Rosberg wins in Bahrainposted in F103 | 04 | 2016
NICO ROSBERG WON the Bahrain Grand Prix to extend his world championship leader over Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. The defending champ, who started from pole position, dropped to seventh after his car was speared by the Williams of Valtteri Bottas at Turn 1.
Hamilton's car suffered front wing damage, but the three-time world champ was able to recover to fightback and finish on the podium, limiting the points gap to Rosberg.
Bottas received a drive-through penalty for causing the collision with Hamilton, but fought back to finish ninth, one place behind his team-mate Felipe Massa. And the Finn argued he wasn't attempting to overtake Hamilton when the contact occurred.
"To be honest I wasn't trying to pass him," Bottas explained. "I was more focused on the cars behind and not to let anyone try to pass me from outside or inside. That's why I had to brake late.
"That has happened to me before when I've been too conservative and someone has passed me either on the inside or outside. It just caught me out then, going into the corner how tight they were keeping the line and how much they stopped their cars at the apex.
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"I don't think they expected me to be there. It's a shame. It cost me places in the race today and also a shame for Lewis."
Rosberg meanwhile, who made the better getaway at the start on his way to his fifth race win in a row, was never troubled throughout the race and eventually backed off to win by 10.2secs ahead of the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn's team-mate, four-times world champ Sebastian Vettel, failed to start after the engine of his car failed during the warm-up lap.
While Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo finished fourth, Frenchman Romain Grosjean continued Haas's brilliant start to the season with a superb fifth, opting to do three stints on the super-soft tyres.
Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen stopped late-on to fit a set of super-soft tyres and surged past Felipe Massa to take sixth, with Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat also passing the Brazilian on the penultimate lap to take seventh.
Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne, standing in for the injured Fernando Alonso at McLaren, scored a point on his F1 debut with 10th. His team-mate Jenson Button retired with an ERS problem, while Renault's Jolyon Palmer pulled into the pits at the end of the formation lap with a hydraulics issue.
DRIVER QUOTES:
NICO ROSBERG, MERCEDES:
It's been an awesome weekend. The key was really the start. I got a great getaway and from then on I was trying to control the pace. Very, very happy with today; absolutely awesome to get another win.
We've been working a lot on the starts. I'm pleased that it worked out so well, it was a really good getaway on the dirty side of the grid and that really made my race in the end. And from then on the car was feeling great and just controlling the pace and playing it safe. That's what we were trying to do. Also, in case the Safety Car comes and things like that. So we really went for the safest strategy, not the fastest strategy. Just to cover all eventualities.
KIMI RAIKKONEN, FERRARI:
I made a bad start and after a few laps we were one straight behind Nico, so it's pretty difficult to recover from there, but we did what we could and we had pretty good speed. Not enough to win, but we'll take second today and try to improve from there.
I don't think there are any special things we do here. There's maybe some circuits that we seem to have all the time bad luck. But I'll take it, but still we know... it was unfortunate for the team that the other car had an issue. We have some work to be done.
Obviously this is the end result and we had pretty okay speed in the race. Obviously bad start, I don't know exactly what happened, if I had some issue or did some mistake.
I just got wheelspin in the end. Obviously got surprised, managed to hold quite a good position after such a bad start, so it was a nice thing in the first two corners, didn't lose too much. Then managed to pass cars, so that was a key point, but once I was second place I was already one full straight behind Nico so, obviously not an awful lot to do after that - but we managed to catch up little-by-little and I think we did the maximum that we could after that start.
Not ideal for the team. We had some issue with the other car before the race even started, so yeah, we have quite a bit of work to be done - but the speed is more or less there and we just need to fix certain things.
LEWIS HAMILTON, MERCEDES:
I think two separate incidents, but both equally as painful, perhaps this one today more painful. Nonetheless, we still managed to get back up there and at least get some points. So again, damage limitation. Congratulations to Nico, kind of an easy race for him I assume, but I'm glad that it wasn't more points and obviously I could have not finished the race so...
The team was hoping that was potentially a safety car or something. I had so much damage on the car that I couldn't keep up with Kimi. I was fighting but the rear end was nowhere. I did what I could with it and at the end I was just keeping the tyres in case I get an opportunity with the safety car, but it didn't come.
Obviously I just lost a lot of performance with the car and I'm not quite sure what happened at Turn One: whoever was on the inside was in my blindspot so I didn't see them. It was a racing incident: those kind of things happen. After that just trying to manage the tyres, obviously with a lot less rear end and trying to get as many points as possible. I did the best I could with it.
F1 — Bahrain Grand Prix (Result):
1. Nico Rosberg GER Mercedes-Mercedes 57 laps 1h 33m 34.696s
2. Kimi Raikkonen FIN Ferrari-Ferrari +10.2s
3. Lewis Hamilton GBR Mercedes-Mercedes +30.1s
4. Daniel Ricciardo AUS Red Bull-TAG Heuer +1m 02.4s
5. Romain Grosjean FRA Haas-Ferrari +1m 18.2s
6. Max Verstappen NED Toro Rosso-Ferrari +1m 20.9s
7. Daniil Kvyat RUS Red Bull-TAG Heuer +1 lap
8. Felipe Massa BRZ Williams-Mercedes +1 lap
9. Valtteri Bottas FIN Williams-Mercedes +1 lap
10. Stoffel Vandoorne BEL McLaren-Honda +1 lap
11. Kevin Magnussen DEN Renault-Renault +1 lap
12. Marcus Ericsson SWE Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
13. Pascal Wehrlein GER MRT-Mercedes +1 lap1
14. Felipe Nasr BRZ Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
15. Nico Hulkenberg GER Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
16. Sergio Perez MEX Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
17. Rio Haryanto INA MRT-Mercedes +1 lap
Not Classified
Rtd Carlos Sainz Jr ESP Toro Rosso-Ferrari 29 laps completed
Rtd. Esteban Gutierrez MEX Haas-Ferrari 10 laps completed
Rtd Jenson Button GBR McLaren-Honda 7 laps completed
Dns Jolyon Palmer GBR Renault-Renault 0 laps completed
Dns Sebastian Vettel GER Ferrari-Ferrari 0 laps completed
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Jim McGill