MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo podium 'like a win'

To Daniel Ricciardo it felt like a win, for Ferrari it was a win, while the Hungarian Grand Prix was the worst race of the Formula One World Championship for usually-dominant Mercedes.

Ricciardo might have repeated last year's victory in Budapest if not for contact with Nico Rosberg's Mercedes in the final laps, which required a new nose for the Australian's Red Bull-Renault.

Instead – lightning fast on soft tyres while others were on Pirelli's hard compound – he finished third, behind Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull teammate Daniil Kyvat.

Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton had a shocker, yet finished sixth and bizarrely stretched his championship lead from 17 to 21 points over teammate Rosberg, who wound up eighth after his late pitstop to replace a rear tyre punctured in the incident with Ricciardo.

Dutch 17-year-old Max Verstappen notched the best finish of his debut season, fourth for Toro Rosso, despite a drive-through penalty for going too fast behind the safety car, meaning the first four placegetters were all products of Red Bull's junior development program.

Amazingly, after McLaren-Honda's qualifying dramas, Fernando Alonso was fifth and Jenson Button ninth – the first time the team has had both that pair in the points this season.

While that brought belated joy to the second most successful team in F1 history and its Japanese power unit supplier, in NASCAR it was Toyota's day as its scored its first win in the 22 years of the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Victory in that event, one of the "crown jewels" of the Sprint Cup, again narrowly avoided Roger Penske, 16-time winner of the open-wheel Indianapolis 500, as Kyle Busch won his third straight race, and fourth in the past five rounds, holding off Joey Logano in one of Penske's Fords.

It was Busch's 33rd Sprint Cup victory but first at The Brickyard and he's still outside the top 30 in the championship, which he needs to make to participate in The Chase for the title after missing a swag of races early in the season with a broken leg.

Home-town hero and five-time Brickyard 400 winner Jeff Gordon was classified 42nd after hitting the wall 50 laps into the 160 circuits of the 4km superspeedway, while reigning series champion Kevin Harvick was the top Chevrolet finisher in third.

Matthew Brabham's stock car racing debut in a late model at Tri-County Speedway in North Carolina was cut short by an electrical problem when he felt he was on for a top-five finish.

BMW won the Spa 24-Hour GT race – the double-points round of the Blancpain Endurance Series –for the first time since 1998 as a Z4 upstaged Audi R8s, Ferrari 458s and other exotic machinery in the 57-car field that contested an at-times  treacherously wet 67th running of the Belgian classic.

The McLaren 650S that V8 Supercar star Shane Van Gisbergen shared led early after starting on the front row but did not finish, classified 29th and 79 laps behind the victorious BMW.

Australian Liam Talbot shared the Kessel Racing Ferrari 458 that finished third in the Amateur Cup at Spa and 19th outright, 26 laps behind the winning Z4, while the Aston Martin Vantage that fellow Aussie Jonathan Venter co-drove was classified 30th.

Bathurst 12-hour winners Katsumasa Chiyo and Wolfgang Reip were 15th and 23 laps down in a Nissan GT-R with Alex Buncombe.

The second-placed Audi went twice around the clock without a change of brake pads and disks in finishing a lap behind the BMW.

This year's GP drivers stood in a circle, arm-in-arm, around their helmets and Bianchi's, as they observed a minute's silence pre-race with his family and fans.

Sebastian Vettel dedicated the 41st victory of his career, equalling Ayrton Senna's tally and leaving him behind only Michael Schumacher (91 wins) and Alain Prost (51), to the hugely-talented and popular Frenchman.

And Daniel Ricciardo said the contemporary with whom he became friendly in his earliest days in Europe had been the inspiration for his attacking drive.

Ricciardo had contact with the Williams-Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas at the start as he dropped from fourth on the grid and later was the victim of biffo from Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes – damaging his right sidepod, for which the world champion was given a drive-through penalty.

Four laps from the finish there was the contact with Nico Rosberg, about which the German initially grumbled before accepting the decision of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) stewards that Ricciardo did nothing wrong.

"I left everything on the track," Ricciardo said.

"Whether some competitors like it or not, that's how I like to do it and how I'll always do it.

"We were quick enough to win.

"I saw Seb wasn't getting away [after the safety car to clear the debris from Nico Hulkenburg's Force India-Mercedes, which had its front wings and nose drop off at high speed].

"I thought if I could get Nico [Rosberg, then second] I could probably get Seb, so the laps were counting down.

"I saw a gap and went for it.

"At that stage the move was clean and then it just looked like Nico [Rosberg) cut back on the exit and came across and just ...

"I guess I didn't have enough room and we touched.

"It's disappointing. We both obviously ruined our chances of a win.

"[But] I was inspired today. I could have sat in third and accepted that, but I had the chance to win and I went for it.

"It's a shame how it ended up but at the same time I don't regret what I did.

"I drove with a heavy but a strong heart and that makes me happy.

"This race was definitely for Jules.

"I'm grateful to be on the podium – it feels like a victory.

"It's been a long year ... a tough one [after three victories last season].

"All of a sudden to find two of our [Red Bull] cars on the podium is pretty surreal."

Ricciardo's teammate Kyvat became the youngest podium finisher in F1 history at 21 years and 91 days – just 18 days older than Vettel was when he won the 2008 Italian GP.

Vitaly Petrov's third place for Lotus in the 2011 Australian GP was the only other F1 podium by a Russian.

"It's hard to describe what I feel," Kyvat said.

"Today I learned never to give up, whatever happens."

Early in the race Kyvat had been ordered to let the faster Ricciardo overtake him.

While initially unhappy about that, he admitted post-race: "Daniel had a better shot at victory than I did – he did the right thing to go for it."

Red Bull's previous best this season had been fourth (Kyvat) and fifth (Ricciardo) at the Monaco GP.

The power disadvantage of Renault and Toro Rosso's Renault V6 hybrids was not such a factor on the Budapest circuit, but it will come into play again at the two races immediately after a four-week break – at Spa in Belgium and Monza in Italy.

The Ferrari jumped the Mercs at the start in Hungary and looked to be headed for a one-two until Kimi Raikkonen lost power soon after half-distance.

But the day turned out far worse for Mercedes, which was not represented on the podium for the first time in 28 races, and Williams, third in the constructors' championship but whose Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas were 12th and 13th at the finish.

Mercedes-Benz Motorsport chief Toto Wolff said his drivers "had two bad starts and then things went from bad to worse".

Hamilton, winner of five of the 10 GPs so far this season but who at one time was as low as 15th in this race, admitted his drive was "one of the worst performances I've put in in a long, long time".

"I was all over the place," Hamilton said.

"It was a really, really bad performance.

"I pushed and never gave up, but when I had two different choices I chose the wrong one every time.

"I don't know if it was a lack of concentration or what.

"I definitely had a very bad day in the office ... [but] by the grace of God I got some points."

And more points than teammate Rosberg, who called it "a very disappointing day ... the sort of day I needed to make the most of it against Lewis and it didn't work out".

It was the most chaotic GP of the season, in which notorious Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado copped three penalties, but easily the most exciting.