Lewis Hamilton achieved his fourth successive victory in Formula 1 after holding off a late challenge from Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg in the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Silver Arrows were in a class of their own, with more than a second per lap over their rivals.
Hamilton nailed the start from pole position and held a lead through the early stages.
Rosberg attempted an alternative strategy compared to Hamilton, by running three laps longer in the first stint and switching to Pirelli’s hard tyre rather than taking another set of the mediums on which they both started.
The race appeared to hinge on whether Rosberg could stay within a couple of seconds of Hamilton through his stint on the slower tyre, in order to jump him with an earlier final pit-stop.
But Hamilton stayed out of reach and was four seconds up when Mercedes decided to pit him for the final time on lap 43 of 66.
That gave him track position for the final stint, but the penalty of 23 laps on the slower tyre, while Rosberg faced the prospect of trying to catch and pass his team-mate on-track with his final set of the quicker tyres.
Rosberg was able to edge closer to the leader in the final laps, but fell short by just 0.6 seconds. This result means Hamilton is now the new championship leader. The first time since he won the Canadian Grand Prix of 2012.
Behind the dominant Mercedes cars, Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo claimed his maiden podium finish in Formula 1 by taking third.
The Williams of Valtteri Bottas held that position initially, after an excellent start from fourth on the grid, but was jumped at the first round of pitstops and was powerless to prevent the Red Bull of reigning champion Sebastian Vettel jumping him for fourth at Turn 10 in the closing stages.
The four-time world champion drove a brilliant race from P15 on the grid to finish only one place behind his team-mate.
Red Bull pitted Vettel early to get him out of sequence with the rest, and the German made full use of an aggressive three-stop strategy to climb the order, producing some bolshy overtaking moves when required.
Home crowd favourite Fernando Alonso used a similar three-stop strategy to beat Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen to sixth position.
Raikkonen delivered his strongest performance of the season relative to his team-mate, but was powerless to prevent Alonso passing on fresher tyres in the late stages of the race, despite making it as difficult as he reasonably could.
Romain Grosjean delivered the first points of the season to the Lotus team by bringing the twin-tusk E22 home in eighth position.
The Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg claimed the final points on offer by jumping the slow McLaren of Jenson Button at the start and rounding out the top ten.
A three-stop strategy did work out for Felipe Massa, who started ninth but trailed home in P13 behind the McLaren pairing of Button and Kevin Magnussen.
So a fantastic result for Mercedes. Five out of five for the Brackley-based team, with Lewis Hamilton achieving his fourth race win in a row. Can the Silver Arrows be beaten? It’s going to be a challenge for the others to catch up.
Spanish Grand Prix race results, after 66 laps:
1. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1h41m05.155s
2. Nico Rosberg Mercedes +0.636s
3. Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault +49.014s
4. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault +1m16.702s
5. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes +1m19.293s
6. Fernando Alonso Ferrari +1m27.743s
7. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari +1 lap
8. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault +1 lap
9. Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
10. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
11. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes +1 lap
12. Kevin Magnussen McLaren-Mercedes +1 lap
13. Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes +1 lap
14. Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Renault +1 lap
15. Pastor Maldonado Lotus-Renault +1 lap
16. Esteban Gutierrez Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
17. Adrian Sutil Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
18. Jules Bianchi Marussia-Ferrari +2 laps
19. Max Chilton Marussia-Ferrari +2 laps
20. Marcus Ericsson Caterham-Renault +2 laps
Retirements:
Kamui Kobayashi Caterham-Renault 34 laps
Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Renault 24 laps
Drivers’ championship:
1. Lewis Hamilton 10
2. Nico Rosberg 97
3. Fernando Alonso 49
4. Sebastian Vettel 45
5. Daniel Ricciardo 39
6. Nico Hulkenberg 37
7. Valtteri Bottas 34
8. Jenson Button 23
9. Kevin Magnussen 20
10. Sergio Perez 20
11. Kimi Raikkonen 17
12. Felipe Massa 12
13. Romain Grosjean 4
14. Jean-Eric Vergne 4
15. Daniil Kvyat 4
Constructors’ championship:
1. Mercedes 197
2. Red Bull-Renault 84
3. Ferrari 66
4. Force India-Mercedes 57
5. Williams-Mercedes 46
6. McLaren-Mercedes 43
7. Toro Rosso-Renault 8
8. Lotus-Renault 4
9. Sauber-Ferrari 0
10. Marussia-Ferrari 0
11. Caterham-Renault 0
Next race: Monaco Grand Prix, Monte Carlo. May 22-25.
After achieving his fourth successive victory, Lewis Hamilton admitted he was ‘struggling’ during the Spanish Grand Prix. Autosport.com has the full story.
Lewis Hamilton feels he is “struggling” at present despite taking over the Formula 1 world championship lead in Spain with a four consecutive grand prix victory.
