Nico Rosberg won the 71-lap
long Austrian Grand Prix at the Redbull Ring for Mercedes as his team-mate
Lewis Hamilton finished 2nd despite the 5 second penalty that was added to his
overall time.
As the lights went out,
Rosberg was able to get brilliant traction off the line from 2nd to gain a
slight advantage over Hamilton to shut the door on the pole sitter into the
first corner as he took the lead.
The first lap of the race was
yellow flagged after Kimi Raikkonen heading towards turn 3, faced a tank
slapper in his Ferrari and then lost control to collect Fernando Alonso’s
McLaren to have a horrific crash into the barriers with the McLaren car on top
of Ferrari’s nose and the hanging on the barriers. As the cars eventually
stopped both drivers walked out without a scratch from the incident which
Raikkonen claimed was caused by “wheelspin” that he encountered at an unusual
place of the track.
The incident brought out the
safety car for the next 5 laps so the cars could be cleared off. Meanwhile Will
Stevens brought his Manor Marussia into retirement to take his first DNF of his
F1 career and Danil Kvyat was forced to take an early pitstop after suffering a
front nose damage.
On the 9th lap of the race, a
day, a weekend or even a season, that would probably be one to forget for
McLaren went from bad to worse. With 25 place grid penalties from engine
components changes and stop and go penalties even before the start of the race
for both cars and following a disappointment for Alonso, Jenson Button was
forced to retire with engine problems which cost him very dear even before the
race started, to end his race.
Rosberg pitted his car on lap
34 from 1st, Hamilton brought his Mercedes in for a relatively slow stop behind
him in 2nd. At the exit of the Pitlane, Hamilton went over the white line on
the left towards the track which gave him a 5 second stop and go penalty. Since
Hamilton was done with his stops for the day, the 5 seconds was added to his
overall race time. This wasn’t much of a worry for the Brit as he finished well
ahead of the Brazilian, Felipe Massa in his Williams who was battling to keep
his 3rd place that was handed to him by Sebastian Vettel after the sole remaining
Ferrari faced a terribly long pitstop and ended up 4th which was a battle up to
the flag against the Williams for the final podium spot.
Valterri Bottas in the second
Williams car finished in 5th thus gaining valuable points on Ferrari for the 2nd
place in the championship. Last weekend’s Le Mans winner Nico Hulkenberg
brought his Force India home in 6th followed by Pastor Maldonado in 7th for
Lotus, Max Verstappen in 7th for Toro Rosso, Sergio Perez in 9th for Force
India and Daniel Ricciardo picking up the final point of the race in 10th for
Redbull Racing.
Felipe Nasr, Danil Kvyat,
Marcus Ericsson and Roberto Mehri were the final 4 of the 14 drivers that
finished the race in 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th respectively.
Romain Grosjean, Carlos Sainz
Jr., Jenson Button, Will Stevens, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso faced the
disappointment of not making it to the chequered flag.
The next round will take place
in Silverstone in the United Kingdom from the July 3-5.