Verstappen passed F1 title rival Charles Leclerc twice on his way to claiming an epic fightback victory in Sunday’s race at the Hungaroring, aft♛er engine trouble in Q3 left☂ him 10th on the grid. 

The Red Bull driver’s remarkable charge was aided by a strategy shocker from Ferrari, before Verstappen eased to his eighth victory of the season to extend his world cওhampi🥃onship lead over Leclerc to 80 points.

Verstappen finished 10 seconds clear ♋of Hamilton, who staged his own recovery from seventh after his DRS failed in qualifying to claim a strong seܫcond. 

“If you💦 look at Max’s race - he started 10th, spun, and st💎ill won the race,” Hamilton said after the race. “That says pretty much everything about his car.” 

Asked if he thin🌃ks a win is now possible this season, Hamilton responded: “I hope so. It’s what we are working towards. 

“I think this weekend there was potential for a win. You saw George on pole. I think if we had both been up there we could have probably worked a bit better as a team. One of us would have been able to support each other strate✱gy-wise. 

“But I think if we are able to take this pace into the second half of the season, for sure, we can start to fight with the guys. This is the first time that we’ve been able to f🍰ight and battle with a Ferrari - that’s huge for us. 

“I think the Red Bulls probably 𒆙still are ahead. The fact that Max started 10th, spun and still finished 10 seconds ahead says enough about their car but I think we still have made huge progress and huge🏅 steps. 

“To have this consistency and two double podiu♔ms in the last two races, gives us great hope and a huge push for the second half.” 

Hamilton’s charge to second was helped by running an offset strategy th🐻at saw him run two stints on the medium tyre before switching to the faster softs for the final stages. 

The seven-time world champion suggested he could have challenged Verstappenꦰ for the win if he started the race on so𝔉fts. 

“I would🌼 say probably going longer in that second stint, 🍨giving me the option to then go to the softer tyre at the end,” he said when asked what the key moment of his race was. 

“That offset that I enabled myself to get, I think proba💦bly the race was lost with that first stint on the medium tyre. But the second and third part of the race was pretty epic.”

Hamilton added: “If we had started where we should have started without the problem yesterday, I think we would have then been in a much better place 🐬to race Max today.”