Rosberg takes untroubled Spanish Grand Prix win

2015 Spanish Grand Prix summary

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Nico Rosberg cruised to a largely untroubled victory in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Rosberg led from pole position while team mate Lewis Hamilton, who shared the front row with him, fell behind Sebastian Vettel at the start. An early attempt to jump ahead of the Ferrari in the pits was thwarted by a slow tyre change, but Hamilton eventually got ahead by switching to a three-stop strategy.

Mercedes were untouchable around the Circuit de Catalunya, with Vettel three-quarters of a minute behind in third place. Ferrari and Williams were the only other teams to get their cars home on the lead lap.

Valtteri Bottas beat the recovering Kimi Raikkonen to fourth place, with the second Williams of Felipe Massa in sixth.

Daniel Ricciardo came home a lapped seventh ahead of Romain Grosjean, who struggled with a gearbox problem. Daniil Kvyat lost ninth place to Carlos Sainz Jnr at the start of the final lap, while Max Verstappen finished out of the points in eleventh.

The only two retirements were Fernando Alonso,whose brakes failed alarmingly prior to a pit stop, and Pastor Maldonado, who lost part of his rear wing early in the race.

2015 Spanish Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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30 comments on “Rosberg takes untroubled Spanish Grand Prix win”

  1. 2015 might just turn out to be the worst season in recent years. Even though Spain has always been a Mercedes-dominated track, I still can’t help but feel Ferrari aren’t going to be challenging them anytime soon again. This means that we pretty much have a 6-tier championship

    Tier 1: Mercedes

    Tier 2: Ferrari

    Tier 3: Williams

    Tier 4: Red Bull/Toro Rosso/Lotus

    Tier 5: McLaren/Force India/Sauber

    Tier 6: Manor

    1. @mashiat Ferrari’s got an engine update scheduled for Canada, I think.

    2. As a Lewis fan, I’m enjoying the last two seasons just fine……

    3. I would hardly call 2 races “always”…

      1. @geemac I meant 2014. Don’t know why I said always.

    4. Trenthamfolk (@)
      10th May 2015, 15:30

      It’s easy to turn off your TV…

    5. Ferarri has a PU upgrade for Montreal. See how much gap can they close then.

  2. Like Vettel stated before the GP, this weekend would make or break Ferrari’s chance for the championship. Now we know the answer: They are not going to beat Mercedes this year. They can’t out-develop them.

    1. I heard somewhere Ferrari are spending extra $100M this year to close the gap. And it doesn’t appear to be working…

      1. Well, obviously there isn’t any magic currency machine which instantly converts dollars to laptime. Investments need time.

        1. Yeah. Toyota definitely didn’t have one.

    2. Funny. PU upgrade is in Montreal, which is 2 races away.

    3. Do you have any link to those Vettel words?

      Thanks

  3. F1 is becoming a boring sport, well, I don’t know if its a sport now, with so much things added to improve the show all is artificial, and this race was a clear example. I don’t remember a worse start of a season with so much boring races, even 2013 was more interesting! Ferrari won in Malaysia, but I doubt they will again this season. Radical changes will come on 2017, but some people are opposing to it. Pure whining about changing F1 and nothing has happened, and it never will. Like they want to kill the show already. I feel like this race was the “enough” for me. So difficult to say what I feel, but now F1 is dead guys. Not even my favorite team for about 7 years (Ferrari) can nail me back to the show.

    1. I couldn’t agree more – I had it on at work today, and even with nothing else to do it couldn’t hold my attention. Back in the Senna / Prost era I used to live for each race. Thankfully there’s still MOTOGP for some real excitement, racing and personalities.

  4. It would be interesting to learn if Rosberg was really slow today or whether his was saving his tyres. To me, it seems that he had not the speed to fight against Hamilton if the Brit was right behind him after the first corner.
    Well, I expect Rosberg to beat Hamilton at Monaco.

    1. Hamilton started OK, though maybe caught by surprise (Rosberg seemed marginally faster) and then got bogged down weirdly in the low gears. Race over. Some track indeed.

    2. Rosberg was actually faster than Hamilton towards the end of the race despite being on much older tyres as well as the slower compounds. He was also matching Lewis’ pace at the end of his 2nd stint despite being on older tyres.

      Hamilton seemed faster in the opening 10 laps of the stint, but as the tyres wore on, Rosberg got faster. That’s how I read it anyway.

      1. Hamilton was told to stop pushing and that it is impossible to catch Rosberg at the end of the race so he is backed off.Thats why Rosberg was faster towards the end of the race.
        Anyway,Rosberg’s race was clean without any problems with pitstops,traffic or anything else instead of lewis so u cant have a clear picture of who was the faster one this weekend.

  5. The second time in a row Bottas manages to keep a Ferrari behind, even if he had the tire advantage this time and it was Barcelona, a track notorious for its lack of overtaking opportunities. Nice defensive drive by the Finn nonetheless.

    Hamilton lost a lot of time behind Vettel early on in the race, so the winner was decided quite quickly.

  6. Trenthamfolk (@)
    10th May 2015, 15:32

    Nice win for Rosberg… He didn’t cut any chicanes, ram Hamilton off the road or have to rely on a Hamilton technical failure… a rare event! I wonder if he’ll moan about Hamilton driving too slowly today??

  7. so much for lap records being broken… the pace was so slow today. in 2008 raikonnen did a 1.21.67 fastest lap. today it was going to be a 1.29, only that hamilton did a 3 stop and had mediums late in the race so was running a bit faster and did a 28, but still 7 seconds off the pace from 7 years ago. i wonder if f1 will ever f1 fast again.

    1. @kpcart, are you a race fan or do you just care about lap times alone? Perhaps you should look into time attack or WRC. You’re acting like those dyno queens, you know those guys who spend thousands on their engines just so they can get a print out that says their car makes a 1000 horsepower…or whatever number they are hunting for.

      What good is a 1000 horsepower on the road if you can only put 75% of that power to the ground? What good is it to lap the track in 1.21.67 if the field starts and finishes in the same grid position. Those processional races sure were awesome…I mean the cars sounded insane and the lap times were great and that’s all that matters(*sarcasm). I think you have your priorities mixed up when it comes to racing.

    2. @kpcart, it’s the tyres , the only time you will get the drivers pushing hard on low fuel is after a late unplanned pit stop and new super-softs fitted, otherwise pushing hard just spoils the race plan when the tyres need changing ahead of schedule.

  8. I wouldn’t say that F1 today is boring etc but come on man… what’s the point of having DRS? No one even bothers to try pass someoneunless they are on the DRS zone…. Ferrari has made leaps forward but there’s no way to challenge Mercedes this year! If we take into consideration the budegets the only teams that could possibly challenge mercedes next year is ferrari and maclaren if their project turns out to be a good one… Red Bull has made a lot of steps behind and Williams seems that can producea good car but not a championship one! Sadly the best driver on the grid and the one that could challenge Mercedes ever with this year’s Ferrari is a part of a long term project….

    1. There is this thing called aero wash. Educate yourself on the sport. If you don’t understand it, or expect the racing to look like touring cars, you will be sadly disappointed.

      1. and when you combine aero-wash with fragile tyres, DRS becomes the only sensible way to overtake other than by pit-stop strategy.

  9. Red Bull clearly made a mistake by choosing Kvyat over Vergne last year. Kvyat isn’t on the same level as Ricciardo and the last lap incident was completely avoidable.

    I don’t like Villeneuve, but he might be right about the Red Bull squad being too young.

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