Vettel wins in Hungary, Lewis keeps his promise

Sebastian Vettel won a tense Hungarian Grand Prix yesterday in a Ferrari one-two that stretched his championship lead to 14 points after Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton sportingly surrendered third place to his teammate.

The German, savouring his fourth win of the season and 46th of his Formula One career, took the chequered flag 0.9 seconds ahead of teammate Kimi Raikkonen.

The Finn had looked faster than Vettel for most of the afternoon.

"I'm over the moon, that was a really difficult race," said the winner, who had to wrestle with a skewed steering wheel and had no room for error.

Hamilton finished fourth after slowing down on the last lap and allowing Finnish teammate Valtteri Bottas to go past, despite the loss of vital points.

Bottas had let Hamilton through on the 45th of the 70 laps, on the assurance that his teammate would hand back the place if he could not overtake the Ferraris and the triple champion duly kept his word.

"Thanks to Lewis for keeping the promise and letting me by," said Bottas.

"I don't think every teammate would have swapped back." Hamilton, whose radio was malfunctioning and would have had more of a chance had he got past Bottas earlier, said he had done what he had to do.

"It's tough in the championship but I'm a man of my word," he said. "I did say that if I can't overtake them I would let him back through." On a circuit where overtaking is notoriously hard, the top five all finished in their starting order with Max Verstappen fifth for Red Bull.

The Dutch teenager was handed a 10- second stop-and-go penalty for colliding with his Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo on the opening lap.

The impact ended Ricciardo's race, with the car stranded on the track and fluid leaking from the broken radiator.

"It's not on. It was amateur to say the least. It's not like he was trying to pass - there was no room to pass," said Ricciardo.

"I don't think he likes it when a teammate gets in front. You've got the whole race to try to repair the mistake but the pass was never on. It wasn't even a pass, it was a very poor mistake."

Fernando Alonso, who had his 36th birthday on Saturday, gave struggling McLaren their best finish of the season by taking sixth place and the fastest lap of the race. Hungary was the last race before the August break, with nine of the 21 rounds remaining. - Reuters