McLaren's Lewis Hamilton took his second victory of the
season as he beat Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Hamilton led throughout but had to fend off a determined
challenge from both Raikkonen and the Finn's team-mate Romain Grosjean, who was
third.
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel was fourth ahead of
Ferrari's
Fernando Alonso and McLaren's Jenson Button.
Alonso extended his title lead over Red Bull's Mark
Webber to 40 points.
The Australian was ahead of the Spaniard after their
second stops, but Webber suffered a failed differential and made a third stop
for fresher tyres with 13 laps to go, which dropped him back down to eighth
place at the flag.
Webber is two points ahead of Vettel in the championship,
with Hamilton a further five points adrift and one ahead of Raikkonen as F1
heads into its mid-season four-week break before the Belgian Grand Prix on 2 September.
Jenson Button, slower and harder on his tyres than
team-mate Hamilton, finished the race sixth, ahead of the Williams of Bruno
Senna, Webber, Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton's win came as a result of a controlled defensive
drive, not dissimilar to Alonso's victory in Germany a week ago.
The McLaren driver led from pole position and measured
his pace ahead of the faster Lotus cars.
The 2008 world champion said: "There is a long way
to go and we have a lot of work to do, but we are going to give it
everything."
Grosjean was his main opposition for the first two-thirds
of the race, as Raikkonen bided his time fighting up from sixth place on the
first lap, after he dropped a place to Alonso at the start after a temporary
problem with his Kers power-boost system.
But clever strategy by Lotus, founded on their car's
excellent tyre usage, gave Raikkonen clear air in the middle of the race before
his second and final stop and put in an impressive sequence of laps to make up
enough ground to pass Button, Alonso, Vettel and Grosjean.
The two Lotus cars were side by side rounding the first
corner when Raikkonen emerged from the pits but the Finn legitimately pushed
the Frenchman to the outside of the track on the exit of the corner and
consolidated second place, before setting off after Hamilton.
He quickly closed on to the McLaren's rear, and the
question then became which driver's strategies would work out best - and would
Hamilton's tyres last when he had made his final stop five laps before
Raikkonen.
But the extra wear generated by following another car
took the edge off Raikkonen's tyres, and he had to settle for second place as
Hamilton took his first win since the Canadian Grand Prix in June and became
only the third driver after Alonso and Webber to win more than one race this
season.
Raikkonen said: "We came second, it's not enough. We
had some problems with the Kers in the first lap which didn't help us, but we
had good speed. We keep trying the next race to win, we keep saying that but at
least we are up there all the time. I take the second place, but for sure we
are not happy until we win."
Grosjean was left to fend off Vettel, a problem that
removed itself when the German made a third stop for tyres late in the race
with 10 laps of the 69 remaining.
Vettel used his fresher tyres to try to close a 15-second
gap on the Lotus but ran out of time.
Button ran third in the early laps, but his heavier tyre
wear forced him on to a three-stop strategy, one more than Hamilton's.
Button's race was further hindered by coming out from his
second stop behind Senna, although the Briton managed to rejoin ahead of the
Brazilian after his final stop having made up ground following Senna's second
and final stop.
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