Rosberg wins Brazilian Grand Prix

Two in a row now, with pole positions as well.

“Whoever is going to win the last race has a little benefit into December”, commented Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda, a former triple champion.

Nico Rosberg drove to victory in the Brazilian Grand Prix Sunday.

“I have been working hard”.

“I think I’ve just raised my game”, he said. His retirement brought out double yellow flags in Sector 2 at the early stages of the race.

Grid drop penalties have become a common thing in the F1 this season but Daniel Ricciardo showed why he’s a three-time race victor as the Infiniti Red Bull Racing driver fought his way back up to 11th place after starting from 19th on the grid.

Despite his plea, Hamilton fears it will go unheeded. Hamilton cut that down to half a second by lap 18 but the dirty air took its toll. Going on a different strategy, something could have happened to Lewis’ opportunity. “I had good pace, you just can’t overtake here”.

Hamilton insisted he had the outright pace to win in Brazil, but claimed the mechanical make-up of a modern grand prix vehicle makes overtaking impossible.

“I’m here to race and when you have to do the same order that’s already set from the beginning, it’s relatively boring”.

But again he was thwarted in his attempts to get close enough to pass as Rosberg drove a strong race in front of him, helped by what a few might have considered coaching over the radio form his engineer, which is not allowed.

“Nico has been doing fantastically well”.

Unsurprisingly, Rosberg said it would be unfair if Mercedes allowed the drivers to run with different strategies.

Vettel shared the podium with the two Mercedes drivers for the ninth time this year.

The team, though, kept the status quo and Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff also confirmed after the race that they won’t change their approach despite Hamilton’s moan. Beyond that Mercedes are reluctant to split their strategies for fear of upsetting the losing driver.

Rosberg will be wondering why he did not start the season like this.

“It was a great weekend for me”. Hamilton said he hoped to be able to take more risks with race tactics in future but Wolff gave the idea short shrift.

“And we have always tried to say that Nico’s class and performance is important to make Lewis perform as he did, and to make the vehicle faster and the team to progress”. So I just wanted to see if there were any other [strategy] options.

For Rosberg, it was his second win in a row not only in this race, but in a row and his 40 of his career. They were Max Verstappen and Nico Hülkenberg.

A third of the way through, Hamilton was closing on Rosberg – cutting the gap to 0.4 seconds – with Vettel slipping sevens second behind the leaders. Ferrari’s follow third and fourth.