MOTORSPORT: Hamilton and Mercedes rule

Lewis Hamilton is on top of the world again, Daniel Ricciardo is back up to third in the Formula 1 World Championship, and Mark Webber and Australia’s rising international star Joey Mawson are winners again overseas.

Webber scored his first victory of the year in the World Endurance Championship at Porsche’s home round at Nurburgring in Germany.

Mawson has stretched his lead over Michael Schumacher’s teenage son Mick from 20 to 46 points after his sixth win and 11th podium in this year’s German Formula 4 Championship at Austria’s Red Bull Ring in Spielberg.

Hungary proved Red Bull and Ferrari not in Merc league

Mercedes, and particularly Lewis Hamilton, are continuing to play with the rest of the F1 field.

Red Bull Racing and Ferrari are not the threats to Mercedes they thought they might have been.

Hamilton chalked up his 48th grand prix victory in Hungary last night, his fifth in the past six races, and a record fifth success in Budapest.

He was doing it so easily at one stage that team chiefs had to tell him to speed up or they would give Rosberg a preferential strategy.

Rosberg lost out to Hamilton at the start but finished within two seconds of him and the 43-point lead he had after winning the first four GPs this season has now become a six-point advantage in Hamilton’s favour.

Ricciardo in his Renault-powered Red Bull was another 25.5 seconds away in third last night, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel close behind.

Ricciardo had qualified just 0.315 seconds slower than Rosberg’s pole position lap time – Hamilton was between them – and the Australian thought he might have gone fastest had the session not been aborted, and that he may have challenged the Mercs in the race.

Although there was a stage at which Ricciardo was closing on the Mercs it was only because Hamilton was cantering with Rosberg unable to overtake him.

Red Bull’s 18-year-old Max Verstappen withstood every effort – and contact – from a frustrated Kimi Raikkonen in the other Ferrari as they filled fifth and sixth places – almost 50 seconds down at the chequered flag.

If Red Bull and Ferrari are still struggling to get on terms with Mercedes, McLaren-Honda’s improvement was put in sharp perspective with seventh-placed Fernando Alonso a lap down at the finish.

The other McLaren was the only retirement, with an oil leak, after an early sensor failure and Jenson Button’s brake pedal going to the floor. A reset during a pitstop solved that, but Button again fumed about radio communication rules jeopardising safety.

“I think it’s a joke really. Stopping an incident [through radio communication] should be praised, not penalised,” Button said.

But Button is under fire over his broader safety concerns from Red Bull’s opinionated motorsport consultant Dr Helmut Marko.

“Button, who earns $10 million [a year], should retire,” Marko has told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“Safety is all well and good, but it cannot be that skiing is more dangerous than Formula 1.

“F1 got so popular because risk was a part of the sport. This safety that we have now is nonsense. And this idiocy with the halo system (the proposed cockpit protection) will completely destroy F1.”

Perfect podium record for Ricciardo in Budapest

The Hungaroring has been Daniel Ricciardo’s best track in F1.

He won there in 2014 – the second of his three wins in his first season with Red Bull Racing – and he’s been third in the two Hungarian GPs since, meaning a quarter of his 12 F1 podiums have been in Budapest.

He is third in the championship again after having slipped to fifth. He’s a long way behind Hamilton and Rosberg though and just ahead of Ferrari’s Raikkonen and Vettel, with teenage teammate Verstappen only a little further back.

While Mercedes is a runaway leader in the constructors’ championship, Red Bull is now just one point behind Ferrari.

“I’m really pleased with a podium … I don’t think we could have got a win,” Ricciardo said after last night’s race.

“We tried at the start; we had a good run off the line and at the apex the Mercs were in my blind spot, so I thought I was in the lead, but on the exit I was done by Lewis  and then Nico  got me round the outside of turn two.

“I think, even if we had got the lead, their pace was good, so they could have even over-cut us if they stayed out an extra lap.

“There were moments when we looked competitive compared to Mercedes.

“When the first stint settled they had a bit more pace. At the start of the second stint, with the soft-compound tyre, it seemed competitive, but in the end it looked like Mercedes was doing just what they needed to do and then got stronger and stronger.

“We thought they were perhaps struggling, so we thought we’d be aggressive to get close if they were going to pit soon.

“I was trying to fight for the win at the time as opposed to defending. Then, once we pitted, it looked like they just turned up the volume, unfortunately.

“Third was the best we could do and Seb [Vettel] got really close in the last three laps.

“My tyres were getting towards the end, so coming over the line in third was good.

“Three podiums in a row here is great – it’s a good place for me. I feel really good.

“Fridays and Saturdays have been really good for us from the start of the season, but the last few Sundays, for whatever reason, I hadn’t been that satisfied with, so it was important to put it together from Friday to Sunday this weekend and I believe I did that.

“And now we’ve got another in seven days (the German GP at Hockenheim), so that’s another chance to be happy again!”

