Indeed having been 43 points behind Rosberg in May, Hamilton is now comfortably ahead of his Mercedes team-mate by virtue of an unbeaten July with victories in Austria, Silverstone, Hungary and here in Germany on Sunday.
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The Briton crossed the line 6.9 seconds ahead of Red Bull’s Ricciardo who was on the podium for the second race in a row on his 100th grand prix appearance.
Meanwhile, Rosberg was handed a five-second penalty for pushing Max Verstappen off the track, thus finishing the German GP at fourth place behind the Red Bull driver.
It was Hamilton’s sixth win in seven races, putting him 19 points clear of Rosberg with nine grands prix remaining.
Lewis Hamilton had the best send-off to the first part of the season before the summer break kicks in as he won the German Grand Prix.
Rosberg also picked up a five-second penalty for pushing Verstappen off the course and had to settle for fourth, after winning the Hockenheim race two years ago from pole.
Behind the Mercedes and Red Bulls it was the Ferraris of Vettel and Raikkonen, whose fifth and sixth place finishes mean Ferrari now trail Red Bull in the constructors championship.
Hamilton was left kicking himself on Saturday night after a mistake in qualifying paved the way for Rosberg to claim pole.
“A big thank you to everyone who has come out”, Hamilton said after the race, according to the BBC. “This engine has done unbelievable to get us to where we are and I’m super grateful for the life it has led and the laps we’ve led with it. It’s as good a buffer as I could get with the circumstances”.
Amid a series of poor starts, collisions and other technical problems, Hamilton had to wait six races before registering his first win of the ongoing season, at Monaco in May.
A stopwatch failure was to blame for Nico Rosberg’s pit-stop delay at the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim.
“So I was really optimistic and thinking that I can bring it home today so just really disappointed that everything went wrong”.
However, he said he was still aware of the fact that he would nearly certainly lose ground again to Rosberg at one of the next two races in Belgium and Italy, following the four-week summer break.
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Not wanting to take anything away from Nico, who is a very good driver and has driven some fantastic races with many race wins, seems that he isn’t able to live up to his teammate’s standards.
