Hamilton beats Rosberg to Austin victory

Mercedes AMG Petronas

Lewis Hamilton claimed his fifth successive Formula 1 victory after passing Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg mid-distance.

Hamilton jumped ahead of Rosberg in the second stint of the race and was untroubled from his team-mate across the remainder of the race on his way to a 10^th win of the season.

Hamilton now leads Rosberg by 24 points, meaning that the title fight will go down to the final round of the season in Abu Dhabi.

Daniel Ricciardo claimed third position after passing both Williams drivers through the pit stop phase.

Rosberg held the lead at the start while Hamilton slotted into second as Felipe Massa got ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso jumped ahead of Ricciardo.

The Safety Car was deployed at the end of the first lap following a collision between Adrian Sutil and Sergio Pérez. Sutil’s hopes of a strong result ended when he was hit by Force India’s Pérez at Turn 15 and both cars sustained terminal damage.

Rosberg led Hamilton away at the restart and the pair lapped within a second until the Brit began to struggle with tyres. Rosberg stopped first, with Hamilton likewise switching to Primes a lap later, and emerged with a lead of almost three seconds.

Red Bull opted to use the undercut for Ricciardo and the Australian got the jump on Bottas when the Williams driver stopped a lap later in their battle for fourth, with Massa a few seconds further up the road.

Hamilton gradually chipped into Rosberg’s lead across the next stint and on lap 25 he made a DRS-assisted move under braking for Turn 12 and the pair came close to touching on the exit of the corner.

Hamilton opened up a narrow advantage over Rosberg throughout the middle stint of proceedings as Massa remained a threat five seconds behind.

But the Brazilian driver lost third place to Ricciardo through the second pit stop phase when a slow stop, combined with the Red Bull driver receiving the undercut, enabled Ricciardo to move ahead.

Mercedes had to react to those behind and Hamilton stopped a lap later for another set of Prime tyres. Rosberg reacted by pitting on the following lap and the German emerged in second place, four seconds behind his team-mate and a similar distance ahead of new third-placed man Ricciardo.

Rosberg slashed the gap to Hamilton to 2.4s with a rapid lap but the Brit responded and the difference between them stabilised as they pulled comfortably clear of Ricciardo.

Sebastian Vettel started from the pit lane and made minimal progress early on after a couple of stops across the first few laps but after stopping mid-distance he made it up to sixth. He passed Fernando Alonso when the Spaniard made his final stop but could only watch as Alonso breezed past into Turn 12.

Red Bull pitted Vettel late on for a fresh set of Options and he emerged in 14^th position. He nonetheless carved his way through the midfield and claimed seventh, ahead of Kevin Magnussen and a combative Jean-Éric Vergne. Pastor Maldonado finally claimed his first point of the year in 10^th, despite a five second penalty.

Romain Grosjean and Jenson Button placed 11^th and 12^th, while Kimi Räikkönen was 13^th, ahead of Esteban Gutiérrez and Daniil Kvyat.

Nico Hülkenberg ran outside of the top 10 early on before parking his Force India along the back straight.