The Mercedes driver finished just 0.6 seconds ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg at Barcelona.
“Nico did a fantastic job today, he was very quick,” said Hamilton.
“I struggled to keep him behind and was grateful I was able to.
“I think I have a bit of work to do over the next few weeks, we struggled last year in Monaco and struggled at this race.
“I have to find out where I am losing the time and apply it the next race.
“By no means is it easy for me, I still have a massive challenge from Nico.
“But I could never imagine these four race wins… It is still so close, there is a long, long way to go and I have a bit more time to find in this car.”
Despite admitting that Rosberg had been unnervingly close to him, Hamilton said he was enjoying he battle a lot – and was thrilled to have won the Spanish Grand Prix for the first time in his career.
“It’s a huge boost for me and the team, and it’s because of all the hard work we have done,” said Hamilton.
“I am enjoying every step of the way.”
As for Nico Rosberg, the Mercedes driver missed out on passing his team-mate for the win and admitted he needed one more lap. Autosport.com has the news story.
Nico Rosberg believes he needed just one more lap to overtake Mercedes Formula 1 team-mate Lewis Hamilton for Spanish Grand Prix victory.
Hamilton assumed the 2014 F1 world championship lead by beating Rosberg at Barcelona.
But it was a close-run thing, as Rosberg used an alternate tyre strategy to close in on Hamilton in the final laps, finishing just 0.6 seconds behind.
Asked how many more laps he felt he needed to pull off an overtaking move, Rosberg replied: “I think one more to be honest. I could have given him a go.
“I wasn’t close enough but with one more lap I would have been.
“I’m a bit gutted.”
Rosberg feels he urgently needs to address his starts, having failed to jump his polesitting team-mate off the line.
“The start was unfortunately poor,” he said. “It is a bit of a weakness I have at the moment. Three bad starts in a row and that has cost me. It is not good and we need to work on that.”
He switched to hard tyres in his first pitstop while Hamilton stayed on mediums, meaning the opposite scenario applied in their final shootout for the win.
Rosberg was happy that his strategic switch had paid off, and just rued running out of time to try a proper passing move.
“The race pace was good, the best thing to do was switch strategies and it worked out perfectly,” said Rosberg.
“But this is a really difficult track to get close to the guy in front.
“I got close, and at Turn 10 on the last lap I could have gone for a kamikaze move, but it wouldn’t have worked so not much point.
“Lewis did a great job all weekend and was a little bit ahead, but there are a lot of positives to take out of it.
“I am fully motivated to take that bit extra and edge him out next time and it is doable.”
Despite starting the Spanish Grand Prix in P15, the four-time world champion drove a brilliant race to finish in fourth place. Sebastian Vettel mentioned post-race that he really enjoyed the challenge. Autosport.com has the story.
Sebastian Vettel says he enjoyed charging through the field as he went from 15th on the grid to fourth by the end of the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver endured a troubled weekend at Barcelona, starting with an electrical problem that left him sidelined for much of Friday.
His qualifying session was then cut short by a gearbox issue, which in turn led to a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change.
But despite the lowly starting position, Vettel was able to charge through the field, a well-executed three-stop strategy and some aggressive racing helping him to fourth place.
“It was definitely more fun than in the last race when we had to let people by,” he said.
“We were quite happy with the car in the race. We had to be patient. It’s very tricky when you sit in a train – the car slides, the car in front of you slides, and you lose grip.
“Once the traffic was clear, we were able to use the pace. We had a good strategy and had two sets of softer tyres at the end and we could get past some people.
“I enjoyed it a lot and I think fourth is the best we could get today.”
Vettel added that while Mercedes is currently out of reach, he had not given up on bridging the gap this season.
“[Mercedes] have a very good package with the engine, car and two very good drivers. All in all that makes them so strong and difficult to beat,” he said.
“But it would be quite sad to go into the weekend and just aim for third. I think this weekend from the team point of view was good with third and fourth, but at the next race we’ll attack again.”
Daniel Ricciardo agrees that Red Bull has some work to do if it is to take the fight to Mercedes.
Ricciardo finished third in Spain – his first official podium finish after losing second in Australia to a post-race exclusion – although the young Australian was a full 49s behind race winner Lewis Hamilton.
“Unfortunately we are not going to catch Mercedes, at least this weekend, so a lonely third was not a bad result,” Ricciardo said.
“Mercedes are the top dogs at the moment but we seem to be setting ourselves nicely in that next stop, so we now need to creep our way closer.”
Kimi Raikkonen says he wanted to clarify the thinking behind Ferrari’s strategy after losing out to team-mate Fernando Alonso in the Spanish Grand Prix.
