Nico Rosberg has finally got the better of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton this season, winning the Spanish Grand Prix from pole position yesterday to gain ground on the championship leader.
Hamilton finished in second place and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was third.
The morale-boosting win was Rosberg’s ninth and his first since the Brazilian Grand Prix — the penultimate race of the last season — which the German also won from pole position.
Hamilton has won three of five races this season, with Vettel the only other driver to beat him when the German won the Malaysian Grand Prix in March.
McLaren’s misery continued as two-time champion Fernando Alonso retired just short of halfway with faulty brakes — on the same track where he last won a race two years ago with Ferrari.
Hamilton has finished in the top two for 12 straight races since retiring at the Belgium Grand Prix in August last year. He leads Rosberg by 20 points and dominant Mercedes have finished one-two in three of five races so far.
As Rosberg milked the applause, Hamilton walked up to him, patted him on the back and then shook his hand firmly. A gleeful Rosberg than jumped up and down with his Mercedes crew.
A crowd of 86,700 watched the race, with a total of 189,000 spectators attending the Catalunya circuit over the weekend — although there was no Spanish driver in genuine contention and little suspense, either.
With 19 of the past 25 winners in Spain starting from pole position, the sinewy circuit is arguably the hardest to overtake on in Formula 1 and it showed as Rosberg finished 17.5 seconds clear of Hamilton and 45.3 seconds ahead of Vettel.
Alonso retired on the 28th lap because of brake problems after overshooting his stop as he entered the pits, sending a front jack flying, which thankfully did not hit the mechanic nearby.
With about eight laps to go, Mercedes were trying to get Hamilton to consolidate his position, knowing Rosberg was too far ahead.
Hamilton asked “is it impossible?” to catch Rosberg, to which his engineer replied: “Yes, he is going to respond if we pick the pace up. It would be impossible.”
Rosberg will look for another confidence-boosting win at the Monaco Grand Prix in two weeks’ time, which he won from pole last year to kick-start a title bid that lasted until the final race.
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