After securing his seventh consecutive win with a straightforward victory in Russia, Rosberg has opened up a 43-point lead at the top of the world championship. “I had the pace but then I had a problem with the engine, so I had to back off”.
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The defending champion has a hectic personal schedule, often travelling to the United States between races and committing time to other passions such as music and fashion.
Maurizio Arrivabene has admitted his driver, Sebastian Vettel, went “ballistic” during Sunday’s race in which he was shunted out by Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat on the first lap.
At the Sochi circuit last weekend, Rosberg took pole position while Hamilton started from 10th place on the grid after another engine failure – caused by an overheating component in the car’s energy recovery system – curtailed his qualifying session early on Saturday.
Kvyat received a 10-second penalty for the action and eventually finished 15th in his home race.
In one of the more freaky stories of the day, Mercedes have apparently been so flooded with messages from angry fans that they felt the need to justify themselves to the Formula One world.
Already up to fifth after a first lap in which Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel crashed out, Hamilton passed both Williams cars and the other Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen to take and hold second.
“Barcelona is next, I am well aware Lewis will bounce back when he has a clean weekend and it will be the usual tough battle against him, nothing has changed there. But there are still 17 races to go and still 17 races I can give him hell”. The jet arrived in Sochi at 2am where Hamilton’s mechanics worked through the night to enable him to start from 10th.
Although he managed to recover to second, Hamilton’s charge was hampered when his W07 picked up a water leak in the second half of the race.
“I believe I had a chance to win. I don’t want the team to give up”.
“But we have a great team behind us and I’m fully confident that we will sort this out”.
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“Of course we don’t do it deliberately and the team has been abused in some of the social media and conspiracy theories are out there”, Wolff said. “We did a fantastic job of getting the vehicle where it needed to be this weekend and we were very strong with where we had the set-up, very happy but it was just another race where I couldn’t fully exploit that so I come away from here”.
