Hamilton back to winning ways

LEWIS HAMILTON celebrated his third victory of the season on a day Jenson Button’s hopes of back-to-back world championships suffered “a massive blow”.

Hamilton took the chequered flag after a typically chaotic Belgian Grand Prix in which three of his main rivals all failed to score a point.

In finishing 1.5 seconds ahead of Mark Webber as the race ended in the wet, Hamilton has leapfrogged the Red Bull racer at the top of the standings, with his cushion now a marginal three points.

It was Webber’s team-mate Sebastian Vettel who was again the major talking point during and after the event, notably for causing yet another accident, this one accounting for Button.

With Hamilton and Button running one-two, the latter came under attack from Vettel on lap 17, only for the German to lose control of his car under braking into the bus stop chicane. As he fought for control, Vettel skewed one way and then the other before spearing into the sidepod on the left-hand side of Button’s car, bursting the radiator and forcing him into retirement.

It was an error scathingly criticised by McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh as “not what you would expect to see in Formula One, more reminiscent of junior formulae.”

Vettel collected a drive-through penalty, his second in successive races, before then suffering a puncture later on after running over the front wing of Force India’s Vitantonio Liuzzi, finishing 15th.

It was also a blank day for Fernando Alonso, who previously had revived his title hopes in the last two races by finishing first and second.

But after surviving being run into by Williams’ Rubens Barrichello whose historic 300th grands prix ended before the first lap, Alonso then broke the front-right suspension of his Ferrari after spinning into a barrier in the wet on lap 38.

With such incidents and casualties, it was a good day for Hamilton and Webber, who suffered a clutch issue off the line as he slipped from pole to seventh before recovering to finish as runner-up.

“I think you can probably see by my reaction just how happy I am,” said a beaming Hamilton, who narrowly avoided a barrier after going wide into the gravel as the rain came 10 laps from home. “I love racing. It is in my blood, and I missed it so much in the break.”

Renault’s Robert Kubica was third, followed by Felipe Massa (Ferrari), Force India’s Adrian Sutil, and the Mercedes duo of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, who had started 21st.