A disastrous start at the 2016 German Grand Prix cost Nico Rosberg three places right away.
Advertisement
The Briton crossed the line 6.9 seconds ahead of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, who was on the podium for the second race in a row on his 100th grand prix appearance.
At Hockenheim over the weekend, Hamilton (who started second) stormed past Nico Rosberg and romped home to victory, managing to secure a 19-point lead.
Following his triumph at the German Grand Prix, Hamilton has now won six of the last seven races, while taking a clean sweep of all the four grands prix which were staged in July.
After the first round of pitstops, the same top six positions were maintained and only started to change halfway through the thrilling race, after the second pitstops.
Second was Daniel Ricciardo, with Max Verstappen, his Red Bull teammate, third.
The team’s strong finish was their first double-podium result since last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix and moves them ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ standings behind dominant Mercedes.
“It is a tough one, really hard”, Rosberg told Sky Sports.
A fourth successive triumph increased defending champion Hamilton’s advantage at the top of the drivers’ standings to a commanding 19 points heading into the mid-season break, having trailed Rosberg by 43 in May. Finishing fourth was down to the penalty.
“That guy has great talent and speed and on a good day I think that he’s unbeatable”, he said.
As for Rosberg, he was convinced the five-second penalty cost him second place: “I was very surprised to get the penalty”.
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff has revealed that the stopwatch that the team were using did not start as it should have. “I came to do a job, and yesterday wasn’t ideal but you learn from your mistakes”.
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.
“There were lots of things going through my mind at the time [after Spain]”, he went on.
Following the Red Bull pair around for the opening half of the race, Rosberg set about attacking Verstappen after his pitstop and dived past into the hairpin.
“He pushed me off the track”, Verstappen shouted over the team radio.
Rosberg dived down the inside, with Verstappen moving in the braking zone before then giving him some room.
Advertisement
“He didn’t turn in, he just kept driving straight, so I had to go off the track, otherwise he would’ve crashed”.
