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Hamilton’s back on top!

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Gulf Weekly Hamilton’s back on top!

Triple Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday to seize the championship lead from team mate Nico Rosberg for the first time this season.

The Briton took the chequered flag less than two seconds ahead of the German, who had lined up on pole position at the Hungaroring but lost out to Hamilton at the start in the key moment of the race.

Hamilton, who has now won in Hungary a record five times, leads Rosberg by six points after 11 of the season’s 21 races.

The Briton has won five of the last six races, including the last three.

“The start was everything,” said Hamilton. “This is a great result for the team. What a day.” Sunday’s win was the 48th of his career and fifth of the season.

Until Sunday he had shared the record for Hungary GP wins with seven times champion Michael Schumacher.

“I grew up watching Michael so to have a similar number, and now one more than he had here, is incredible,” said Hamilton.

Australian Daniel Ricciardo finished third for Red Bull after pushing the Mercedes pair hard enough at one point for the champions to tell Hamilton to pick up the pace.

Ferrari’s four times world champion Sebastian Vettel, also a previous winner in Hungary, finished fourth after sounding off over the team radio about slower cars holding him up as he lapped them.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen held off Ferrari’s feisty Kimi Raikkonen for fifth. The Finn had started 14th but a long first stint saw him challenging the Dutchman.

The battle between the pair provided a moment of excitement in an otherwise uneventful race, with Raikkonen clipping the back of Verstappen’s car and damaging his front wing in an attempt to pass the 18-year-old.

Fernando Alonso was the sole surviving McLaren in seventh. McLaren’s hopes of a strong result on the back of their best qualifying performance since renewing their engine partnership with Honda were dashed early on, with Jenson Button falling down the order with hydraulics problems.

The 2009 world champion also collected a drive-through penalty for a breach of radio rules before finally retiring late in the race.

Rosberg, who has also won five races this year, will have the chance to seize back the lead in his home German Grand Prix. The race at Hockenheim, absent from the calendar last year, takes place in just a week’s time.

“It was all down to the start in the end,” said Rosberg of Sunday’s race. “From then on I was trying to put all the pressure on Lewis but it’s not possible to pass at this track.

“To have the next race coming up very quickly sounds good, at my home race ... it’s going to be awesome.”

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DETERMINED Lewis Hamilton still sees himself as hunter rather than hunted in the Formula One title race.

The Briton seized the lead from Mercedes team mate and title rival Nico Rosberg after an unprecedented fifth victory at the Hungaroring on Sunday that opened up a six-point lead over the German, see below.

With half the 21-race season now completed and Germany’s Hockenheim circuit next up on Sunday, Hamilton, who has often spoken of how he thrives in adversity, still sees himself in hot pursuit.

“I’m just still in the same mentality of chasing, I’m still chasing,” he told reporters.

“It’s been great to be able to come back with fewer engines, with the struggle that we had at the beginning of the year, so I’m very, very proud of that but conscious that there’s still a long way to go.”

Hamilton trailed Rosberg by a massive 43 points after May’s Spanish Grand Prix following a spate of reliability problems in the early part of the season.

The 31-year-old, who singled out that Barcelona race and the collision between the Mercedes pair as the low point of his season, has hit back with a run of five wins from the last six races including victory in the last three.

Early season troubles have left him short of power unit components, however, and Hamilton knows he may have to take a grid penalty or start from the back of the grid at some point later in the year.

In order to limit the damage to his title hopes, Hamilton is aiming for maximum points with races like Silverstone two weeks ago, where he claimed a sensational win on home soil after dominating all weekend.

“I really would love to come out of the next race with another result like this so that when I do go to Spa or Monza, whichever one it is that I have to take my penalty ... that it’s minimum damage,” he said.

“So I need to make sure I stay on it, like Silverstone weekends, from now on.”

Hockenheim is the last race before the August break, with the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa and then Italy’s Monza following on after that.







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