Earlier with a 43-point deficit to Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, a winning streak has seen Hamilton race into the summer break with a 19-point lead.
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The result means that Hamilton has now won six of the last seven F1 races, taking his career total to 49 wins and 96 podium finishes.
All the races that Nico won at the beginning of the season were races when Lewis had contact with a auto at the beginning or because he started from behind due to a penalty.
Rosberg, who had looked unbeatable after topping every practice session, was only fourth after falling back at thestart and collecting a five-second time penalty for forcing Verstappen off the track.
“Today was really a show of looking at the glass half-full, and filling it up”.
“The start went completely wrong, none of it was good”, said Rosberg, who swept the first four races of the season but has won only one since. “If I can get a race win ahead, then I’ll feel like I’m properly ahead”. “What I’d like to have is consistent penalties, so everybody knows what to do”.
The German therefore lost all the time he gained by overtaking Verstappen, and also ended up spending more than the five second penalty in the pits as the stop-watch being used by the team stopped working abruptly.
“Stopwatch failure”, team boss Toto Wolff explained after the race.
“There will be one race where I’ll fall further behind”, he said.
“Being 19 points behind is not tough, tough is losing the race in the way I did and that will take some time to digest”.
The incident came on lap 29 after both Rosberg and Verstappen had pitted. “Attractive start, fantastically managed”, the Briton’s Mercedes team said to him over the radio on the slowing down lap.
Hamilton started second but flew past Rosberg off the start and led going into Turn One, never surrendering the lead thereafter.
Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen crossed the line in fifth and sixth for Ferrari while Jenson Button finished eighth for McLaren after passing the Williams over Valtteri Bottas on the penultimate lap.
“We do have a penalty up ahead. It’s nearly like a couple of weeks ago we were in Barcelona and I was 43 points behind thinking “Geez I might come away 50 points behind” and finding it hard to find a way through the woods”.
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Ricciardo celebrated his second place by drinking champagne from his boot on the podium. “I’ve got great people round me who depend on me to be upbeat”.
