All three benefited from a first lap crash between reigning World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, and his Mercedes teammate, Championship leader, Nico Rosberg.
Advertisement
Like Hamilton, Rosberg did not want to talk about where the blame lay for the clash: “I don’t want to comment on such things because if I answer that, then it is not good”.
That put him P2 on the timesheet, 0.117s slower than Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel. A left-rear puncture then forced him to make a pit-stop on the penultimate lap.
Verstappen took advantage of the early crash involving the favorites and held on for the victory only a few days after moving up from feeder team Toro Rosso in a controversial driver switch with Daniil Kvyat.
Eighteen-year-old Verstappen showed maturity beyond his tender years on his Red Bull debut to fend off the challenge from Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. An emotional Verstappen replied: “Thank you very much, Christian”. The Mercedes PR machine went into meltdown that day – Hamilton informed anyone who would listen that Rosberg had deliberately crashed into him – but on Sunday, their response was rather more measured.
Indeed the picture of the two Mercedes cars sitting in the gravel trap at turn four is set to be one of the defining images of this season. The world champion went into a spin and clipped Rosberg’s vehicle as he did so, putting both cars out of the race.
The collision on Sunday has been dismissed as a racing incident by the stewards and Mercedes appear ready to draw a line under the incident, despite the fact it resulted in a first double-DNF for the team since 2011.
Germany’s Nico Rosberg said after the race that he felt extremely “gutted” after colliding with his team-mate Lewis Hamilton at the Spanish Grand Prix.
“By continuing with the approach of letting them race it was clear that eventually this could happen”.
“You can’t give one driver exclusively the blame”, Wolff told Germany’s Sky television after a meeting with Hamilton and Rosberg following the crash.
Hamilton: “It wasn’t a case of the door was closed and I chose to go across the grass”. “He’s a driver that deserves it and at least we have provided some narrative for the race weekend – we lost both Mercedes on lap one, it was an exciting race and a new star was born. Both of them were upset about the situation and they know what effort went into building the vehicle and there was not any finger pointing”.
Advertisement
The stewards had explained that Hamilton “had a portion of his front wing inside Rosberg’s auto fractions of a second prior to having to leave the track to avoid a collision…Rosberg had the right to make the manoeuvre that he did and Hamilton’s attempt to overtake was reasonable”.
