash and his consequent crashing into race leader Hamilton, relations between the rivals, so far as we could see in public, were pretty cordial. But all that collapsed when Vettel accused Hamilton of deliberately brake-testing him — even though afterwards the telemetry proved to the contrary.

Silverstone has been the scene of success for Hamilton in the last three successive years and he is pursuing career win number 57 in his 198th grand prix faced with 52 laps and 190 miles around the high-speed 3.6-mile circuit, a former wartime airfield where British planes plotted the downfall of German attackers.

Horner, continuing his enthusiastic outlook for a title on tenterhooks, adds: “Emotions are running high. There is a lot at stake for the world championship and, as the season progresses, the tension will increase.”

He cited penalised culprit Vettel: “Sebastian wears his heart on his sleeve. He is a very endearing personality on one side and on the other he is a ruthless competitor. He wants that title again so badly and that’s why you see a reaction like the one in Azerbaijan. It is that burning ambition that brought us four titles when he was here at Red Bull.

It is evident, thankfully, for the sake of the spectacle and thrill-hungry enthusiasts worldwide that there is plenty more action to come based on the ill-feeling towards each other of two world-class race drivers not prepared to surrender a millimetre of advantage in their 200-plus mph confrontations.

— The writer is a motorsports expert