#F1 #HungarianGP Report: @LewisHamilton storms to dominant victory.

Lewis Hamilton claimed the World Driver’s Championship lead with a flawless drive in wet-dry conditions to win the Hungarian GP as Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen held a fast-charging Valtteri Bottas to finish second.

Verstappen made a two-stopper work to perfection after the initial running on a wet track, which followed the Dutchman crashing on his reconnaissance lap to the grid and needing fast repair work in the small amount of time available before the warm-up lap.

When the 70-lap Hungarian GP began, Bottas appeared to jump the start before the lights went out and he and Racing Point’s Sergio Perez moved slowly off the line from second and fourth respectively, while Hamilton and Lance Stroll blitzed clear, with lightning-quick Verstappen and the two Ferrari’s of Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel making their way up the order.

Hamilton pulled away comfortably from Stroll in the opening corners while Verstappen clinched third on the rundown into the turn two left-hander after Vettel lost momentum after sliding on the exit of the first corner.

At the front of the field, Hamilton charged to a 3.1 second gap at the end of the first lap, with the frontrunning drivers starting to switch their intermediates to slicks at the end of lap two as the Hungaroring continued to rapidly dry – lead by Leclerc and Bottas, who put on a set of softs and mediums respectively.

Hamilton and Stroll dived into the pits a lap later for a set of medium rubber, with the former emerging in the net-lead, while Verstappen remained out for an extra lap and used his time in first place to jump Stroll when he took a set of yellow C3 mediums at the end of the fourth tour.

Whilst Hamilton reclaimed the lead from Verstappen, Stroll found himself behind both Haas F1 Team entries of Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean pitted at the end of the formation lap for medium tyres.

On lap six after the pit-stop rush, Hamilton lead Verstappen by 7.8 seconds, which saw the Briton post a series of fastest laps.

Stroll made short-work of Grosjean with DRS assistance into the first corner and then focused his efforts on passing Magnussen, which he did after momentarily pausing to take third place at the same spot at the beginning of the 16^th lap.

As the drivers were constantly warned of the threat of more rain – Hamilton continued to build his lead over Verstappen – while Stroll was unable to close in on the Red Bull, instead found himself under intense pressure from Bottas’ Mercedes.

The Finn chased down Stroll through the pack after slipping into a puddle and into the turn two run-off area while fighting Leclerc, who quickly started to struggle for grip on his soft tyre stint.

As the next band of rain failed to appear, Bottas was the first of the leaders to pit on the 33^rd lap and used the clear air to his advantage to jump ahead of Stroll, who stopped two laps later and re-joined well behind the Mercedes in fourth.

Verstappen and Hamilton both came in on lap 36 and 37 respectively, putting on the C2 white-marked hard compounds, and while they remained in the same order, Verstappen was immediately under threat from Bottas’ quick pace on the medium rubber.

As Hamilton extended his lead over 20 seconds, Bottas was on the hunt to pass Verstappen with his softer tyres compared to the hards, with a string of fastest laps.

With 25 laps remaining in the Hungarian GP, Bottas was within striking distance of the Dutchman, but after dropping back in traffic, Mercedes decided to bring Bottas in for a third stop and switched the Finn to hards, with a 22-second gap to attempt to take second.

Although Bottas chopped down time from Verstappen’s lead in the early stages of his last stint, he could not close as rapid as he expected despite running fresher compounds.

After they made their way through the traffic it went down to the final lap, but although Bottas had made it within DRS range, he was not close enough into the first corner and could not find his way by and wound up 0.7 seconds adrift.

Meanwhile at the front, after some confusion between his race engineer on whether to make a final stop and which tyres to take, Hamilton traded in his massive gap over Verstappen for a fresh set of softs – which saw the Briton break the fastest lap twice in succession – for the second time on the final lap.

Hamilton reached the chequered flag by 8.702 seconds ahead of Verstappen to clinch his eighth victory at the Hungaroring – equalling seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher’s record of Hungarian Grand Prix victories.

Behind the podium finishers, Stroll finished 57.579 seconds off of Hamilton to come home fourth to score his best result for BWT Racing Point.

Red Bull Racing’s Alexander Albon went from 13^th on the grid to finish fifth and in-front of Vettel, who shortly after Ferrari team-mate Leclerc made an early second stop despite the chance of rain.

It looked to have worked for Vettel but running deep into turn two gifted the Red Bull the place.

Perez recovered his Mercedes-powered RP20 to seventh after running a long-middle-stint and ahead of eighth-placed Renault of Daniel Ricciardo.

Magnussen drove his Haas VF-20 to an impressive ninth place to give the Kannapolis-Banbury outfit it’s first points of the 2020 campaign after falling down the pack as the faster cars made their way by during the race.

The Dane held on ahead of McLaren’s tenth-placed Carlos Sainz, who survived a tangle with Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi in the pit-lane (who finished 19^th and at the rear after suffering two spins, also a puncture after clashing with the McLaren for which the Canadian was hit with a five-second time penalty).

Sainz came out on top in a close-fought battle with Leclerc to grab the final point on offer.

Latifi wound up as the final runner and five laps down, with Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly the sole retiree of the Hungarian GP after retiring on lap five with a ploom of smoke pouring out of his Honda-powered AT01 racer in the pit-lane.

The Formula 1 Aramco Magyar Nagydij (Hungarian GP) 2020 Race Results Classification (70 Laps)

* Provisional results. Note – Hamilton scored an additional point for setting the fastest lap of the race. https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2020/races/1047/hungary/race-result.html

The Top Three

Hungarian GP Winner – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, F1 W11 EQ Power+: “Believe it or not, I was still pushing out there. It was a different kind of challenge, but great pit stops, great strategy. I need to try and keep this up!”

2^nd – Max Verstappen, #33, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing-Honda, RB16: “Not how I wanted it at the beginning of course, ending up in the barriers. The mechanics did an amazing job, I don’t know how they did it, but I paid them back with a second place. Splitting the Mercedes is good for us.”

3^rd – Valtteri Bottas, #77, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, F1 W11 EQ Power+: “Really bad race to be honest for me. I reacted to a light on my dash that went off, instead of the start light. So, then I had to do the start again, lost many places and made the race very difficult for me.”

You can see the full Formula 1 2020 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship standings at the following link: 2020 F1 World Championship Standings

Round four of the 2020 FIA Formula 1 World Championship returns to the legendary Silverstone Circuit in the United Kingdom for the Formula 1 Pirelli British Grand Prix 2020 from July 31-August 2.

#F1 Qualifying Report: @LewisHamilton claims blistering #HungarianGP pole.

#F1 #HungarianGP FP2: @ScuderiaFerrari’s #Vettel quickest in rain-soaked session.

#F1 #HungarianGP FP1: @LewisHamilton heads @ValtteriBottas in @MercedesAMGF1 1-2.

#F1 Aramco #HungarianGP 2020 Preview. #HungaryGP