Lewis Hamilton claims faultless win at Hungarian GP

“P2 was not what we wanted but is the best we could have done”, the German said.

Hamilton won in Hungary after a dominant run from pole position, a big win for Mercedes at a track where they had expected to be weak, the proliferation of slow to medium-speed corners not playing to the strengths of the W09 vehicle.

To Vettel’s credit, he did his best to damage the limitation after his off-colour qualifying display, but Ferrari had the quicker vehicle this weekend.

“It feels a little bitter-sweet”.

“I would like to give praise and thanks to Valtteri”, said Hamilton on social media, having extended his lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 24 points.

“In today’s race, starting P2 after lap one, Valtteri’s race was the ideal wingman’s race. That would’ve been nice”.

“So, we’ll see. Should be an exciting second part of the year”. It was a disappointing result. Kimi Raikkonen is a further 43 points behind, while Bottas trails his fellow Finn by 14 – he is 81 points adrift of Hamilton.

“Until about 15 or 20 laps before the end our plan worked out well, we controlled the pace and there was no threat to my position. What matters to me is that we are constantly developing, and we are”.

Recovering from the incident, Ricciardo was not going to waste another chance as clawed his way back to Bottas late in the race.

“We need to apply more pressure in the second half”.

There is still plenty of work to do if he is to break that streak, even if Hamilton is well ahead of where he was this time past year when he went into the August shutdown 14 points adrift of Vettel.

“With Seb, he had a good run into Turn 2″, Bottas said.”We had a bit of a battle in Turn 1”. I still had my nose inside into turn two, he was on the outside, he turned in very early and for me there was nowhere to go. For me it was a racing incident – and so was the incident with Daniel.

“With Daniel, pretty much a similar thing”.

That came on lap 65 of the 70-lap race when Vettel finally passed Bottas, the Finn’s right front wing touching his rear left tyre under braking, wrecking Mercedes’ hopes of a one-two finish. “I don’t believe there is ever a moment you have got your hands on the trophy”. “I was lucky that the auto wasn’t broken and that we could carry on”.

Bottas was eventually handed a 10-second penalty on the way to fifth place, while Ricciardo finished fourth.

Mercedes-AMG’s duo of Hamilton and Bottas were running in first and second for the final portion of the race, after a bungled pit-stop dropped Vettel into third – the German had been running in second for most of the race until that point.