Alonso overtook Raikkonen for sixth place in the closing stages, having caught the Finn on fresher tyres by virtue of stopping three times compared to his team-mate’s two pitstops.
Earlier in the race Alonso had been able to make the first pitstop of the pair despite running behind Raikkonen on the road. Teams often give pitstop choice priority to the driver who is ahead on track.
On team radio messages from the slowing-down lap broadcast to television audiences, Raikkonen asked “who made these calls?” as he felt he was getting “second choice”.
Asked by AUTOSPORT to explain the messages and whether he felt Alonso was getting priority, Raikkonen replied: “I just wanted to clear up some things.”
The Finn played down the significance of the differing strategy choices and being beaten to sixth.
“Obviously there was not much between it,” Raikkonen said. “We still finished far away from the others. It did not make much difference to the result.”
Alonso insisted that his strategic priority had been to beat Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull, not to try to win an intra-team war. Vettel managed to jump Alonso at the final stops and pulled away to take fourth.
“I don’t know how the tyres were for Kimi, but for me after two or three laps I had a very difficult rear end so was asking when we could stop,” said Alonso.
“When it was time, we stopped. Then I had traffic and because of that I didn’t pass Kimi.
“In the second stint I finished the tyres again and asked when we could stop. They said we could keep going or do two stops, or we stop and do three.
“They said Vettel was on three so if we stopped now, we covered him. And I said ‘we do it’.
“I tried to protect the position from Vettel and it was not possible. The intention was just to keep Vettel behind once we’d changed strategy. We didn’t manage it and it was a shame.”
Although Raikkonen was closer to Alonso in Spain after being outperformed by some margin at the preceding race in China, the Finn said he was more concerned with Ferrari’s poor overall position.
“It’s just a different race. We’re trying many things and it was a bit better, but we are still sixth and seventh,” he said.
“We had some chances to fight but we are still far away from where we want to be. Overall we were the fourth-quickest team, so it’s disappointing.
“But there were some good points over the weekend compared to the last race.”
Source: Autosport.com
Despite scoring a points finish with eighth, it was discovered post-race that a sensor failure affected Romain Grosjean’s chance of finishing ahead of the Scuderia. Autosport.com has the details.
A sensor failure on his Renault Formula 1 power unit cost Romain Grosjean the chance to beat the Ferraris in the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Franco-Swiss driver started from a season’s best fifth on the grid and held station there ahead of the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso in Sunday’s race at the Circuit de Catalunya, despite locking his brakes heavily at Turn 1 after the start.
Grosjean eventually slumped to eighth as the sensor issue caused his Lotus E22 to lose power, but held on to score the Enstone team’s first points of the 2014 campaign.
“It was quite bad in the car,” Grosjean said, when asked by AUTOSPORT what had gone wrong.
“It was a sensor failure that brought other issues. I think we were running five or six cylinders depending on what it decided to do.
“We lost it around lap 12. It was creating some other problems losing the quick shift on the gears.
“It was a bit shaky in the car and not very powerful in a straight-line, but generally we can be proud of our weekend and it’s good to score the first points.”
Renault’s track support leader Simon Rebreyend said the French manufacturer would investigate the issue to prevent a recurrence.
“Unfortunately Romain was not able to hold off the Ferraris as a calibration issue caused a loss of power from the first part of the race,” he said.
“We need to look at what we can do to correct this in future races.”
Grosjean could not be sure if he would have beaten the Ferraris without the power unit issue, but reckoned he could at least have put up a decent fight despite feeling the track conditions did not play to the strengths of the twin-tusk Lotus.
“Of course it would have been nicer to keep the two Ferraris behind and it would have been much harder for them to overtake me [without the issue], but track conditions today were not playing into our hands,” he added.
“We suffered a little bit with the temperature being cooler and the track being a little bit green, but in general it’s all good and we all deserve a cold one!”
Williams driver Felipe Massa admitted that this race was a disaster. Autosport.com has the story.
Felipe Massa described his Spanish Grand Prix as a “disaster”, after failing to score points from a race in which his Williams Formula 1 team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished fifth.
Massa started ninth having made a mistake in qualifying, but reckoned his FW36 had the pace to fight for a top six finish.
However, he failed to make progress in the race and slumped to 13th, behind both Force Indias and both McLarens, while team-mate Bottas ran as high as third before losing fourth to Sebastian Vettel’s faster Red Bull late on.
“Today was a disaster,” said Massa, who experimented with a three-stop strategy but still could not make progress.
“It was a very difficult race. I was in the traffic most of the race and was struggling with tyre degradation.
“I was struggling with the grip overall – it was much worse today than yesterday, and compared to the long run on Friday.
“It was very difficult to work the tyres and the only difference is the [air] temperature went down [today].
