But a poor opening to the race, after similar cost the world champion probable victories at the opening two rounds in Australia and Bahrain, was to prove damaging yesterday.
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With the win, Rosberg’s second in a row, he moves within 2 points of Hamilton in the drivers’ standings. For the first time in 7 years the Monza race was not won by a pole-sitter.
As Rosberg streaked away into a race of his own at the front, Hamilton started his recovery, passing Ricciardo at the second chicane on lap two and Bottas into Turn One on lap 11 before the Ferraris pitted out of his way on their two-stop strategy.
Nico Rosberg is a happy man after cutting Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton’s Formula One championship lead down to two points. We have made improvements and have made more consistent starts but we are still caught out by the random variation that we have from one weekend to another.
“We knew Ferrari had the edge on us so fifth was our objective and we got it….” You’ve seen it with Nico in Hockenheim.
“I can assure you on Tuesday it is the only thing I am going to work on because everything else we are doing really well”, he said. But it still wasn’t enough to win the race. “I don’t know if it’s great for the fans that there wasn’t more of us racing”. Rosberg led from the start itself even though Hamilton was on pole.
Sure, the Silver Arrows have still won 13 of 14 races this year, but at least you can’t count on them to make a ideal start and ride off into the sunset.
Wolff said he had no interest in getting to the bottom of who has been at fault for the problems at starts this year.
Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport Toto Wolff said the team will investigate the reason behind the poor start.
“I knew my engineers would be anxious and nervous of how the start went, so that’s why I tried to put their minds at ease”, Hamilton said.
While Hamilton’s team publicly insisted his sluggish getaway was a combination of auto and driver, the Briton appeared more at fault. “We continue to have an inconsistency with our clutch”. Once we have seen the data we will address it internally and what needs to be done in order for that to be avoided.
“So it s not a game of blaming”. The joys of what you can achieve when there are colleagues working together! “In this case, the team has lost”.
“It means so much to me to win here at Monza.” said Rosberg “The crowd were unbelievable over the entire weekend and especially during the podium ceremony”. “So it was all there”.
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‘A driver in the heat of the moment, after losing a race to a team-mate, will say things. “I’m feeling great. The race is on with Lewis of course, it’s always going to be a great battle and I look forward to what’s to come”, he was quoted as saying by the official website of F1.
