He said he was well aware that Kimi Raikkonen who split the two silver arrows cars and finished second behind him for Ferrari had demonstrated threatening speed on a day when his team-mate Sebastian Vettel had failed to start a race for the first time following an engine failure.
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“Yeah, awesome guys!” Rosberg said in the post race interview. “The key, for me, was the start…”
Williams’ Valtteri Bottas has crashed into Lewis Hamilton at the first corner in the early start of the Bahrain race, damaging Hamilton F1 auto and making the race tough for the former world champion.
“I might… (get one made)”, he said, before the mental warning lights came on.
“I feel really positive generally, even though we have lost the first two races”, Hamilton, 31, added.
“I made a bad start”, Kimi continued, “and then after a few laps we were one straight behind Nico, so it was pretty hard to recover from there”.
The 30-year-old German leads the embryonic drivers championship by 17 points ahead of his Mercedes team-mate, defending three-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
It was his second consecutive victory of the season, giving him the maximum amount of points after two rounds, and his fifth win in a row after his triumphs late past year.
The crash didn’t only hinder Hamilton’s chances however as Bottas’ driving exuberance landing him with a drive-through penalty leaving his race in damage control and only just managing to hold onto a ninth place finish.
“It’s awesome but I’m not thinking about it – I’m just taking it race by race”. “I was more focused on the cars behind and not to let anyone try to pass me from outside or inside”.
Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen of Finland leads Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain during the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix, at the Formula One Bahrain International Circuit, in Sakhir, Bahrain, Sunday, April 3, 2016. “But I told them there’s a long way to go”.
“(Mercedes motorsport director) Toto (Wolff) gave me my 2013 Monaco winner’s trophy because it was very special for me and that’s it. I don’t have any others, now I do.
The new V6 turbo hybrid engines haven’t gone down particularly well with most fans but Mercedes showed just what they’re capable of, with Hamilton’s 1:29.493 faster than the previous record from 2005 set with the mighty V10 engines. Team-mate Jenson Button retired early in the race.
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Max Verstappen (Toro Rosso), Daniil Kvyat (Red Bull), Felipe Massa, Valtteri Bottas (Williams) and Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren) rounded up the top ten. So far the impressive pace of the Italian outfit has caused some highly entertaining racing, but questions are beginning to be asked about the reliability of the Ferrari outfit and whether they actually have the reliability to pose a serious threat to Mercedes’ Constructor’s Championship campaign.
