Sebastian Vettel wins Hungarian Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton bows to team orders to finish fourth

Hamilton could not challenge Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen after being let through by Bottas and was told to let his Mercedes teammate back past on the final lap

Sebastian Vettel won the Hungarian Grand Prix to increase his lead in the world championship (Getty)

Ferrari celebrated the 1-2 victory they had expected at Hungaroring this afternoon, but a steering problem for winner Sebastian Vettel, allied to the Mercedes drivers’ sporting partnership that facilitated a dogged late-race challenge from Lewis Hamilton, turned what had been a snorefest for the first half into a real cliff-hanger.

The Ferraris lead easily at the start, as Vettel slotted into the lead ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikonen. Both Mercedes made indifferent getaways, Valtteri Bottas taking third but Hamilton falling behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo.

That situation lasted as long as it took for Verstappen to recover from running wide in the first corner to draw alongside his team-mate, and then inadvertently understeer into him and push him off the road as they contested the second. Friday’s pacesetter Ricciardo, who then spun on fluid from a damaged radiator, was through immediately, on a day when he had declared that he expected to lose friends with the change he intended to make from sixth on the grid.

“It wasn't on, and it was amateur, to say the least,” Ricciardo said. “He doesn't like it when a team-mate gets in front of him. It was a very poor mistake. I honestly don't think it's trying too hard or that there is an excuse for it. It's like he tried the outside in Turn One, it didn't work and he had the line taken from him. So what looks a good start is a bad start. Then I go past and it's ‘Oops, I've got to fix it.’”

Up until the tyre stops, which Bottas triggered on the 30th lap, Vettel had led Raikkonen with ease, chased by Bottas, Verstappen and Hamilton, each stymied by the difficulty the track poses for overtaking.

Verstappen was the last to stop, leading from Raikkonen’s pit call on the 34th lap until his own on the 42nd, but also having to serve a 10 second penalty for his indiscretion. He thus dropped to fifth behind Hamilton.

Up front, Vettel was now struggling with an odd steering alignment problem, and was beginning to struggle.

“I don’t know what the problem was but it was a weird feeling,” he said. “The wheel was tilted to the left, so it was okay in right-handers but very odd in left-handers, and I had to avoid the kerbs.”

Hamilton, too, had problems, as his radio was only working intermittently. Thus, when he felt his tyres were in sufficiently good shape that he could have gone longer before pitting (on the 31st lap), he had no means of communicating that to his team.

“That was frustrating, like driving with a blindfold. You know your own pace, but you can’t guide the team on it, or adjustments for the pit stops, or feedback on lap times and gaps.”

On an occasion when things were working, Mercedes asked Bottas to move over and let the faster Hamilton attack the Ferraris. The deal was that if he could not pass Raikkonen, he would hand the place back.

Max Verstappen slides into Daniel Ricciardo to take his Red Bull teammate out of the race (Getty)

At last the record crowd had a race, as the switch was made on the 46th of the 70 laps. Hamilton found his car very quick on the soft-compound tyres, and rapidly began clawing back lost ground. That left Raikkonen in an uncomfortable position as pig in the middle. Because of the championship fight there was no way that Ferrari were going to let the Finn win, any more than they were going to when he led in Monaco back in May.

“This is only going to ruin my tyres even more,” he complained plaintively to his team. “Is this what we are going to do for the whole race?”

Mercedes were blighted by radio problems (Getty)

As he knew only too well, it was. But he was told that when Vettel sped up, as per instructions, he should go with him. Thus began the game of cat and mouse which certainly had Ferrari on tenterhooks, and the crowd on their feet.

“There was a guy at the chicane every lap, standing there giving us the thumbs up to encourage us,” Vettel reported. The gap ebbed and flowed as they negotiated traffic. First Hamilton was told he could have five laps, using his engine’s overtake button, then 10. By the 54th lap the gap to Vettel was only 1.7s, but as is so often the case at the Hungaroring, a following car just couldn’t quite gather the pace to overtake.

Sebastian Vettel had to endure crooked steering throughout the race (Getty)

That gave Mercedes a problem, because the recovering Verstappen, on fresher rubber, was catching Bottas pretty quickly. If Hamilton had to slow down to let him catch up the seven seconds he’d lost, Verstappen might beat them both to the finish.

In the end, Hamilton and Mercedes honoured their promise. Thus, as Vettel won by 0.9s, the Finn completed the podium a further 11.5s adrift, with Hamilton 0.4s behind and Verstappen another 0.4s down.

Vettel now leads Hamilton by 14 points going into the summer break (Getty)

“Valtteri was great to let me go,” Hamilton said, “as I had a lot more pace. It got difficult towards the end to give the place back because he was seven seconds behind and I was among backmarkers trying to go slow, so they were trying to overtake me. I had to be careful. If I had ended up fifth trying to give Valtteri the place back and getting overtaken by Max too, that would have sucked.”

It was a great sporting gesture, which Hamilton admitted came more from the hart.

Fernando Alonso claimed a season-high sixth place to lift McLaren off the bottom of the championship (Getty)

“The mind is more cut-throat because every point counts. It’s do or die this year. But my heart said that was the right thing to do. I want to win this championship, but I want to win it the right way. I think if you do good things, then they come back around for you.

“But If I lose it by those three points, then I wouldn’t know what to say…”

The result puts Vettel further ahead again in the title chase with 202 points to Hamilton’s 188 and Bottas’s 169, while Raikkonen closes on Ricciardo’s 117 with 116.

Vettel finished ahead of Ferrari teammate Raikkonen with Bottas in third (Getty)

“I’m over the moon, because that was a really difficult race,” Vettel admitted. “I had my hands full from three or four laps after the Ricciardo safety car, and something was wrong with the steering. It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t have the pace to go faster. Towards the end it did come back a bit, and I could breathe again, but I had to stay focused for the whole race. It was really tough, but a great race.”

Results

1 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Ferrari 1hr 39mins 46.713secs

2 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 1:39:47.621

3 Valtteri Bottas (Fin) Mercedes GP 1:39:59.175

4 Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) Mercedes GP 1:39:59.598

5 Max Verstappen (Ned) Red Bull 1:39:59.989

6 Fernando Alonso (Spa) McLaren 1:40:57.936

7 Carlos Sainz (Spa) Scuderia Toro Rosso at 1 Lap

8 Sergio Perez (Mex) Force India at 1 Lap

9 Esteban Ocon (Fra) Force India at 1 Lap

10 Stoffel Vandoorne (Bel) McLaren at 1 Lap

11 Daniil Kvyat (Rus) Scuderia Toro Rosso at 1 Lap

12 Jolyon Palmer (Gbr) Renault at 1 Lap

13 Kevin Magnussen (Den) Haas F1 at 1 Lap

14 Lance Stroll (Can) Williams at 1 Lap

15 Pascal Wehrlein (Ger) Sauber-Ferrari at 2 Laps

16 Marcus Ericsson (Swe) Sauber-Ferrari at 2 Laps

17 Nico Hulkenberg (Ger) Renault at 3 Laps

Not Classified:

18 Paul di Resta (Gbr) Williams 60 Laps completed

19 Romain Grosjean (Fra) Haas F1 20 Laps completed

20 Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) Red Bull 0 Laps completed

PA