Nico Rosberg brought the curtain down on the 2015 F1 season with a victory in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
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Nico Rosberg completed a hat trick of victories to end the Formula One season when he won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, while his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton was left frustrated by a tire strategy which he believed cost him a shot at winning.
Rosberg held the lead from the start after his sixth straight pole qualification and only briefly came under pressure from Hamilton towards the end of the 55-lap night race at the Yas Marina circuit. In the end, however, he had to settle for a distant second place in a race dominated by Rosberg from pole position.
“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. “I’m really excited about how the season went”. I am so happy that I found some performance at the end of the season. I think we have to find out. Valterri Bottas was going well with his Williams, but was charged with a five second penalty, when his team made an unsafe release of his auto, shaving the back end of McLaren’s Jenson Button and ripping off half of the Finn’s front wing. I agree, the drivers are very much part of the package to function and Lewis mentioned a couple of days ago he didn’t feel the auto was as good as it was before and if he says that it is something we need to consider and see whether we have data support for that or not.
Currently, Nico Rosberg is stands at the second rank in F1 World Ranking (for 2015).
“Let’s leave that”, he said. He then pitted on the next lap.
“Firstly, it has been an wonderful year”. We gave it a try and did the best job we could with it.
“They’ve surpassed expectations throughout the year”.
“In hindsight, once Nico had pitted I would have backed off a bit and made those tyres go a lot longer”, Hamilton said.
“It was worth the consideration to go a little longer and see how it panned out”, said Wolff.
Finnish Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen finished in third place in Abu Dhabi, while Vettel came in fourth.
“But it’s not been an ideal year”. The speed has been there but there have been some mistakes.
Or are the wins here and in Mexico and Brazil simply consolations and Hamilton will reassert the superiority that saw him triumph in 10 of the first 16 races next season?
“We’re aware of the threat next season from the red guys [Ferrari], so we’ll give it everything over the winter and I’ll try to keep the current form going next year”. His race ended at the first corner after he was hit by McLaren’s Fernando Alonso, who received a drive-through penalty.
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After a frantic opening lap, Rosberg led by 1.4 seconds and extended that steadily before making his first stop after 11 laps.
