Australian Mark Webber took back the Formula One championship lead from Lewis Hamilton yesterday after snatching victory in a Hungarian Grand Prix that Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel had been favorite to win.

McLaren's Hamilton retired with a suspected gearbox failure, only his second blank this season, and dropped to second place overall, four points adrift.

Vettel, starting on pole position for the seventh time in 12 races but again failing to convert the advantage, fell foul of the safety car rules and finished third behind Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.

Webber now has 161 points to Hamilton's 157, with Vettel on 151 and McLaren's world champion Jenson Button on 147. Alonso has 141.

"It was a bit of a gift today for me but I haven't had many of them," said Webber, who competed in his 150th race on the Formula One circuit.

Webber, celebrating his fourth win of the campaign, did everything right after going against the flow and staying out when the other frontrunners pitted for fresh tires when the safety car was deployed on the 15th of 70 laps. His hopes were handed a massive boost when the stewards then slapped a drive-through penalty on Vettel for a safety car infringement, which dropped him behind Alonso.

While Vettel cruised through the pitlane shaking his fists in the air with obvious rage at the officials, the Australian streaked away to build up a sufficient advantage to pit and retain the lead.

Button, who started from 14th, finished eighth.

Mercedes' Nico Rosberg was released from his pit stop with a loose wheel that then bounced high among the mechanics as cars were coming in. In the mayhem, with a Sauber mechanic luckily catching the wheel, Renault's Robert Kubica drove into Force India's Adrian Sutil - fortunately without injuring any of the pit crew.

Ferrari's Felipe Massa, back in Hungary a year after an accident that nearly killed him and ended the Brazilian's season, was fourth. Renault's Russian rookie Vitaly Petrov chalked up his best result in fifth place.

Germany's Nico Hulkenberg was sixth for Williams, with Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa collecting his first points of the season for Sauber in seventh. Japanese teammate Kamui Kobayashi was ninth and Brazilian Rubens Barrichello 10th for Williams after passing former Ferrari teammate Michael Schumacher despite the German pushing him perilously close to the wall.

Barrichello described Schumacher's action on Twitter as "the most dangerous manoeuvre against me that I have ever known".

"It was a go-kart manoeuvre. If he wants to go to heaven before me he can; I don't want to go to heaven," Barrichello told reporters.

Schumacher was handed a 10 place penalty on the starting grid for August 28 Belgian Grand Prix for "illegitimately" impeding the Brazilian. Mercedes was also fined US$50,000 for the unsafe release of Rosberg's car.