Rosberg Edges Hamilton To Win In Brazil

INTERLAGOS, Brazil- After having dominated all the practices and qualifying this weekend, Nico Rosberg made it a complete weekend, winning the Grand Prix of Brazil Sunday afternoon, just edging out his teammate Lewis Hamilton by a second and a half. Home hero Felipe Massa took third, his first podium appearance here since 2008.

For Rosberg, his fifth win of the season, puts him 17 points behind Hamilton with one round left at Abu Dhabi in two weeks’ time.

“I was very happy with the whole weekend,” said Rosberg. “I have been feeling comfortable in the car, and I controlled the gap closer to Lewis in the race.”

Both Mercedes cars took off right from the start of the race, with Rosberg leading from the beginning to where the gap early on between the two was just one second. However the day, which was supposed to be raining, ended up sunny and very humid, causing the race rubber to expire very quickly.

The first pit stops saw Nico Hulkenberg time everything perfectly to take over the lead in the early stages. However, the German did not stay long in the front, as his late decision to pit forced him to be passed by Rosberg on lap 14.

Rosberg lead by 1.7 seconds over Hamilton, but the Briton managed to close in on his teammate, until on lap 29, when Hamilton spun on turn four, and had to pit again for fresh tires. But Hamilton returned to form, and by lap 50 was only two seconds in back of Rosberg. Hamilton kept pushing to almost five tenths of a second between the two, but the German was fast down the last part of the circuit, to where he just edged out the win by only 1.5 seconds at the finish.

Jenson Button led the rest of the grid with a brilliant fourth place, while Sebastian Vettel was also another fine performance, finishing fifth. Fernando Alonso passed teammate Kimi Raikkonen laps from the end to give Ferrari finishes in sixth and seventh, respectively. Hulkenberg ended up eighth, while Kevin Magnussen and Valterri Bottas rounded up the top ten.

With one round left, the win has given Rosberg plenty of confidence going into the final race. But for now, he was enjoying his victory.

“I am very happy with the race, and the atmosphere in Brazil is fantastic and it is great to have support.” He concluded.

Mark Gero

Mark Gero has written formula one racing stories since 2002 on the Internet for such sites as Motorsport.com, Racing Information Service News and for a brief time at the Munich Eye newspaper in Munich, Germany along with Autoweek online. Mark also has a diploma in journalism from the London School of Journalism in London, England and in addition a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa.

racingnation.com

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