‘Over the moon’ Vettel extends lead

TEAM-MATE RAIKKONEN TAKES SECOND PLACE

Sporting Hamilton lets Bottas through to finish third.

Sebastian Vettel won a tense Hungarian Grand Prix yesterday in a Ferrari one-two that stretched his championship lead to 14 points after Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton sportingly surrendered third place to his team-mate.

The German, savouring his fourth win of the season and 46th of his Formula One career, took the chequered flag 0.9 seconds ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

The Finn had looked faster than Vettel for most of the race.

“I’m over the moon, that was a really difficult race,” said the winner, who had to wrestle with a skewed steering wheel on a sweltering afternoon at the Hungaroring and had no room for error.

Hamilton finished fourth after slowing down on the last lap and allowing Finnish team-mate Valtteri Bottas to go past, despite the loss of vital points to the Briton’s championship challenge.

Bottas had let Hamilton through on the 45th of the 70 laps, on the assurance that his team-mate would hand back the place if he could not overtake the Ferraris, and the triple champion duly kept his word.

“Really thanks to Lewis for keeping the promise in the end and letting me by,” said Bottas.

“I don’t think every team-mate would have swapped back.”

On a circuit where overtaking is notoriously hard, the top five all finished in their starting order with Max Verstappen fifth for Red Bull.

The Dutch teenager was handed a 10-second stop-and-go penalty for colliding with his Australian team-mate Daniel Ricciardo on the opening lap.

The impact ended Ricciardo’s race, with the car stranded on the track and fluid leaking from the broken radiator, and brought out the safety car.

Fernando Alonso, who celebrated his 36th birthday on Saturday, gave struggling McLaren their best finish of the season so far by taking sixth place and also setting the fastest lap of the race.

Belgian team mate Stoffel Vandoorne was 10th in a double points finish for the former champions, who moved off the bottom of the table. –

Picture: Reuters STRETCHING HIS LEAD. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel celebrates with the trophy after winning Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring in Budapest yesterday.