Lewis Hamilton gave his chances to win a third Formula 1 drivers' title a big boost by taking a dominant win at the Belgian Grand Prix ahead of Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg. While the final results showed the reigning F1 champion leading his German teammate home by just over two seconds, in reality the Briton was never seriously challenged for a win.
The closest he came to losing the lead was when he ran wide at the exit of Eau Rouge at the start which allowed Force India-Mercedes' Sergio Perez to nose ahead of him on the Kemmel Straight. Hamilton, however, out-braked the Mexican to get back in the lead at the Le Combes chicane.
From that point on, most of the battling between cars occurred behind Hamilton as Rosberg tried to recover from a very poor start that saw him drop out of the top five from his second place on the starting grid. Former four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile tried to fight his way up the order from his eighth place on the grid.
The start of the race was at first aborted due to Nico Hulkenberg's Force India-Mercedes stalling on the grid, causing the cars to go around for another formation lap before the race finally got underway for 43 laps instead of 44.
Vettel's bid to fight his way to the podium and hold on to some hope of being a factor in the drivers' championship came to naught at the end as Ferrari gambled on running an extra long final stint on a set of medium compound Pirelli tyres, which were the prime tyres at the event.
Lotus-Mercedes' Romain Grosjean was the beneficiary of Vettel and Ferrari's gamble not paying off as the German's car suffered a right-rear tyre failure at the very end of the race.
With Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull-Renault retiring due to a mechanical failure, his Russian teammate Daniil Kvyat took fourth place to follow up on his second place finish in Hungary prior to the F1 summer break.
Perez ended up taking fifth with Williams-Mercedes' Felipe Massa, Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, Toro Rosso-Renault's Max Verstappen, Williams-Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas and Sauber-Ferrari's Marcus Ericsson completing the top ten.
Following the race, Hamilton's points tally increases to 227 with Rosberg and Vettel on 160 points, respectively.
The F1 season resumes on the 4 to 6 September weekend at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
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