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Rosberg beats Hamilton in Spain
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NICO Rosberg has finally got the better of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton this season, winning the Spanish Grand Prix from pole position yesterday to gain ground on the championship leader.
Hamilton finished in second place and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was third.
The morale-boosting win was Rosberg’s ninth and his first since the Brazilian GP — the penultimate race of the last season — which the German also won from pole.
Hamilton has won three of five races this season, with Vettel the only other driver to beat him when the German won the Malaysian GP in March.
McLaren’s misery continued as two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso retired just short of halfway with faulty brakes — on the same track where the Spaniard last won a race two years ago with Ferrari. His British teammate Jenson Button finished 16th.
Hamilton has finished in the top two for 12 straight races since retiring at last season’s Belgium GP in August. The Briton leads Rosberg by 20 points and dominant Mercedes has finished 1-2 in three of five races so far.
As Rosberg milked the applause, Hamilton walked up to him, patted him on the back and then shook his hand firmly. A gleeful Rosberg than jumped up and down with his Mercedes crew.
A crowd of 86,700 watched the race, with a total of 189,000 spectators attending the Catalunya circuit near Barcelona over the weekend — although there was no Spanish driver in genuine contention and little suspense, either.
With 19 of the past 25 winners here starting from pole, the sinewy circuit is arguably the hardest to overtake on in F1 — and this showed as Rosberg finished 17.5 seconds clear of Hamilton and some 45.3 ahead of four-time champion Vettel.
Although the 730-meter straight to the first turn offered Hamilton the chance to apply instant pressure, Rosberg got away well. Hamilton stuttered — hampered by wheel spin — as Vettel overtook him and he only just held off the Williams of Valtteri Bottas heading into the first corner. Bottas finished fourth and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was fifth.
Brazilian Felipe Massa was sixth in the second Williams ahead of Australian Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull and Frenchman Romain Grosjean of Lotus.
Local hero Carlos Sainz won a late wheel-to-wheel battle with his Toro Rosso teammate, Dutch teenager Jos Verstappen, to take 10th and then ‘stole’ ninth from Russian Daniil Kvyat in the second Red Bull. Kvyat finished 10th.
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