British triple world champion Lewis Hamilton secured his fourth win in a row and sixth this season after a dominant victory at the German Grand Prix on Sunday.
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Two Red Bull drivers joined Hamilton at the podium at the German Grand Prix.
But a bullish Rosberg, who finished his home race only in fourth following an afternoon he will wish to forget in a hurry, dismissed the notion that it would now be hard for him to retain the belief that he can beat Hamilton and win his maiden title.
After Rosberg won four successive races at the start of what is proving to be a roller-coaster campaign, Hamilton has burst back with six victories in seven races heading into F1’s summer holidays.
Second was Daniel Ricciardo, with Max Verstappen, his Red Bull teammate, third.
Rosberg was given a five-second time penalty and two penalty points on his licence for his move on Verstappen at the Hockenheim hairpin.
Sebastian Vettel finished fifth, ahead of Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen. More importantly, he now holds a significant advantage over Rosberg in the standings with nine races left in the season. “It’s as good a buffer as I could get with the circumstances”.
Rosberg did not just have a bad start to compromise his race.
“It will either be Spa or Monza, because I’m going to run out of engines soon”, he said. There was no recovering from there, and Rosberg had to settle for fourth. “This is the first double podium for us in over a year and it is awesome to close out the first part of the season like this”. After surrendering pole position and slipping to fourth early in proceedings, the 31-year-old was slapped with a five-point penalty for an unfair overtake of Verstappen during lap 29.
“That guy has great talent and speed and on a good day I think that he’s unbeatable”, he said.
Seventh place went to Hulkenberg in the Force India, and Jenson Button managed eighth place for a couple of points for McLaren (although Alonso finished in 12th), with Bottas in the Williams and Perez in the Force India completing the points places in Germany.
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Rosberg had set a scorching pace under pressure to seize pole position in qualifying on Saturday but the German’s weekend began unravelling as soon as the lights went out.
