Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton won his second successive British Grand Prix yesterday to extend his lead in the championship standings over Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton — the first British driver since David Coulthard in 1999 and 2000 to post successive wins in the race — came home 10 seconds clear of Rosberg in yet another Mercedes one-two, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in third.
Hamilton took his points tally to 194 and a lead of 17 over Rosberg, who had narrowed the gap to 10 prior to the weekend.
Recovering after losing his pole position advantage at the start, Hamilton stormed back into contention and regained the lead with a superbly executed pit stop to win by 10.956 seconds.
It was his third victory in his home race, his fifth win this year and the 38th of his career.
Four-time champion Vettel took full advantage of the changing conditions with an equally well-timed stop to switch to intermediate tires during the showers to finish third.
Brazilian Felipe Massa, who had led from the start until lap 20, ended up finishing fourth ahead of his Williams teammate Valtteri Bottas of Finland, Russian Daniil Kvyat of Red Bull and Germany’s Nico Hulkenberg, who was seventh for Force India.
Kimi Raikkonen of Finland was eighth for Ferrari, after making an early stop for intermediate tires that ultimately failed to pay off, ahead of Mexico’s Sergio Perez in the second Force India and two-time world champion Fernando Alonso of Spain, who scored his first point this year by finishing 10th for the beleaguered McLaren Honda team.
The race was punctuated by a safety car on the opening lap after a multiple collision that removed both Lotus cars and Alonso’s teammate Jenson Button of Britain.
Earlier, Bernie Ecclestone said he is still hoping to keep Monza on the calendar after next year following further discussions with Italian Grand Prix officials.
Monza has been on the calendar since the championship started in 1950 and is loved by Italians as the Pista Magica.
However, its future has been clouded by uncertainty over whether a new deal can be agreed.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
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