Finnish Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen finished third, ahead of his German team mate Sebastian Vettel, as the event came to a roaring halt.
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Rosberg incidentally is only the second driver to win from pole in Abu Dhabi, the 30-year-old having recorded his sixth successive P1 start on Saturday.
However, Rosberg was too quick, depriving Hamilton from a ideal finish.
Wolff nonetheless confirmed that Mercedes would spend the opening weeks of the winter looking into Hamilton’s concerns over the W06’s set-up in a bid to establish why he struggled more in the closing races. I’m excited about how the end of the season went.
Hamilton won his third world title with three races to spare in last month’s United States Grand Prix, but has subsequently finished second to Nico Rosberg at the ensuing rounds in Mexico, Brazil and the season-ending race in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
Under the desert floodlights Rosberg had enough up his sleeve to hold off Hamilton in the second round of pit stops to end the season in style and give him plenty of confidence for 2016.
Rosberg then controlled it throughout, and while Hamilton pushed hard to make an offset strategy work – making his second stop late, he was unable to mount a challenge, eventually finishing 8.2 seconds adrift at the chequered flag.
“But I think we had a reasonably good speed, they didn’t really pull away a lot from us”. Before he came in, Hamilton had been losing up to 1.5 seconds per lap. “I’ll give everything to win again next year and try to be world champion”, he said.
Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton explains his race strategy during the Abu Dhabi GP. The Finn ended the season in fourth place in the championship behind Hamilton, Rosberg and Vettel.
“I am sure it’s going to be another great season next year, but of course we are aware of the threat from the red guys”. Thanks so much to my team for this wonderful Silver Arrow – everyone at the factories and the track has done such an incredible job all year.
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“In hindsight once Nico pitted I would probably have backed off a little bit and I would have made those tyres go a lot longer”, Hamilton, who flirted with the idea of stopping just once, said. “The tires were still fine at the end, so I honestly felt that I could potentially have taken them to the end”. Daniel Ricciardo was sixth for Red Bull ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in the second Force India Felipe Massa of Williams Romain Grosjean who marked his last race for Lotus with a surge to ninth and Daniil Kvyat in the second Red Bull. The race was preceded by an announcement from the stewards that cleared Ferrari and the American Haas team which is set to join the grid next year of any wrong-doing in their joint use of the Ferrari wind-tunnel to prepare cars. “We don’t want to let them get too close”.
