Lewis Hamilton drew inspiration from his Mercedes mechanics to grit his teeth and remain focused during his hard start to the 2016 season, with his reward for keeping the faith a fourth consecutive grand prix victory after a dominant performance at Hockenheim.
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Britain’s Lewis Hamilton refused to indulge in a 19-point championship lead despite boosting his hopes of a third consecutive world title with victory at the German Grand Prix.
Home hero Rosberg surrendered his lead from pole with a terrible start to the Briton, who stormed away to claim his sixth win in seven races and strengthen his grip in the title chase.
The overarching narrative from this year’s Formula One world championship is – was – Lewis Hamilton’s 43-point deficit to his team-mate and former championship leader Nico Rosberg.
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.
Rosberg finished fourth after being given a five-second penalty for forcing Verstappen off the track when he passed him at the hairpin. Both Ricciardo and Verstappen took second and third places respectively to complete the podium.
Verstappen chased Hamilton for the Hockenheim lead initially after going around the outside of Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo for second at Turn 1 on the opening lap. Following an investigation, the Mercedes driver was handed a five-second time penalty to take at his final pitstop. Once he regained his composure, a red-faced Ricciardo said: “I was waiting to say that and I just blew it”.
“My little title sums it up, everything went wrong – it was a really crap day today, crap race”, he said. That definitely worked today and we were even challenging Mercedes.
“Thanks to Red Bull Racing, I think it’s the first double podium for us in over a year, so it’s awesome to close out the first part of the season [like that]”. Verstappen later said he let Ricciardo pass him “to help the team”.
The Dutch teenager is the only driver to win a race this season apart from Hamilton and Rosberg and finished 13.4 seconds behind Hamilton.
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Formula One now heads into its annual summer break before reconvening for the Belgian Grand Prix on August 28.
