The Briton made a flawless start to pull alongside Rosberg while Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who finished third, surged forward on the outside, leading up to Turn 1.
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Rosberg, who agreed a two-year extension to his contract with Mercedes on Thursday, leads Hamilton by one point in the championship. Verstappen is the only non-Mercedes driver to win a race in 2016.
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. “This is a great result for us as a team, but yeah, what a day”.
According to Mercedes mastermind Toto Wolff, the Drivers’ Championship battle between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton will carry on right until the last race of the season in Abu Dhabi.
Until Sunday, Hamilton had shared the record for Hungary GP wins with seven times champion Michael Schumacher.
“I think Spain was definitely a turning point”, said Hamilton.
After grabbing the lead off the line, Hamilton never opened a gap larger than three seconds, and at one point was asked by his Mercedes team to increase his pace in order to shake off third-placed Daniel Ricciardo.
In the closing ten laps, however, Vettel closed up on Ricciardo and threatened to pass him, but the Red Bull Racing vehicle was able to fend off the Ferrari’s advances just long enough to reach the chequered flag ahead.
Ricciardo’s teammate Max Verstappen will start fourth and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel fifth.
Ricciardo and Verstappen started together on the second row ahead of Vettel and maintained those positions through the first stint.
Rosberg kept his Hungaroring pole by demonstrating to the officials he had lifted adequately under the double waved yellows for Fernando Alonso’s spin at the end of Q3.
Later, due to a controversial clampdown on the sport’s radio rules, he was subsequently handed a drive-through penalty by the stewards.
It’s the first time this year that the reigning championship has been in the lead, though his teammate Nico Rosberg isn’t far behind and there’s still plenty of races to go this season.
Hockenheim is the last race before the August break, with the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa and then Italy’s Monza following on after that.
Hamilton trailed Rosberg by a massive 43 points after May’s Spanish Grand Prix following a spate of reliability problems in the early part of the season.
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“I’m happy the pace was slow because I was trying to put the pressure on him and trying to get some mistakes going from him”.
