LEWIS HAMILTON received the perfect send off into the summer break after a routine win in Germany.
The world champion’s victory here in Hockenheim, plus Nico Rosberg’s shocker, means the Brit now has a 19-point lead in the championship before racing resumes at the end of the month.
While Hamilton’s victory was so easy he was able to turn down his engine to preserve its lifespan, the German will be left cursing his luck and questioning where his season went wrong.
Despite starting on pole, Rosberg came home in fourth place after making a dreadful start – and he never recovered.
To compound his misery, he was hit with a five second time penalty from the race stewards for running Red Bull’s Max Verstappen wide.
Hamilton has now won six of the last seven races to overturn a 43-point deficit that stood after the Spanish Grand Prix.
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Rosberg, who took pole here on Saturday, was not able to capitalise on it as he was slow off the line.
He was running in fourth place by the first turn behind the Red Bull’s of Daniel Ricciardo and Verstappen.
But unlike in the previous weekend in Budapest, Rosberg was unable to fight back to snatch second.
Instead, he was involved in a scrap with Ricciardo, where he came off second best.
He then looked to finally have snatched a place from Verstappen on lap 29 at Turn Six but race stewards deemed the move illegal and slapped him with a penalty.
Rosberg was unhappy and, to make matters worse, his Mercedes engineers actually waited for EIGHT seconds before tending to his car.
That put pay to Rosberg's hopes of challenging for a podium and he finished behind Ricciardo and Verstappen.
The double Red Bull podium also moves the Milton Keynes-based team ahead of Ferrari in the team's championhip, as Sebastian Vettel was fifth and Kimi Raikkonen was sixth.
Meanwhile, Jenson Button was eighth ahead of his McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso, who was 12th.
TALE OF THE TAPE
- Driver of the Day: Jenson Button battled up to eighth place in his McLaren.
- Move of the Race: Kevin Magnussen squeezed passed Felipe Massa on lap 11
- Mistake of the Race: Nico Rosberg was slow off the line and never recovered.
- Milkfloat: Rio Haryanto was slow in his Manor.
- Top Speed: TBC
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