Lewis Hamilton took another step towards his second world championship by defeating his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg to win the United States Grand Prix.

The Brit had to play second fiddle to Rosberg for the opening half of the race, before a slick pass at Turn 12 on the German set up the win.

Rosberg tried to respond but was unable to maintain the pace of Hamilton, who opened up a 24 point lead at the top of the standings with his second career victory in Austin.

Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo executed a smart strategy to claim the final podium place in third, holding off the Williams pair of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas.

But the podium wasn’t enough to keep the Western Australian in the championship hunt.

Rosberg made no mistakes at the start as he led Hamilton up the hill to Turn 1 while Massa leapt ahead of of team-mate Bottas for third.

Behind, Ricciardo bogged down at the start dropping to as low as seventh but he managed to recover to sixth at the end of the opening lap with a clever pass on the McLaren of Kevin Magnussen.

However, the race was soon brought to an abrupt halt when the Safety Car was deployed for an incident involving Adrian Sutil’s Sauber and the Force India of Sergio Perez. The latter tagged Sutil hard while trying to overtake the German leaving him stranded on the circuit.

Sebastian Vettel pitted twice under the Safety Car using both sets of tyres with the world champion joined in the pits by the McLaren pair of Jenson Button and Magnussen.

Once racing continued the Mercedes duo quickly began to move away from the rest of the field while Ricciardo picked off the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso for fifth with an impressive overtake at Turn 1.

Rosberg maintained his lead over Hamilton after the first round of pitstops with Massa holding station in third.

But there was a change for fourth with Ricciardo’s strategy allowing the Australian to slip ahead of Bottas.

Ever since the first stop Hamilton slowly began to reel in his team-mate before producing a late lunge at Turn 12 which saw him snatch the lead on Lap 24.

Once in the lead, the Brit quickly opened up a 1.6s lead.

Hamilton’s lead grew after the second round of pit stops as Mercedes pitted early to react to a hard charging Ricciardo, who jumped Massa to slot into third.

While Hamilton was seemingly in control, there was plenty of action behind as Vettel surged into the points with a series of overtakes. The Red Bull driver managed to pass Romain Grosjean, Magnussen and Fernando Alonso to slot into sixth.

But a fourth pit stop dropped him down the order.

Massa held off Bottas to finish fourth while Alonso just hung on to sixth from Vettel, who produced a late surge in the closing stages.

Magnussen finished in eighth after coming through a frantic last few laps ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne and Pastor Maldonado, who claimed 10th after five second penalty for his first point of the season.

United States Grand Prix Result