Well-thought strategy hands Lewis Hamilton the win in Hungary

Lewis Hamilton wins the Hungarian Grand Prix after a switch to medium tyres paid off for the Mercedes driver. Max Verstappen finished second and Sebastian Vettel in third.

The starting grid looked like this after a great Saturday qualifying session:

Max Verstappen started on pole with Valtteri Bottas alongside him, Lewis Hamilton started in P3 with Charles Leclerc in P4, Sebastian Vettel was P5 just behind his team mate with Pierre Gasly in P6, Lando Norris in P7 alongside team mate Carlos Sainz, with Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen rounding off the top ten.

Nico Hulkenberg was in P11 with Alex Albon in P12, Danil Kvyat started P13 with Kevin Magnussen alongside him in P14. After a great qualifying lap the day before, George Russell started P15 with Sergio Perez in P16, Antonio Giovinazzi started P17 with Lance Stroll in P18. Robert Kubica and Daniel Ricciardo started at the back of the grid P19 and P20 respectively.

The lights went on and away they went, there great get away from Max Verstappen as they headed turn one ahead of Bottas and Hamilton with the former locking up and Hamilton managing to get past. Bottas then lost more places with Leclerc and Vettel able to get past the Mercedes driver.

Bottas pitted in for a new front wing at the end of lap five which dropped the driver to the back of the grid.

Ferrari were in P3 and P4, but were dropping further behind Verstappen and Hamilton with the duo nearly six seconds back.

With ten laps completed of the race, Verstappen led with Hamilton and Leclerc in second and third as they complete the podium places.

By lap 15, Bottas was up into 16th after passing Kubica, Giovinazzi, Stroll and Russell. On lap 20, Verstappen’s lead to Hamilton was decreased to 1.4 seconds with the Mercedes driver gaining on the Red Bull.

On lap 25, Verstappen was pitted and came out ahead of the two Ferrari’s with Hamilton now in the lead of the race. On lap 31, Lewis Hamilton pitted and rejoined the track back in P2 with the gap to Verstappen being around six seconds.

By lap 33, Bottas was close to the top ten yet again after passing Ricciardo to claim P11.

At the half-way point, Verstappen was in the lead by only 0.4 seconds ahead of Hamilton in P2. Vettel and Leclerc were P3 and P4, Sainz and Gasly in p5 and P6, Raikkonen and Hulkenberg in P7 and P8 with Norris and Bottas rounding off the top ten.

Lap by lap, Verstappen defended for his life and kept first place for the time being with the Silver Arrow ever so close.

On lap 41, Hamilton dropped a bit behind the flying Dutchman and was 1.7 seconds behind him with the Mercedes driver ever so angry over the radio each lap.

Two laps later, everyone apart from Ricciardo who started on hard tyres made one pit-stop.

On lap 49, Hamilton pitted in; the pit crew attached the medium tyre on the car and that caught Red Bull out. By lap 52, also Romain Grosjean retired the car from the race after a disappointing Hungarian Grand Prix.

With 16 laps to go, Hamilton was 15 seconds behind, but Max Verstappen had no one ahead of him with Hamilton having to navigate past Raikkonen, Gasly and Sainz.

Hamilton kept on gaining and gaining and with only 7 laps left, Verstappen was only seven seconds ahead.

By lap 65, Verstappen’s gap slowly decreased even more to three seconds.

On lap 67, Hamilton finally passed Verstappen at turn one as the Englishmen hunted a seventh Hungarian Grand Prix win.

On the second to last lap, Vettel passed Leclerc to grab the third place away from the Monegasque.

After a fantastically played strategy, Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix with Verstappen in second and Vettel finishing third. Leclerc finished in P4 with Sainz in P5. Gasly finished sixth, Raikkonen finished seventh with Bottas a deserved eighth after his issues early on. Norris and Albon rounded off the scoring positions with P9 and P10 respectively.

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