Nico Rosberg turned his pole position in to another win in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina, the final race of the 2015 F1 season. Eventually, he finished over 8 seconds behind the German.
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It is Rosberg’s misfortune that his excellent recent surge will be tainted by the suspicion that the champion, however subconsciously, has lost some intensity, though it hardly showed when he was involved in another strategy-questioning conversation with his team in the latter stages of this 55-lap race.
Over the course of the second stint, Hamilton steadily reduced to the deficit, before his team-mate pitted on lap 31.
“If Mercedes retain the leadership that you nearly expect from Mercedes, I’m afraid you could be finding the same thing, but don’t count out Rosberg”, Stewart is quoted as saying by the Press Association when asked if Hamilton could win a fourth title next year.
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
This was Rosberg’s 14th career victory and Mercedes’ 12th one-two of the season, a Formula One record.
When the lights went out, Rosberg made a flawless start while Hamilton struggled to stay with him and had to engage his best defensive driving to retain second place. Sebastian Vettel overtook just before the pit-stop round, but Verstappen made the place back in the second stint when he was waved past Sainz. It’s great to end the season like this.
Not even the mighty Fernando Alonso managed that in his pomp when they were paired at McLaren.
“We took some learning on board off that weekend and whether the auto has come more towards Nico and gone away from Lewis, it could be a factor but I wouldn’t want to reduce it to one factor, there could be many factors playing a role”.
“Or has Lewis taken it more easy unconsciously – for sure not consciously?”
The German must either rise to the challenge and follow in the footsteps of father Keke, Finland’s 1982 world champion, or be written off as a number two.
The story of Sunday’s race in a front of a sell-out crowd of 60,000, was similar to the past two races that Rosberg had won. This kind of season, they need to make more sense about what they are doing because I don’t see this in WEC, MotoGP and other categories that are much more fun than us.
Hamilton finished on 381 points, with Rosberg on 322.
Mexican Sergio Perez for Force India was fifth ahead of the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, with Nico Hulkenberg, Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean and Daniil Kvyat completing the top ten in the points scoring positions.
“Obviously I would have loved to get on the podium again, but I think today’s result was the best possible one for us as a team”, Vettel said.
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Last time out in Brazil, a frustrated Hamilton bemoaned a “boring” race after following Rosberg home and being denied a different strategy to that of his team-mate from the Mercedes pit wall.
