Hamilton thrilled with podium in Hungary after ‘very tough’ race as he reflects on ‘hair-raising’ battle with Verstappen

Lewis Hamilton was delighted to continue Mercedes’ good run of results by taking the final podium position at the Hungarian Grand Prix, having faced a battle to make his tyres last – as well as engaging in a close scrap with Max Verstappen – en route to finishing in third.

After lining up in P5 on the grid, Hamilton had a good start and initially looked to have clinched third from Lando Norris, who had been edged out from pole. While the McLaren soon retook the place, Hamilton remained in fourth and later on snatched third again – this time from Verstappen – thanks to undercutting the Red Bull.

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In the latter stages of the race, Verstappen had caught up with the Silver Arrows car and the former title rivals found themselves in a tense fight. However, the duel came to an end when Verstappen locked up and made contact with Hamilton’s W15, causing the RB20 to bounce in the air and leave the track.

While this dropped the Dutchman down to fifth – as well as leading to him being investigated by the stewards for the incident – Hamilton continued on to take P3 behind the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Norris.

As well as congratulating the Woking-based outfit – with whom he had started his F1 career – along with Piastri for claiming his debut Grand Prix victory, Hamilton also praised his own team for their continued progress.

“Big thanks to this amazing crowd this weekend and a huge congratulations to McLaren on the one-two – that's my old original family, so really happy to see all the boys, the whole team back up front,” Hamilton commented after stepping out of the car.

“For us today, the team has done a great job to continue on with pushing this car. Ultimately we didn't have the pace of the McLarens or of the Red Bulls, but we just were able to hold on at the beginning of the race.

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“It was very, very tough to hold on, make those tyres last, and obviously the close battle we had at the end was a bit hair-raising but that's motor racing. I'm really happy and grateful for the points. Big thanks to the team.”

Asked if the battle with Verstappen had been nerve-wracking, the seven-time world champion responded: “It's not nerve-wracking. I think when you see the pace at which they closed the gap in certain corners, you just laughed to yourself because it's not something I can do – particularly in the last sector they were very, very strong, same as the McLarens.

“I saw him coming from a long way back and he was able to brake a lot later than me. But he sent it up the inside, I stayed still, and he clipped the wheel and went over, so I think a racing incident.”

On the other side of the Mercedes garage, George Russell managed to recover from a difficult qualifying – which resulted in him lining up in P17 on the grid – to ultimately end the race in eighth place. This put him one position behind Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, who had also had a tough Saturday and started the race from P16.

“We were hoping for P7, to be honest,” Russell said of his end result. “Checo [Perez] had a really great race, we were a bit surprised by his pace, and on paper we thought we’d be about 50 to 60 seconds behind the leader – we ended up 40 seconds behind the leaders, so we’ll take the very small positives.

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“Happy to see Lewis on the podium, congrats to Oscar as well on his first win.”

While his own weekend was not without its challenges, Russell acknowledged that it was positive to see the Silver Arrows score their fifth consecutive podium of the season at the Hungaroring.

“We can argue that from these five weekends, this [in Hungary] has probably been our least competitive, and obviously Lewis on the podium today which is a great result for the team,” the 26-year-old added.

“Clearly that was… in the normal circumstance of qualifying, we’d have been up there fighting for that P3 to P5 mix. Still disappointed after yesterday, but that’s the sport – you make mistakes, you get punished.”