Verstappen extends lead in F1 after eighth win of season
LONDON: Red Bull’s Formula One championship leader Max Verstappen won the Hungarian Grand Prix, from 10th on the starting grid and despite a spin, yesterday as Ferrari rival Charles Leclerc suffered another strategy nightmare.
Seventime world champion Lewis Hamilton finished second with Mercedes teammate George Russell, on pole for the first time in his F1 career, third in a repeat of the previous race in France.
Leclerc led for a while but ended up sixth as his tyre strategy unravelled and Ferrari again faced accusations that tactical blunders were handing both championships to Red Bull on a plate.
Reigning champion Verstappen now goes into the August break with an 80point lead — more than three race wins — over Leclerc after 13 of 22 races.
‘‘Amazing result. Who would have thought when we woke up that we were going to win the race?’’ the Dutch driver said over the team radio after taking the chequered flag in tricky conditions at the Hungaroring.
‘‘That is right up there with your best,’’ team boss Christian Horner said.
The win was Verstappen’s eighth of the season and 28th of his career.
He now has 258 points to Leclerc’s 178 and has only once finished off the podium in his past 10 races.
Leclerc, who started third, said the last part of the race and the blunder of switching to hard tyres before a late stint on softs had been a disaster for him.
‘‘That’s where I lost the race basically. I lost 20 seconds with the pit, another six seconds on five laps on the hard because I was just all over the place on the tyre,’’ he told Sky Sports television.
Hamilton, winner a record eight times in Hungary but starting from seventh, felt he might have won had his drag reduction system not failed in Sunday’s qualifying.
‘‘We would have had the pace to win if we hadn’t had that DRS issue,’’ the Briton, who took fastest lap for an extra point, said.
But even starting 10th, and spinning 360 degrees shortly after overtaking Leclerc, Verstappen still finished 7.834sec clear.
Hamilton had bolted on a set of softs for the last 18 laps and passed Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Russell before setting off in pursuit of Verstappen, who was ultimately out of reach despite being on older tyres.
Leclerc was left wondering, not for the first time, what might have been had Ferrari played the strategy differently.
Even if the blunder was not of his own making, he leaves Budapest with his title hopes hanging from the slenderest of threads and Mercedes closing on Ferrari in the constructors’ standings.
Red Bull has 431, Ferrari 334 and Mercedes 304.
Sainz finished fourth with Sergio Perez fifth for Red Bull. Lando Norris took seventh for McLaren with Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon eighth and ninth with a onestop strategy.
Fourtime world champion Sebastian Vettel, who announced on Friday his retirement at the end of the season, took the final point for Aston Martin after another close battle with team mate Lance Stroll in 11th. — Reuters