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Lewis Hamilton had said it would be a miracle if Mercedes were to win the Hungarian Grand Prix, given he was expecting to struggle with tyre wear in the anticipated 50 degrees C track temperatures. Instead, in a gripping race in which the tension ran high throughout, he duly delivered that miracle as he joined the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss as a Grand Prix winner for the three-pointed star.
The race began with Hamilton maintaining his advantage from pole position as Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was slow away and had to fight very hard to push Romain Grosjean wide and prevent the Lotus from taking second. Fernando Alonso jumped up to fourth from Ferrari team mate Felipe Massa, whose left front-wing endplate was damaged in a collision with the slow-starting Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, whose race went to pieces thereafter.
Vettel closed initially on Hamilton, but it soon became clear that the Englishman was not running into the massive tyre degradation that he had been anticipating, despite the high temperature throughout the 70 laps.
Hamilton was the first lead runner to pit to switch from soft to medium Pirellis, on the ninth lap, followed by Vettel on the 11th, Alonso on the 12th and Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen on the 13th. That put Mark Webber into the lead after he’d started his Red Bull on the medium tyres, but as Hamilton regained second, Vettel lost crucial time behind Jenson Button’s medium tyre-shod McLaren.
When Webber pitted on the 22nd lap Hamilton went back into the lead until the 31st, and regained it three laps later when Vettel pitted again.
By half distance it was clear that the Mercedes was not going to fade as it had done in Germany, setting up a tense denouement as two-stopping Raikkonen came into the equation when Hamilton and Vettel made their final stops on the 50th and 55th laps respectively. By then Hamilton had escaped and was seven seconds clear of Raikkonen, who had his hands full on worn tyres fending off the Red Bull.
It got close at times, but the Finn is no pushover and held on to second to repeat the two leading positions from 2012. Vettel had to be satisfied with third, annoyed with himself for damaging his front wing in the battle with Button, and must have pondered what might have been as Raikkonen immediately pulled off into the pit lane exit after crossing the line.
Webber had to do a late stop to switch to the soft tyres, and dropped back to a nonetheless excellent fourth after a strong run following his qualifying dramas.
Alonso clung on to fifth after a typically gritty race in a less than fully competitive Ferrari, and for the last 32 laps he had Grosjean within a second of him yet never yielded to the pressure. The Frenchman pulled off a terrific around-the-outside overtaking move on Massa at Turn 4, but later brushed Button’s McLaren in one of the top chicanes while following Vettel past it on the 24th lap.
Later Grosjean received a drive-through penalty for gaining an advantage by running off the road while passing Massa, which ruined his chances of victory, and was also handed a 20-second post-race penalty for the incident with Button. However, as he held a 21.524 second advantage over the Briton at the flag, he retained his sixth place finish.
In one of McLaren’s strongest performances of the season Button held on for seventh ahead of Massa, with Sergio Perez in the other MP4-28 taking ninth as Pastor Maldonado’s 10th finally garnered a 2013 point for Williams.
Behind the FW35, Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg just held on for 11th after an earlier drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane, but he was only fractions ahead of the Toro Rossos of Jean-Eric Vergne, who had passed high-qualifying team mate Daniel Ricciardo with four laps to go.
Giedo van der Garde was a good 14th for Caterham, beating team mate Charles Pic, as Jules Bianchi headed Marussia team mate Max Chilton home in 16th.
Neither Force India made the finish; Adrian Sutil stopped after 19 laps with a hydraulic leak, and Paul di Resta stopped only a couple of laps from the finish. So did Rosberg, whose appalling afternoon ended with a fiery engine breakage in Turn 2 on the 65th lap. Valtteri Bottas’s Williams also wilted, as did Esteban Gutierrez’s Sauber.
Ahead of the summer break Vettel still leads the drivers’ championship battle with 172 points as Raikkonen moves ahead of Alonso with 134 to 133. Hamilton is fourth with 124 to Webber’s 105. In the constructors’ stakes, Red Bull have 277 to Mercedes’ 208, Ferrari’s 194 and Lotus’s 183.
