Lewis Hamilton won his third Formula One world drivers’ title in Austin, Texas on Sunday night as an error from his Mercedes-GP teammate Nico Rosberg with seven laps to go handed him victory at the United States Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s season has been built on dominating races, but Sunday was a rare off-day for the Briton and he looked set to be beaten by Rosberg.
But Rosberg ran wide on the damp Circuit of the Americas track on Lap 49 of the 56-lap race, briefly losing control and sliding wide off the track.
Though he quickly rejoined the circuit, Hamilton had only been two seconds behind him before the incident, and took advantage to take the lead and move 76 points clear in the drivers’ standings with only 75 left to be won from the remaining races in Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi.
Hamilton becomes only the 10th driver to win a third world title and only the second Briton after Jackie Stewart.
“This is the greatest moment of my life,” he told his Mercedes team on the pit radio after he had crossed the line to clinch his third win in four years in the United States. “Thank you so much guys for everything you do.”
It was the 30-year-old Briton’s 10th success of 2015, but this was arguably his most chaotic success of the season in a race that had two safety car periods.
The heavy rain that had forced qualifying on Saturday to be postponed relented sufficiently for a shortened qualifying session to take place five hours before the race on Sunday, with Rosberg claiming his third successive pole position.
But, yet again, the German was slow off the line, as Hamilton, who started second on the grid, got alongside him into Turn 1. The Mercedes cars made contact as Hamilton ran wide, pushing Rosberg off the track as a consequence.
Though Hamilton kept the lead, Rosberg dropped to fourth behind the Red Bull Racing cars of Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo.
The track was still wet even though the rain had stopped, and for once the Mercedes were under pressure, with the Red Bulls thriving in conditions where aerodynamic grip was more important than engine power.
Ricciardo would find his way past Hamilton by Lap 15, and he would be followed through by a feisty Rosberg, who was proving the quicker Mercedes driver on intermediate tyres.
He was even faster when the track dried sufficiently to move to slick tyres, passing Ricciardo for the lead and pulling out a lead of 10 seconds.
Two safety car periods, though, the first after Ricciardo and the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg had collided, and then after Kvyat had crashed, ruined Rosberg’s time advantage over Hamilton, but he still had track position at the front going into the final 10 laps.
But the error of his own making handed the position to Hamilton, and rather than staging a late charge, he had to spend his time watching his mirrors and holding off Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari, who completed the podium in third place, a result that keeps him second in the drivers’ standings.
Max Verstappen matched the best result of his career as he finished fourth, with his Toro Rosso teammate Carlos Sainz Jr in sixth, although he was demoted to seventh in the final results after having a five-second time penalty added to his result for pit lane speeding.
Sergio Perez was fifth for Force India, with Jenson Button benefiting from Sainz’s penalty to be finish for McLaren.
gcaygill@thenational.ae
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