Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain steers his vehicle during the German Formula One Grand Prix in Hockenheim, Germany, Sunday, July 31, 2016.
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Lewis Hamilton roared to victory at the German Grand Prix to open up a 19-point lead in the F1 drivers’ championship with his sixth win in seven races.
Second was Daniel Ricciardo, with Max Verstappen, his young Red Bull teammate, third.
At pole position on the grid in the final race, Rosberg had a bad start pushing his position to four, which Hamilton as well as Red Bull utilised to their advantage with the former leading the race from turn one with a gap of 1.3 seconds. “If I get a race win ahead then I will feel I was ahead”, he said.
Amid a series of poor starts, collisions and reliability problems, Hamilton had to wait six races before registering his first success of his title defence, at Monaco in May.
The Briton responded: “As always, thanks to you all, brilliant pit stops and now have a well-deserved summer break”.
Rosberg was stuck in fourth and had to hold off Ferrari drivers Sebastien Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen who were at fifth and sixth respectively.
Williams driver Valtteri Bottas was ninth ahead of Sergio Perez who gave Force India a double-points finish with 10th.
Hamilton started behind Rosberg at the Hungarian Grand Prix one week ago but beat him to the first corner, winning the race and taking the overall lead for the first time this season.
A dejected Rosberg – Hamilton’s only realistic rival for the drivers’ title – was left to rue a lost opportunity in his home race. “I’m very happy with that”. In the end, Red Bull Racing managed to secure second and third place. With the Belgian GP scheduled towards the end of this month, Rosberg will certainly have a comeback plan in place. The body language of the German after the race demonstrated mass disappointment at failing to win in front of his home fans rather than conceding further ground to Hamilton in the championship, but there was no getting over the fact that the mid-season stretch had been disastrous for him.
Speaking about his bad start, he explained: “I got a lot of wheelspin, which I didn’t expect from the warm-up lap, and that caught me by surprise”.
Rosberg was soon tussling with Verstappen. When a day goes completely wrong all those things come together.
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“It’s a difficulty that we have in the sport, because no two incidents are the same, and we can’t have the same stewards going round the world with us”, he said. “That’s going to take some time to digest over the next few days”.