Formula 1 World Championship driver standings after 11 of 21 rounds – 1. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 192 points; 2. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 186; 3. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 115; 4. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 114; 5. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 110; 6. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Red Bull-Renault) 100; 7. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams) 56; 8. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 47; 9. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 38; 10. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 30; 11. Romain Grosjean (France, Haas-Ferrari) 28; 12. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 27; 13. Fernando Alonso (Spain, McLaren-Honda) 24; 14. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 23; 15. Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Honda) 13; 16. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark, Renault) 6; 17. Pascal Wehrlein (Germany, Manor-Mercedes) 1; 18. Stoffel Vandoorne (Belgium, McLaren-Honda) 1.

F1 constructors’ standings – 1. Mercedes 378 points; 2. Ferrari 224; 3. Red Bull-Renault 223; 4. Williams-Mercedes 94; 5. Force India-Mercedes 74; 6. Toro Rosso-Ferrari 45; 7. McLaren-Honda 38; 8. Haas-Ferrari 28; 9. Renault 6; 10. Manor-Mercedes 1.

Webber and co deliver for Porsche on home ground

Mark Webber’s World Endurance Championship victory with Porsche came after Audi had set the pace in the fourth round at Nurburgring while Toyota tumbled back to its more usual third among the top-class Le Mans prototype manufacturers.

“We had great battles on the track with Audi,” Webber said.

“I was never bothered which of our cars did it, but the most important thing was to beat Audi.

“I was very happy with the performance of our car and our driving.

“This is a brilliant win. We had an early puncture, but we kept our heads down and hung in there – and the Audis ran out of a bit of steam.”

Webber was partnered, as usual, in the No. 1 Porsche 919 Hybrid by New Zealander Brendon Hartley and German Timo Bernhard, who drove the final stint and took the chequered flag almost a minute clear.

The trio are the reigning WEC champions but this was their first win this year.

“We lost some time (in this latest, six-hour race) in a full-course yellow [caution period] when the car in front of me wasn’t going 80 kmh/h as the regulations say,” Webber said.

“Then our sister car had a drive-through penalty.”

That 919 Hybrid was driven by Frenchman Romain Dumas, Switzerland’s Neel Jani and German Marc Lieb.

They finished fourth, but after two wins this season – the six-hour at Britain’s Silverstone and the four-times-longer Le Mans last month – lead the driver standings by 33 points.

Porsche heads the manufacturer standings with 164 points to Audi’s 129 and Toyota’s 97.

Audi R18 e-tron quattros finished second and third at Nurburging, while Toyota – which almost won Le Mans for the first time before a mechanical failure in the last couple of minutes – saw its TS050s one and four laps down respectively in fifth and sixth places.

Ferrari 488s were first and second in the GTE Pro class, with an Aston Martin Vantage third after the Ford GT that won the class at Le Mans had to take a drive-through penalty for a pitstop infringement.

In the International Motor Sports Association round on the short Lime Rock circuit in Connecticut, US, Aussie Ryan Briscoe’s British co-driver Richard Westbrook qualified their Ford GT on the GTLM class pole but it was knocked off the track on the opening lap by a Ferrari driven by Finnish ace Tony Vilander.

However, they recovered during a two-hour, 40-minute race of attrition to finish third behind a pair of Chevrolet Corvette C7.Rs – the first of them driven by Brit Oliver Gavin and American Tommy Milner.

It was the Corvette Racing’s 100th victory since its debut in the American Le Mans Series in 1999, while the weekend’s defeats were the first since the start of May for Ford’s new GTs.

Joey jumps further ahead of new Schu

Joey Mawson, the 20-year-old Sydney driver leading Germany’s Formula 4 Championship in his second season in the series, described the weekend’s Nurburgring round as “altogether excellent” for him.

Fourth in the first of the round’s three races after starting 11th because of a penalty, Mawson – driving for Dutch team Van Amersfoort Racing – won the second race and was third in the third race – the 15th of the season.

The victory came after he led all the way from pole position, while 17-year-old title rival Mick Schumacher – driving for Italy’s Prema Powerteam – made up 22 places from 33rd on the grid to finish 11th.

“That race was excellent for me,” Mawson said.

“I’ve never felt so good on the track and my pace was spot on.”

Nine races remain – the next three at Nurburgring on August 6-7 – with Mawson leading Schumacher 254 points to 208, but the Aussie admits “anything can happen” yet.

Toyotas on top at The Brickyard

The Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis went 10 laps longer than the scheduled 160 after a series of late crashes, with NASCAR’s reigning Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch victorious ahead of Matt Kenseth – both of them driving for the Joe Gibbs Toyota team.

Five-time winner of the race Jeff Gordon, deputising for sidelined Dale Earnhardt Junior – who has symptoms of concussion – was 13th after coming out of retirement at the end of last season.

Another local favourite, Tony Stewart, a two-time winner of the event, was 11th ahead of his retirement from NASCAR at the end of this year.

The Associated Press reported that the crowd, in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with seating for about 250,000 fans, was “about 50,000”.

AP said that, apart from what was supposed to have been Gordon’s “final ride” at The Brickyard last year, “attendance has steadily dwindled over the past eight years”.