Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Rosberg closes in on Hamilton with win

GRANOLLERS — Nico Rosberg has finally got the better of Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton this season, winning the Spanish Grand Prix from pole position yesterday to gain ground on the championship leader.

Rosberg celebrating his first win this season. Photo: Reuters

Rosberg celebrating his first win this season. Photo: Reuters

GRANOLLERS — Nico Rosberg has finally got the better of Mercedes team-mate 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 Grand Prix, the penultimate race of the previous season, which the German also won from pole. “It was a perfect weekend. Perfect to be on pole and then to win a race like this. The car has been awesome all weekend. Finally, I got a perfect start; it’s been a long time coming.”

Hamilton, the defending F1 champion, has won three of five races this season, with Vettel the only other driver to beat him when the German won the Malaysian Grand Prix in March.

“I had a good start, getting past Lewis,” Vettel said. “But, unfortunately, Mercedes were just too quick and we couldn’t keep up.”

McLaren’s misery continued as two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso retired just short of halfway with faulty brakes — on the same track where he last won a race two years ago with Ferrari.

Hamilton has finished in the top two for 12 straight races since retiring at last season’s Belgium GP in August. He leads Rosberg by 20 points and dominant Mercedes has finished 1-2 in three of five races so far.

“Everyone brought upgrades here and we’re still much faster,” Rosberg said. As Rosberg milked the applause, Hamilton walked up to him, patted him on the back and then shook his hand firmly.

A crowd of 86,700 watched the race, with a total of 189,000 spectators attending the Catalunya circuit 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 circuit is arguably the hardest to overtake on in F1 — and this showed as Rosberg finished 17.5 seconds clear of Hamilton and about 45.3 ahead of Vettel.

“I think I’m in the fight. Obviously, our opponent (Mercedes) is favourite for the whole year and was untouchable last year,” Vettel said. “I’m not happy with the gap to be honest, not happy at all. But I’m pretty confident we will get closer again pretty soon.”

Rosberg will look for another confidence-boosting win at the Monaco Grand Prix in two weeks’ time, which he won from pole last year to kick-start a title bid that lasted until the final race. AP

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.