Lewis Hamilton overtook rival Max Verstappen and teammate Valtteri Bottas to win the Portuguese Grad Prix on Sunday.
During the opening laps, Hamilton dropped to third place. But, during nine race-winning laps, the Brit made two impressive moves to claim the first spot.
Verstappen came in second, while Bottas, who started from pole, scored third place. Sergio Perez came in fourth with Lando Norris rounding off the top 5.
Kimi Raikkonen had a crash after he ran into teammate Antonio Giovinazzi’s Alfa Romeo, which led to the safety car being deployed early in the race. The debris was cleared six laps later which was when Verstappen sailed around the outside of Hamilton at the opening corner.
Then at lap 11, Hamilton began to show his offensive skills by moving back past Verstappen. The Dutchman eyed up Hamilton through Turn 4. But, Hamilton’s persistence led Verstappen to yield.
Soon after, Hamilton was tagging Bottas who was in the lead all this while. Finally, Hamilton took the lead in lap 20 of 66 by overtaking Bottas.
Verstappen was then stuck behind Bottas, unable to make any impression. He was the first among the leaders to stop for a new tyre set on lap 35.
Bottas followed a lap later with a significant advantage over the Dutchman. However, the Finn was slow in getting his tyres up to speed which saw Verstappen overtake him into second place.
Bottas, who was already 37 points behind teammate Hamilton, managed to score a point for fastest lap.
Verstappen put on a fresh set of tyres to compete for the fastest lap as well. However, his time was deleted for exceeding track limits.
Hamilton will head to the next race with an eight-point lead over Verstappen.
“That was such a tough race, physically and mentally and just keeping it together,” said Hamilton. “It was windy, so it was easy to put a foot wrong.
“I lost out at the restart, which was not good. I was not happy and I had to position myself the best I could. I then had to make a move on Valtteri before the tyres were destroyed, and I just made it stick at turn one.”
Verstappen said, “At the end we just lacked a bit of pace and Lewis got by.
“Once we settled in second, you could see we were lacking in pace compared to them. We were not on top of it here, but we will see what we can do in Barcelona.”
Charles Leclerc finished sixth for Ferrari, one spot ahead of Alpine’s Esteban Ocon. Fernando Alonso finished eighth following a late move on Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
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