Hamilton Takes Victory from Front; Both Lotuses on Podium

Lewis Hamilton held the pole in the 2012 Hungarian Grand Prix and had the chance to take his second win of the season. Behind him were Romain Grosjean and Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton won from pole, but things were quite different behind him at the end of the race. Kimi Raikkonen made a late race push and took second. His teammate Romain Grosjean was behind him. 

It was a very interesting start to the 2012 Hungarian Grand Prix. There was a yellow flag during the start of the race that forced the team to do a second formation lap after having already set up at the grid. The explanation was some confusion with the flag holder at the back of the grid. He started waving the flag then stopped. On top of that, Michael Schumacher stalled his car meaning he would have to start from pit lane. The problem also means that it was a 69-lap race instead of 70 laps. 

At the start of the race, Button passed Vettel for third, and Alonso passed Raikkonen for fifth. From then, Alonso was all over the back of Sebastian Vettel. 

Michael Schumacher was having an awful day. He had to start from the pit lane due to his stall and immediately switched to the harder compound tires. Then he got a drive through penalty for speeding in the pit lane. 

With 12 laps in, Hamilton held the lead, and Grosjean was about 2.5 seconds behind him. Vettel was beginning to catch Button for third, and Alonso had fallen back behind Vettel presumably to save his tires. 

The drivers did their first pit stops around lap 16. Hamilton came in on lap 19. After the stops, the top drivers stayed the same. The only change is that Raikkonen passed Alonso putting the Lotus in 5th and FerrariFerrari F2012Italy, 2012 > 201214 photos
1 video
in 6th. 

By lap 29, Vettel appeared to be catching Button for third. They were 0.544 seconds apart. At the same time Grosjean had closed to 1.2 seconds behind Hamilton. 

At lap 35, the halfway point, the running order was: Hamilton, Grosjean, Vettel, Raikkonen, Alonso, Webber, Senna, Button who had just pitted, Massa and Rosberg. 

The frontrunners pitted around lap 40, and Raikkonen took over the lead. He put in a 14 second lead over Hamilton. Raikkonen very, very nearly ran into Grosjean leaving the pits. A piece of paper would have barely fit between the cars. That put Hamilton first, Raikkonen second and Grosjean third. 

All drivers had made their final stops at lap 50. The race had finally begun. Raikkonen was chasing Hamilton down. He was one second down from Hamilton with 57 laps into the race. At this point, there were no other drivers on track who were within a second of the car ahead of them. 

With 10 laps to go, Vettel pitted for soft tires and came out within inches of Alonso. He did not lose any position because of the gap between them, but Vettel had cold tires for the first lap, and Alonso brought the fight to him. However, the new tires were too good, and Alonso could not make the pass. Michael Schumacher pulled into the garage and was the only retirement so far during the race. 

With 5 laps to go, Raikkonen was 0.9 seconds away from Hamilton. Narain Karthikeyan ran into the wall and broke his front suspension on lap 65. He is the second retirement of the day. 

Raikkonen could not make it stick, and Hamilton won. That puts both Lotuses on the podium. The big news from this race might be Bruno Senna holding off Mark Webber to take 7th place.

Alonso still has 40 point lead in the drivers' championship, but just two points separate Webber and Vettel now. Hamilton and Raikkonen are separated by just one point. 

Red BullRed Bull RB8Austria, 2012 > 201210 photos
is winning the teams' championship, but McLarenMcLaren MP4-27United Kingdom, 2012 > 20125 photos
, LotusLotus E20United Kingdom, 2012 > 201213 photos
and Ferrari are within four points of each other. 

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