Formula 1Circuit de Catalunya GP

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Nico Rosberg took his first victory of the 2015 season – the ninth of his Formula 1 career to date – with a superbly controlled drive from pole position. Despite a poor Start Lewis Hamilton was able to recover and came in second place thanks to a blistering pair of stints within a bold three-stop strategy. Sebastian VETTEL took third. (Ferrari)

In Their Own Words
Nico Rosberg

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Nico Rosberg took his first victory of the 2015 season

“We had a perfect weekend here in Spain. We have a fantastic car and everybody did a really great job in the break, so thanks to the team for everything. My start was great for the first time this season. From there I was able to control the pace and I never felt in danger throughout the whole race. I’m so happy about this win. It’s still early days in the season so it’s good to close the points gap to Lewis. I will continue to push hard – starting with a home race for me in Monaco!”

Lewis Hamilton

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Lewis Hamilton
I got off to a poor start with too much wheel spin and had to fight hard just to keep third. From there it was always going to be tough as it’s difficult to run right behind another car here and even tougher to pass. I managed to stay close enough to Seb before the first stops but unfortunately we

“I got off to a poor start with too much wheel spin and had to fight hard just to keep third. From there it was always going to be tough as it’s difficult to run right behind another car here and even tougher to pass. I managed to stay close enough to Seb before the first stops but unfortunately we lost a bit of time there. In the end, we went for a three-stop strategy to try something different. That call was made quite early on as it was clear it wouldn’t have worked to stay out for that long and, again, passing on track was almost impossible. Luckily we had the pace to make it work. Nico was then 22 seconds ahead with 15 laps to go which was a big gap. I pushed really hard to close up until about 6 laps from the end but I was only gaining about a second per lap which wasn’t enough. So, damage limitation on a difficult weekend for me. But I’m grateful that I could score some good points for the team.”

Sebastian VETTEL: I think it was. Obviously we were hanging in there pretty well. We had a good start, we were able to get past Lewis and then we did the right thing, covering him at the first stop. But then unfortunately they switched to a three-stop and they were just too quick. So we couldn’t really keep up with the pace they had today, third is the best we could do and very happy. The car is great and it’s great to see the fans, all the Ferrari flags, so very happy.

RACE DANIEL RICCIARDO, 

 

“I am more satisfied today as we achieved everything we could and seventh was the maximum I could get out of the car. There were some parts of the race that were encouraging but we’re still further off than where we want to be, but we’ll keep pushing. We came here with upgrades this weekend but they didn’t give us what we were expecting, so that’s something we’ll keep working on. We’re still a fair bit behind Williams at the moment but I think we have a good chance to close the gap a bit further in Monaco.”

DANIIL KVYAT,

 

“We didn’t have enough pace today. I had a poor opening lap, dropping a few places and from then on that compromised my race. Because here at this track, if you lose places at the start, it’s almost game over, as it is so hard to get close enough to pass. I had a nice battle with Sainz towards the end, but now we will wait and see what the Stewards say about how it ended. We need to improve the car in every area at the moment. On the positive side, both our cars finished the race, which is good on the reliability front. This was a bad day for me, so now I just want to look ahead to Monaco in the hope we can be more competitive there.”

CHRISTIAN HORNER,
Team Principal:

“Daniel drove a strong race today, and did a great job to extract everything he could out of the car to finish seventh which is where we are for the moment. Dany had a tricky first lap which landed him in traffic, and as a result used up his tyres fairly quickly and needed an early pit stop. He drove a solid race over the next two stints to cross the line in tenth place. We’ll have to wait and see what the outcome of the Stewards is regarding the incident with Carlos.”

THIERRY SALVI, Renault:

“The weekend was focused principally on the reliability of the power units. We limited mileage where we needed to and did not suffer any issues in qualifying or the race, which was the first step we needed to take to recover after the last events. It’s obviously not enough to do just this, but we have to get back to form step by step. Everyone at Renault Sport F1 is focused on this and we look forward to being able to work on power unit performance very soon.”