Is Lewis Hamilton's Hungarian Grand Prix Victory His Most Dominant of 2016?
Like Sasquatch or Kimi Raikkonen's smile, the so-called "hot hand" may or may not exist.
One thing we can be certain of, though, following Lewis Hamilton's victory in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, is that if the hot hand does exist, the British driver currently has it.
Hamilton's win at the Hungaroring, northeast of Budapest, was his fifth in the last six Formula One races. More importantly, the 25 points he scored pushed him past his Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, and into first place in the drivers' championship.
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Hamilton won the world championship in 2014 and 2015, but this is his first time at the top of the table this year. In 2014, he also got off to a slow start and spent much of the season trying to catch Rosberg. This year, Rosberg's lead was 43 points after the Russian Grand Prix in May—now that is all gone.
Back in 2014, after a collision with Rosberg ended Hamilton's Belgian Grand Prix (and left him 29 points adrift in the championship), he won six of the final seven races to lock up the title.
After a variety of struggles earlier this year, Hamilton is in the midst of a similar streak. This time, the turning point looks to have been the Spanish Grand Prix, where Hamilton took both himself and Rosberg out on the opening lap.
Yes, he made a mistake in qualifying at the European Grand Prix, but the defending champ was flawless in Canada, Great Britain and Hungary. When he has confidence in himself and his car, Hamilton is nearly unbeatable.
Such is his self-possession that, in Hungary, he controlled the gap to Rosberg like a boxer with a 10-inch reach advantage, using his long arms to keep his opponent at bay.
"This is a race where, because it's so hot here, you don't need to do more," Hamilton explained on the Sky Sports broadcast. "You don't need the five-second, 10-second gap. I need to just do what I had to do, even if I win by a tenth of a second. So I was just managing that gap at two seconds, two-and-a-bit seconds and even if he got 1.8, 1.5, it doesn't matter."
Asked how in control he felt throughout the afternoon, Hamilton answered, "100 percent. There was never a moment that I felt that I was going to lose it."
Two parts of the race illustrate that control perfectly.
The first was the start. Hamilton lined up second on the grid after Rosberg's questionable pole lap under double-yellow flags on Saturday. By the exit of the first corner, Hamilton was alone in the lead, while Rosberg was struggling to fight off the two Red Bulls.
"I lost the win into Turn 1, which was really disappointing," Rosberg told Sky Sports.
When they crossed the start/finish line at the end of the first lap, Hamilton already had a 1.076-second advantage. From there, he just kept jabbing with that long reach, almost toying with Rosberg, pushing him back if he got too close.
The second illustration of Hamilton's control came near the end of the race. When the Mercedes duo began Lap 52, Hamilton was 1.768 seconds ahead and was already being held up by Haas' Esteban Gutierrez, who later received a penalty for ignoring the blue flags telling him to get out of the way, as he was a lap down on the leaders.
After spending the lap behind Gutierrez, Hamilton's lead was down to 0.619 seconds. Both Silver Arrows passed the Haas on the pit straight at the start of Lap 53 (with Hamilton giving the Mexican a well-deserved middle-finger salute on his way by).
As they entered Turn 1, the on-screen timing showed the gap was reduced to just 0.474 seconds and Rosberg was not much more than one car length behind his team-mate.
Freed of Gutierrez, though, Hamilton built his lead back to nearly a second (crucial for denying Rosberg the use of his drag reduction system) by the exit of Turn 2. At the end of Lap 53, it was back to 1.208 seconds.
Despite driving identical cars, Rosberg just could not match Hamilton's speed when it mattered.
"There was just so much pace in Lewis' driving that, once he put the feet to the floor, he was just gone," Mercedes executive director Toto Wolff told the Sky Sports crew after the race.
Rosberg is a good driver. His ability to push Hamilton and, at times, beat him confirms that. But Hamilton is great—maybe one of the greatest ever.
In their three-and-a-half seasons as F1 team-mates, Hamilton has 27 wins to Rosberg's 18. More crucially, though, he has two world championships (plus a third with McLaren). Rosberg has none.
At the post-race press conference in Hungary, Rosberg said, "It’s been a good season so far up to now, it’s been a good battle with Lewis and as I’ve always said, I’m not counting the points, there’s still a long long way to go."
He may not be counting points, but everyone else is, and Hamilton is now ahead by six. The new championship leader is facing engine penalties in the near future, but even that may not be enough to tilt the balance back in Rosberg's favour.
Matthew Walthert is an F1 columnist for Bleacher Report UK. He has also written for VICE, FourFourTwo and The Globe and Mail. Follow him on Twitter:
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