The incident resulted in a battle for victory between Red Bull and Ferrari, with Max Verstappen going on to become the youngest driver in F1 history to win a race just 10 days after his promotion from Toro Rosso to the senior team.
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Max won today in his first race with the team.
Verstappen was lost for words for his record-breaking maiden victory.
“It feels unbelievable”, he said.
“It’s a pity we weren’t good enough in certain parts of the track to give him the possibility of winning the race”. I have to say “thank you” to the team to give me such a great vehicle to win straight away in the first race.
Verstappen, 18, drove like a veteran in fending off a late challenge by Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who not long ago raced against Verstappen’s father, former Benetton and Arrows driver Jos Verstappen.
Pole-sitter Hamilton lost control of his vehicle and crashed into Rosberg at turn three, taking both Mercedes drivers out of the race in one swoop.
Stewards summoned both drivers after the first lap accident between the sport’s dominant pairing and chose to take no further action.
But Hamilton is adamant he will not be taking it easy with his team-mate in the future, even though Mercedes boss Niki Lauda blamed him for the incident and accused him of being too aggressive.
Triple world champion Hamilton had started on pole position, with Rosberg alongside, but their race imploded after three corners.
Both men were unhurt and climbed from their cars to learn quickly that the stewards would investigate the accident after the race. I suspect he’s going to get stronger when he gets more experienced, more familiar in the vehicle. Hamilton ended up on the grass and spun into his team-mate eliminating both cars. “I’m standing here now with zero points and I was in the gravel trap”, he added.
Raikkonen, whose second place finish lifted him to second behind Rosberg in the drivers’ championship, said: “I am happy for Max, but disappointed for myself. He was doing a very good job already previous year and today in a better vehicle he was able to win”.
‘It is very tough because it was my race to win.
Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes motorsport, didn’t want to singularly blame one of the drivers.
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“We felt that once Sebastian had passed Carlos Sainz and was running in clean air, you could see that his pace was strong, stronger than ours and the obvious way that they were going to navigate themselves past us was through a three stop”, Horner said.
