Reflecting on his championship lead over Mercedes team-mate Rosberg, Hamilton said that he was pleased to head into the annual European summer holidays with a firm grip.
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Hamilton’s next race victory will take him onto 50 career wins, one behind Alain Prost.
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.
Lewis Hamilton said the turnaround in form that had led to him opening a 19-point lead in the championship was “kind of crazy”.
Hamilton has won six of the past seven races. Finishing fourth was down to the penalty. “I wasn’t expecting to be as strong as I was today”. “A little bit like Nico towards the end of the season and the beginning and he has recovered all the points he lost and now it’s about maintaining, if there is something like momentum, it’s for him to keep that momentum”.
Toto Wolff has even admitted that the team counted “one one thousand… two one thousand….three one thousand” just to make sure they remained in the pits the set time as to avoid any more penalties from the marshals. “[Saturday qualifying] was not ideal, but you learn from those things”. “Still not enough because I’m not a race win ahead yet and so I hope I might be able to have the chance to get a race win ahead and I think then I would feel like I was ahead”.
“He pushed me off the track”, Verstappen shouted over the team radio.
He also blamed Verstappen for moving under braking.
“It’s nice to go on the summer break with a result I’m happy with”, Ricciardo said.
Compatriot Sebastian Vettel set the third fastest-time on his first appearance on home soil as a Ferrari driver.
“Here it’s much more snappy and more of a challenge, but in general our auto worked well out there today”. The race was plain sailing for Hamilton, as he crossed the finish line in first ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.
After 12 of this year’s 21 races, Ricciardo has claimed three podium finishes and 133 points despite a run of bad luck that plagued his season between Russian Federation and Monaco.
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Verstappen had to give up second place to Ricciardo as he failed to replicate the Australian’s pace on super soft tyres while running on the harder compound.
