Nico Rosberg was allowed to keep pole position for Sunday’s race after stewards deemed he had slowed enough for waved double yellow flags, despite the German going faster in the sector in which the flags were shown on his way to his benchmark time.
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Triple Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix yesterday to seize the championship lead from team-mate Nico Rosberg for the first time this season.
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was third, followed by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen of Red Bull.
Hamilton then controlled the 70 laps with a mixture of speed and flawless judgment in sweltering heat at the Hungaroring circuit.
Romain Grosjean kept Raikkonen at bay for a while early on before dropping back, taking 14th in the second Haas ahead of Palmer’s Renault team mate Kevin Magnussen.
While Button was forced to retire from this year’s edition of the race, Alonso produced a strong performance to pilot his MP4-31 challenger to seventh place.
Add to that five pole starts, a personal best.
Despite being the joint-record holder for wins at the Hungaroring, Hamilton admitted his weekend had “been a bit messy” after mistakes in practice and then in the wet phases of qualifying, when he almost did not make the top 10. At that point I was like “hey, stay focused and get back on it!” which luckily I managed to do.
“Once I’ve gone into the lead, I just manage my tires, my auto and manage the gap and react only when I needed to”, the two-time defending champion said. “It was just about managing it today, I didn’t need to win by five or ten seconds”.
“It’s very close. Up till now it was a good battle with Lewis. I love the track”.
But Hamilton complained he was “struggling for pace” as Rosberg lapped just a second behind him, and Ricciardo homed in to within three seconds of the Mercedes pair after 30 laps.
By lap 15, he was 2.5 seconds clear and the two Silver Arrows were falling away, more than six seconds adrift.
Ricciardo pitted for a second time at the end of lap 33, and suddenly Hamilton turned in his fastest laps of the race.
“I’m doing all I can with these tyres”, said Hamilton before setting his quickest lap until that point. It wasn’t easy. The last lap, I’m sure he had DRS and, at least in my mirrors, it looked like he got quite close in Turn One. “Race from hell this is going to be”. The disputed Turn 8 corner, however, was clear by the time Rosberg reached it with the track returning to green flag conditions as he approached it.
Mercedes swapped a number of mechanics from his championship-winning side of the garage to that of Rosberg’s ahead of the new campaign, and Hamilton also faces starting at least one of the remaining 10 races from the back of the grid under the sport’s complex engine rules.
Button started eighth but soon developed hydraulic problems. Hamilton was able to drive the auto back to the pit lane and later returned to the team garage after a medical checkup.
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Red Bull Racing and Ricciardo were a surprise package for qualifying after looking a distant half-second off the pace on Friday.
