In other news out of the Italian Grand Prix, McLaren confirmed that reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne will take over from Jenson Button.
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This means that the next race in Singapore could possibly see Rosberg overtake Hamilton in the championship, if the Brit doesn’t gain some momentum and win his third race in the Singapore Grand Prix. Rosberg took full advantage again, and went on to win the race, with Hamilton having to scramble for second.
Daniel Ricciardo finished fifth for Red Bull with Valtteri Bottas sixth.
Hamilton was philosophical about the way the race panned out and admitted he could do little to recover from his slow start.
“He did a great job and I just had to get back up to second”. You’ve seen it with Nico and you’ve seen it with me, quite a few times, so we will continue to work on it.
He continued: “I don’t know what happened”. Outside the Mercedes drivers, only Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has been able to claim victory in a race.
Rosberg winning by 15 seconds over Hamilton, with Vettel 20 seconds off the pace, just ahead of Raikkonen. Hamilton pitted a lap later, also for mediums, and dropped back to fourth behind the Ferraris.
Initially Hamilton radioed Mercedes to say the poor launch was his own error, but after the race he suggested that might not have been the case. When he finally reemerged in second place, Hamilton was almost 15 seconds adrift of Rosberg-a gap that proved impossible to make up.
The German celebrates his seventh victory of the season by doing some crowd surfing, as he is hoisted up in jubilation.
He knows he has a fight on his hands for the remaining seven races.
The series leader and defending three-time world champion, who plummeted from pole position to sixth said: “Obviously, it was lost at the start”.
“I’m looking forward to Singapore, which was our weakest race previous year. Hopefully we’ve learnt lessons from 2015 and we’ll come back even stronger!”
Making a comeback after the massive crash last weekend, Kevin Magnussen finished 17th, behind Caros Sainz Jr. and Marcus Ericsson.
“He judged it to perfection and limited the damage in terms of the points situation”.
“We have a relatively inconsistent clutch”.
“We have made improvements, so you’ve seen better starts, but we are still caught out by the random variation that we have from one start to another”.
He added: “Of course, we never stop improving and learning”.
Rosberg has had his share of problems as well, particularly at his home race in Hockenheim.
“I’m feeling great, the race is on with Lewis”. Lewis Hamilton took the pole and was looking to win at Monza for the third straight year.
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“He completed a ideal recovery drive to get back to second though and, with his fighting spirit, he didn’t give up on the win until it was clearly impossible”. Although he eventually battled back to finish second, the poor start cost him what had looked like a good shot at victory.
