Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in a very commanding and superior form wins the Hungarian Grand Prix earlier at the Hungaroring in very wet conditions. His 8th career win at the same race circuit and a second consecutive win coming from the back on last weekend’s win at the Styrain Grand Prix in Austria. Red bull’s driver, the ever adventrous Max Verstappen with a very brilliant race today ensured that it didn’t end in Mercedes, another one-two finish after holding off Valteri Bottas to take a second position, despite surviving a crash and damaging his car’s front wing in wet conditions pre-race. Valteri Bottas took the final podium place in 3rd.
Hamilton was miles ahead of the pack in terms of balance and quality of racing in today’s race and he controlled the pace from start to finish. He was strategic in his pit stops as he took full advantage of the wet conditions to extend his leads with some very fast laps with more seconds on the clock.
Max Verstappen, who crashed into barriers on his way to the grid before the start, was patched up quickly and was made ready for the race by the gifted hands of the Red bull mechanics and it all paid off as he made a quick transition from 7th position to 3rd to close ground on Bottas in 2nd.
Ferrari Seb Vettel ended the race with a strong finish in 6th position with a perfomance with few incidences except for a slid on the exit of the first turn, which slowed him down and he lost some momentum. Vettel was the only Ferrari to score points at the end of today’s race. His Ferrari team member Leclerc who struggled at yesterday’s qualifying was down in 11th and now needs a miracle or some sort to get back into contention for glory this season.
The most exciting competition of the race for me would be the battle for P2 between Verstappen and Bottas which went down to the wire in the final lap as Bottas made frantic effort to close down Verstappen after they powered through traffic. It all came down to the final lap, but Bottas was not close enough to take advantage of the use of DRS. He could only manage to close the gap down 0.7s behind Verstappen to take the final podium place.
The other Red bull driver Alex Albion finished in 5th ahead of Seb Vettel. McLaren didn’t have as much luck this afternoon compared to a fair outing in Austria with Carlos Sainz finishing in 10th place, after overtaking Ferrari Charles Leclerc in the closing stages of the race. Lewis Hamilton’s win today ensured that he has piped team mate Bottas on the drivers standing by 5 points and also makes it his 86th career win in total and he has also equaled Mack Schumacher’s record of 8 wins at the same race circuit. AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly is the only driver not to finish the race in today’s largely incident free race.
The top 10 drivers result sheet for today’s Hungarian GP
1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
2. Max Verstappen, Red Bull
3. Valteri Bottas, Mercedes
4. Lance Strol, Racing Point
5. Alexander Albon, Red Bull
6. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari
7. Sergio Perez, Racing Point
8. Daniel Ricciardo, Renault
9. Kevin Magnussen, Haas
10. Carlos Sainz, McLaren
The next F1 Grand Prix event is in two weeks at the British Grand Prix.
