Rosberg delighted by his win in his home of Monaco
Monaco, May 26, 2013 – Nico Rosberg has taken his first win for Mercedes this year, ahead of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, who extends his championship lead. Rosberg was in front from start to finish, starting on the supersoft tyre and then switching to the soft during a safety car period. An accident on lap 45 brought out the red flag and under the current rules the drivers were allowed to change tyres during the stoppage. Rosberg completed the race on the supersoft tyre, following yet another safety car period with 15 laps to go.
After the original start Red Bull’s Mark Webber was the first of the front-runners to make his scheduled stop, coming in on lap 25 to change from supersoft to soft. But the complexion of the race was altered when the safety car came out for the first time this year on lap 29 – provoking a round of pit stops. Both the Mercedes pitted consecutively for soft tyres two laps later, with Lewis Hamilton dropping from second to fourth as a result of the safety car intervention.
Following the red flag stoppage, after a collision on lap 46 between Marussia’s Chilton and Williams’s Maldonado damaging the barriers at Tabac corner, the teams could choose whichever tyres they wished at the re-start, 25 minutes after the accident that caused it. The majority of the drivers chose to go with a used set of supersofts, with Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen the highest-placed driver to re-start on the soft tyre, from fifth place. The Finn was forced into a final pit stop for the supersoft following a collision, passing six cars in the final five laps to score a point.
Force India’s Paul di Resta, who started from 17th, planned a two-stop strategy. He changed from the supersoft to the soft tyre on lap nine, climbing to 11th place by the red flag. This effectively allowed him a ‘free’ pit stop and he eventually ended the race in a points-scoring ninth.
Nico Rosberg-Monaco is such a special place to win and it just feels amazing today. It was my childhood dream to win this race and to do it in a Silver Arrow on the streets where I have lived all of my life is fantastic. I can’t quite believe it has happened yet and it will probably take a while to sink in. Thank you to the team for the car that we had this weekend and it’s good to have been able to show the same level of performance on Sunday and convert our pole position. The whole weekend went pretty much to plan, even though qualifying was tough with the weather conditions. I didn’t have the best start today which meant Lewis and Seb got pretty close but after the first corner, I was able to set my own pace. Then it was just a case of keeping a cool head through all the incidents and the team did a great job of keeping me in touch with what was happening. Thank you to everyone here today and back at the factories in Brackley and Brixworth. I hope this win today is the first of many more to come for us.
Sebastian Vettel 2nd – “Overall I’m happy and pleased with the result, we know that it’s very difficult to overtake here. Congratulations to Nico, he did a very good job and had a very controlled race; I think he had the pace and the tyres to respond whenever we tried to get a little bit closer to him. I had a fantastic start, but there was no room! I think I could have gone past both Mercedes, but there was no space and I had to lift. Then Mark came and it was very tight into the first corner. I was a bit surprised by the slow pace of the opening laps – usually you expect two silver arrows in front of you, but they were more like buses today going for a cruise on the first couple of laps. But, the strategy for them was clear and they did a very good job. It was a good strategy from our team to get past Lewis. It was hard with the restarts, but we can be happy with the result. It was a good achievement by the team; we seem to like this place. Congratulations to everyone and thanks to all our partners – two cars on the podium is very good.”
Mark Webber 3rd– “First of all congratulations to Nico, it’s a very special place to win here and he had a seamless weekend; that’s what you need to do here. Even though he started in the lead, you still have to pull it off so well done to him. For us, we knew we were a little bit against it starting on the second row, but I got an absolutely incredible start and it’s sod’s law that it’s the shortest run into the first corner here. Seb and I had nowhere to go, so we were lifting while Nico and Lewis looked like they had tricky ones. We will save some of those starts for future reference! Then after that it was basically about saving the tyres and making the one-stop work for us. It was predictable that if the race was going to stack up, then the two-stop was not really an option as you could have come back into traffic. We had to go pretty long and all the drivers were nursing the tyres – it was nice to get Lewis on the stops.”
Pastor Maldonado- It was an unfortunate incident today with the Marussia car and the impact was quite big. Fortunately I am ok and the stewards took immediate action. We need to move on from a disappointing weekend but I’m looking forward to the next race in Canada, where we will be continuing to demonstrate the improvements in the car.
Lewis Hamilton-It’s been a great weekend for the team and I’m really happy for everyone. Big congratulations to Nico, he’s been awesome all weekend here and really deserves that victory. From my side, this weekend hasn’t really been the best and we didn’t make the most of the opportunity for a one-two finish today. When the safety car came out, I needed to maintain a gap so we didn’t get delayed with the double pit stop but unfortunately the gap was too big and we lost out to the two Red Bulls. That’s motor racing and these things happen sometimes. It’s the tightest track in the world here and virtually impossible to overtake unless you are much quicker than the car in front so there was nothing I could do to improve my position. But it’s great for the team to have achieved our first victory of the season and I hope we can carry through the performance we showed here to Montreal.
Kimi Raikkonen – “It was a really disappointing day. Because of one stupid move from Sergio [Perez] we’ve lost a lot of points to Sebastian [Vettel] in the Championship and you can’t afford to lose ground like that. He hit me from behind and that’s about all there is to it. If he thinks it’s my fault that he came into the corner too fast then he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about. It’s not the first time he’s hit someone in the race; he seems to expect people to be always looking at what he might do, then move over or go straight on if he comes into the corner too quick and isn’t going to make it without running into someone. Not the ideal weekend but there’s nothing we can do about it. At least we got one point back at the end.”
