Lewis took the race lead at the start by overtaking Rosberg, who started from the pole position.
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After winning the recently concluded Hungarian Grand Prix, Hamilton is now six points clear of his teammate, leading the Championship table for the first time in 2016. The next race is the German Grand Prix scheduled for this coming weekend at the Hockenheimring. McLaren’s Fernando Alonso finished seventh, ahead of Toro Rosso’s Carlos Toro Sainz in eighth and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas in ninth.
In fact, Hamilton proved to be the dominant force all through the race, getting his front wing ahead of Rosberg’s at the very first corner of the race, and staying ahead of the rest of the pack all the way to the end of the race.
Rosberg must be even more anxious because Hamilton has now won thrice on the trot, nearly overshadowing the German’s four wins in a row at the start of the season.
Rosberg immediately responded. “What you have to do with double yellow is significantly reduce your speed”.
Lewis Hamilton was threatened by his own team as he wrote another remarkable chapter in his life story, writes Byron Young at the Hungaroring. And so it proved.
“The fact he didn’t get penalized means we have to be careful because the message we are sending to drivers here, but also to the drivers in the lower categories, is it’s now possible for you to lose only one tenth of a second in the double waved yellow flag section, which is one of the most unsafe scenarios”. Hamilton answered that he was “driving as best as I can” but seemed to respond to the request and Ricciardo never really challenged again.
“Copy that Lewis, but if the cars bunch up we will bring Nico in first”. “The risk is we’re putting the win in jeopardy”.
A couple of races go towards one then the tide turns.
Rosberg posted a time of 1 minute, 19.965 seconds according to provisional results, 0.143 seconds faster than Hamilton, who barely made it to the last of the three qualifying sessions, finishing 10th in session two.
By lap 51 it was 1.8 seconds before Hamilton was held up when Esteban Gutierrez ignored blue flags.
The four-time world champion on Monday repeated the view of race victor Hamilton by saying that it was a bad example to other drivers. Stewards reviewed the radio messages and gave Button a drive-through penalty, to the British driver’s clear dismay.
By lap 29 he had superbly weaved his way through the field to fourth.
He was told to continue which prompted a rather sarcastic reply from the 2009 world champion.
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“And next week, there’ll be a go-kart race somewhere and there will be a double yellow flag – because somebody went off – and the marshals probably go out to help him”.
