Nico Rosberg made it back-to-back race wins over Lewis Hamilton in the Brazilian Grand Prix to secure second place in the Drivers’ Championship.
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Starting from pole – his fifth in a row – he controlled the race throughout and finished 7.70sec ahead of Hamilton.
Having kept Hamilton at bay at the first turn Rosberg remained a little over a second ahead through the first stint, before they both made their first stops.
“It was a great weekend for me here, but of course everything is relative because of what happened in Paris”, the German said.
“I had the fastest lap, so I obviously had the pace today, so it would be great to sometimes be able to do something different, rather than just say you’re lap 15 and you’re lap 16 and then lap 41 and lap 42, or whatever it was, to actually have a few options”.
“I am pleased with that”. “We saw Lewis dropping off a lot with degradation and that confirmed it was important to take care of the tyres”, he said. I just wanted to see if there were any other options. He wasn’t going to go past me. “But I will try and win the next race in Abu Dhabi”.
“I had good pace, but you can not overtake here”, said Hamilton.
But he took umbrage with Hamilton saying, both on the pit radio during the race and then during his podium interview post-race, that he had been quicker and had been denied the chance to challenge for victory by Mercedes’ refusal to allow him to alter his strategy. He said: “I just couldn’t get close enough to race”.
“Nico drove a fantastic race”.
Triple Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton hinted on Sunday that a change of tyre pressures may have contributed to the end of his qualifying dominance and team mate Nico Rosberg’s late-season resurgence. The two drivers locked up the second row of the grid and Sebastian Vettel took out third place again. We had enough speed to keep the fourth position easily, but I had hoped to have a better feeling with the vehicle. However, his results were excluded after it was discovered by the stewards that the local hero’s right rear tire exceeded the permitted temperature limit at the start of the race. My last stint was probably the best but obviously there was not much I could do at that point, as we were already too far away from the guys in front.
“It felt like a good race, but it wasn’t very exciting. We were a bit in no-man’s land and didn’t have anyone to fight with, but hopefully the next race we can be a bit closer”.
Raikkonen finished where he started and was the last vehicle on the lead lap, more than 30 seconds behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who switched from a two-stop to a three-stop strategy mid-race. After him, there was a good battle between Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and Red Bull Racing’s Daniil Kvyat for sixth, which in the end the German emerged victorious. Williams has since served notice of an appeal.
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Grosjean would finish ninth with Verstappen continuing his impressive streak of scoring points by passing Pastor Maldonado in the closing stages to clinch 10th.
