Rosberg wins European GP to extend F1 title lead

Rosberg led every lap from pole position in a dominant race, comfortably finishing ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel with Sergio Perez behind him in third.

“It’s been an unbelievable day really, an incredible weekend”.

Hamilton felt that the radio restrictions ultimately robbed F1 of a better spectacle, because not having the information meant he was unable to deliver a fightback through the field.

Hamilton initially recovered from a poor start and threatened to take over Force India’s Sergio Perez in fourth place before problems began to mount.

While many expected the narrow and untested track to produce many incidents and safety cars, as it had earlier in the weekend in support races, the race would instead be just the second all year to go without any sort of full-course interruption.

It was Rosberg’s fifth victory of the season and first since Russian Federation, leaving him 24 points clear of Hamilton in the drivers’ standings.

“The circuit is incredible – you need to be well equipped around here”.

“We were struggling a bit [during practice] on Friday, but to see where we are now, it’s a great recovery”. “Already by the end of yesterday the vehicle was coming alive. Thanks to the team”, said Vettel. In the constructors’ championship the margin is now 81 points. Shame that Kimi couldn’t quite keep the third place but, for sure, he made it very nice for me to secure the second.

Speaking to Sky afterwards, he said there wasn’t any chance of him fixing the issue without instruction: “I had no idea, there are something like 16 different engine settings”.

The Williams of Bottas in sixth was followed by the Red Bulls of Ricciardo and Verstappen, with Nico Hulkenburg in the Force India and Felipe Massa in the Williams rounding out the points places.

“Nico had done a switch change before and he changed it back a couple of laps later and Lewis was trying to work out what it was and it took 12 laps”.

Hamilton vented his frustration to the team as he battled with the settings on his vehicle and, although Mercedes engineers knew how to fix the problem, F1 rules prevented them from telling him. The problem was one both cars had but Nico fixed it quicker than Lewis.

“We had a insane situation because we were at certain points listening to what the driver was asking us without being able to answer”, said Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene. There was a way of changing the switches on the dashboard which of course by regulations we are not allowed to communicate to the drivers.