Hamilton’s victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix was his fifth at the Hungaroring.
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Triple world champion Lewis Hamilton has taken pole position in the race to the 2016 Formula One title after cruising to victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Red Bull duel Max Verstappen has had the edge on his Red Bull Racing teammate Daniel Ricciardo, out-pacing him in the past two races in Austria and Britain and out-scoring him 77 points to 64 in their six races together.
However, Rosberg had a poor start allowing Hamilton to quickly overtake and build up a 1 second lead within the first lap of the race.
Hamilton outpaced Rosberg at the start and then controlled the 70 laps with a mixture of speed and flawless judgment in sweltering heat at the Hungaroring circuit. He beat Rosberg by 1.977 seconds.
On lap 34, Ricciardo pitted for softs for the second time as he tried to undercut Rosberg, while Hamilton was asked again to increase his pace in order to avoid the Australian from passing his teammate.
Rosberg won the first four races this year, while Hamilton has won five of the last six. Rosberg started from P1 but Hamilton was quick to get away after turn 1, and completed the first lap with a 1s lead over his teammate.
“I’ve always said I’m not counting points”, Rosberg, who won the opening four races of the season, said. Everything is safe. I lifted off 30 meters (about 100 feet) before my braking point, I was just rolling there 20km/h slower until I got to the apex.
Ricciardo was alongside Hamilton on the outside as they went around Turn One but had to drop back on the exit. Alonso came home a mammoth 43 seconds behind the Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen, a gap which the Woking-based team are unlikely to close by the end of the season. “I have spoken to Charlie for clarification because in the next scenario, if I’m in the same position, all I have to do now is lose a tenth”.
Despite losing the championship lead midway through the season, Rosberg, who Friday signed a contract extension with Mercedes through 2018, was confident about the remaining races.
It’s been good to me and as Lewis said, the fans are fantastic.
“It is still a long long way to go and everything is possible”.
“He could have closed the gap if he wanted to”.
Hamilton, who set the pace in the morning practice, also had the fastest time before crashing at turn 11, about 13 minutes into the afternoon session. “I like it very much, and I think they looked unbelievable”, Hamilton said.
“I really would love to come out of the next race with another result like this so that when I do go to Spa or Monza, whichever one it is that I have to take my penalty…that it’s minimum damage”, he said.
Following a couple of hours of debate as to whether Rosberg had slowed when the yellow flags were shown, a subsequent investigation by the race stewards cleared the German, supporting his claim that he had slowed sufficiently.
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Jenson Button was the only retirement, parking his McLaren 10 laps from the end, although his race was ruined early on when he had a sensor problem.