“Maybe it was something that changed for Valtteri in one direction and me the other. I don’t know, but it’s something we need to analyse because I was very competitive during the whole weekend and then suddenly everything changed just for the race.
“I tried a different strategy to see if we could have been better but it was not.
“For sure I was behind other cars all the time and this used the tyres more, but even taking that conclusion the overall grip I had on the car was so bad.”
Nevertheless, Massa hailed the improvements made by Williams this weekend, despite his own problems.
“We’re going in a good direction,” he added.
“Today we passed McLaren in the championship thanks to the race of Valtteri, and were more competitive than Force India, which is just 11 points in front.
“Everything is open and we need to fight.”
Bottas hailed his own performance as one of the best of his career so far, after successfully using a two-stop strategy to finish fifth.
“We need to be happy,” he said.
“We scored 10 points again and we were the third quickest team here.
“In the end Vettel was on the fresher tyre and there was nothing to be done.
“You always want more, so we need to review to see if there’s anything we could have done better, but from my side the race was one of my best – a good start, zero mistakes and a clean race.”
After reaching a year without a win on Sunday, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso feared it could be some time before he stood on top of the Formula One podium again.
The Spaniard finished sixth in his home race at the Circuit de Catalunya, nearly a minute and a half behind Mercedes’ race winner Lewis Hamilton. His Finnish team mate, 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen, was lapped.
“Unfortunately we were not in a position to fight for more wins in these 12 months and we need to do better. It probably will not happen soon because we’ve been lapped today,” Alonso told reporters.
Since Alonso’s win in Spain last May, only three drivers have won races – Red Bull’s quadruple champion Sebastian Vettel, Hamilton and his Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg.
Mercedes have won all five races so far this year, ending Vettel’s run of nine in a row at the end of 2013, and look in championship form of their own thanks to the performance of their engine.
Alonso, who was championship runner-up in 2010, 2012 and 2013, is third overall in the drivers’ standings, 51 points behind Hamilton.
Ferrari are third in the constructors’ table with 66 points to Mercedes’ 197 and Red Bull’s 84.
“Maybe Mercedes is out of reach,” the Spaniard conceded. “We need to target second place in the championship if we can.”
Alonso finished the opening Australian Grand Prix in March 35 seconds behind Rosberg, the winner in Melbourne, and was the same gap behind Hamilton in Malaysia.
In Bahrain it was 32 seconds but in China, where he finished third, that had shrunk to a still hefty 23.
With all the top teams bringing upgrades to Barcelona, Alonso said the results showed Ferrari had made no gains on their rivals and needed to do more if they were to trouble Mercedes.
“I think we did the maximum today. Obviously we are not totally happy, finishing so far behind the leaders,” said the Spaniard.
“We need to work a little bit extra. It seems that we are more or less in the same position as the start (of the season); We bring new parts, they brought new parts and we are equal. So we need to do extra.”
Raikkonen finished seventh on Sunday, passed by Alonso in the closing stages and demanding an explanation for the decision to let Alonso pit ahead of him despite being behind on the track.
Alonso, who switched to a three stop strategy, said he had asked to come in because his tyres were suffering heavy degradation and fighting for sixth or seventh gave him little pleasure anyway.
“The intention was to keep Vettel behind. Between Kimi and me, whoever finished first was not the priority. It was to stop Vettel and we didn’t manage it,” he said.
Source: Reuters
Looks like Vettal ended up having a really good race. Its interesting between Ham and Nico. Makes it more exciting but Ham had to lay the law down onto Nico this weekend to let Nico know he is the number 2 driver.
Looking forward to Monaco, will be interesting, but I think predictable on which cars will be fighting 1 and 2.
Thanks for the comment Yas V. You’re right about Sebastian Vettel. After a nightmare start to the Spanish Grand Prix – loom problem in Friday’s practice, lack of speed in qualifying and a five-place grid penalty following a gearbox change before the race – it was a superb recovery from the defending world champion to finish in fourth position.
As for the battle between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, it’s really exciting to see the Mercedes pair fighting for wins without team orders affected the play.
Yes, Hamilton has the advantage after four victories in a row. It would have been a perfect five out of five for Lewis if his Silver Arrows didn’t suffered that lack of power in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
The same can be said to Daniel Ricciardo. He drove a brilliant race in Melbourne despite the pressure from the home crowd and the big expectations from the media. But sadly, his podium result was thrown out due to a fuel-flow issue.
At least he scored that first ‘proper’ podium result in the Spanish Grand Prix. Faster than Seb Vettel all weekend. The likeable Aussie deserves this.
Cannot wait for the Monaco Grand Prix. The most glamorous event in the Formula 1 calendar and it’s going to be fascinating who will have the upper hand between the Mercedes drivers. Both Lewis and Nico have won this famous race in the past. Let see who will triumph around the streets of Monte Carlo.