Budapest: McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton won his third Formula One race of the year at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday, beating Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari and BMW-Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld. Defending champion Fernando Alonso was fourth.

Hamilton, led from the start in a turbulent race — his team was penalised after it was deemed to have hindered his qualifying efforts.

On Saturday, race stewards stripped Alonso of his pole position on Saturday and barred the team from scoring constructors’ points in race.

Alonso was penalised five places after the FIA stewards ruled that McLaren had delayed Hamilton on the final pit stop in qualifying. Alonso was stationary for more than 30 seconds after the tires were changed before heading out, while Hamilton waited behind him in the pits. He had been quickest until he was forced to wait behind Alonso.

McLaren, 27 points clear of Ferrari in a title contest overshadowed by a spy controversy linking the two increasingly bitter rivals, said they would appeal against their penalty. They cannot, however, appeal Alonso’s relegation.

With six races to go, Hamilton extended his lead over Alonso in the standings to seven points, 80-73.

At the start, Hamilton moved away easily while Raikkonen tucked in behind. They essentially stayed that way during the rest of the race, with Heidfeld third, except for pits stops.

Robert Kubica of BMW-Sauber had another strong finish for fifth place with Schumacher of Toyota in sixth, his best of the season. Nico Rosberg of Williams was seventh and Heikki Kovalainen of Renault finished eighth.

Late on Saturday, stewards ordered an enquiry after Hamilton was blocked by the Spaniard’s car in the pit lane in the final seconds of Saturday’s qualifying session.

Four hours later, the official classification was issued showing no changes but at 23.35pm local time (2135 GMT) stewards issued a statement changing that.

Both drivers were summoned along with team boss Ron Dennis and team manager Dave Ryan to the stewards’ hearing.

“Because of the delay caused by Alonso, Hamilton was unable to complete his pit stop in time sufficient to enable him also to complete a flying lap,” the statement said. “The stewards find that he unnecessarily impeded another driver, Hamilton.”

Dennis had said Hamilton was to blame for failing to obey repeated team instructions to let Alonso go past earlier in the session at a stage when drivers were burning off excess fuel.

He and Dennis also exchanged angry words on the radio at the end of qualifying.

Alonso, facing pointed questions about the incident at a news conference, said he had been told by the team to wait for a gap in traffic and saw nothing unusual in doing. “Every qualifying we stop and we wait,” he said. “Sometimes 10 seconds, sometimes five, sometimes 45…”

Hamilton, whose relationship with Alonso has been distinctly edgy since he started beating the 26-year-old champion, disagreed openly with the Spaniard.

Asked how much more time he would have needed to cross the start/finish line before the end of the session, Hamilton said: “About the same amount of time I was held up in the pitstop.”

Earlier this year, McLaren’s tactics also were questioned at the Monaco GP when Hamilton was told to “hold position” in second place behind Alonso rather than bid for victory as the McLarens went 1-2.

Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella was also demoted five places on starting grid for unnecessarily impeding Spyker’s Sakon Yamamoto in qualifying. The Italian dropped from eighth to 13th. (Agencies)

It was an emotional race, says Hamilton: Page 20