Hamilton wins Hungarian GP

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Lewis Hamilton has won the Hungarian GP on merit by easily dominating the race from start to finish. He inherited the lead after Alonso lost a wheel and never gave it away again. Raikkonen is second, Webber third. Button saved two points while Vettel abandoned.

For the first time this year, a Renault is in front of the starting grid. Both Red Bulls are behind Alonso, whle championship leader Button is 8th. He will happy with the higher temperatures of today though.

As the ligts go out, Alonso makes a rocket start, in very sharp contrast with the starts at other recent Grand Prix. the fight behind the Spaniard is tense however but Webber manages to get second place, ahead of Hamilton. Vettel had trouble fending off Hamilton and Raikkonen and got hit twice, first by Hamilton and then by Raikkonen. The Red Bull driver ends up in 7th place and already looks up to a difficult race.

After a pass on Nakajima in lap 2, Button moves up to 8th, just behind Sebastian.

In lap 4, Webber loses his second place to Hamilton, a pass clearly facilitated by the KERS component in the McLaren. One lap later the Briton puts in the fastest lap, closing in on Alonso who had pulled away 4 seconds in the 5 first laps. The McLaren is 0.5s a lap faster than the Renault, even with 15kg of extra fuel on board.

Meanwhile Adrian Sutil had to abandon after only one single lap. He entered the pit and simply stepped out of the car.

By lap 10, Alonso is starting to suffer graining of the rear tyres, especially the on the right side of his car. Jenson Button also complains about the same issue and has trouble keeping up with Vettel.

On lap 12, Alonso is in the pits for another set of option tyres, only to find out that his right front wheel is badly fixed. 4 corners later he loses the front wheel fairing, while another 3 turns further along the track the wheel rolls off the car. The Spaniard consequently enters the pitlane and is there fitted with the harder prime tyres.

Alonso rejoins the track in the middle of the other cars, obviously already on a lap down. On lap 16 however the Spaniard is into the pits and steps out of his car.

By lap 18, Button is already down 7 seconds on Vettel and is closely followed by Nakajima.

2 laps later, Webber loses a place to Raikkonen after a slight hesitation of his pitcrew. Mark also quickly loses out to Glock on track, possibly because he can't get the tyres to heat up quickly. One lap later, after also being passed by Rosberg, it's getting better as he is able to pass the German on the outside of turn 2.

In lap 23, Hamilton is still in the lead after his first stop, followed by Button who is on a longer first stint. Trulli, also still in his first stint is third, Raikkonen fourth (1 stop) and Glock fifth (0 stops yet).

In lap 27, Vettel enters the pitlane for an unscheduled stop, taking a new nose and a new set op prime tyres. The German told the team something was broken on the car and he was unable to keep it under control. After the slow stop and a check of the suspension, he enters the pitlane again one lap later and abandons the race. He was in 8th position before the trouble began.

Button meanwhile is suffering from extreme oversteer due to the graining on his rear tyres. Button is currently in 9th place but has Nelson Piquet right on his tail. Interestingly, before the stop, Button asked for the options as "the primes don't work on the car".

The only remaining Red Bull is in third place but also has a hard time fending off Kovalainen.

In the front the fight for first place is intense. While Hamilton is still 7 seconds ahead of Raikkonen, both drivers are driving at the limit and pushing each other hard.

In lap 45, Kovalainen makes a pitstop that looks to be his final one for this race. He takes on the prime tyres. Raikkonen follows suit one lap later but has trouble getting off the mark after his stop, losing something in the range of 4 seconds.

Hamilton stops in lap 47 and rejoins the track comfortable ahead of Webber who moved up to second place. Kimi Raikkonen meanwhile dropped down to 4th, 10 seconds down on Rosberg who is 3rd and not far behind Webber. Kimi had a terrible first out-lap on the primes and is now 0.5 seconds ahead of Timo Glock.

Rosberg pits in lap 49 and rejoins in 5th place. Webber stops one lap later and rejoins again ahead of Rosberg.

After everybody made their stops, Hamilton is still comfortably in the lead, ahead of Raikkonen, a flying Webber, Rosberg, Kovalainen, Glock and Button.