Hamilton in dominant form takes the win in Barcelona
Barcelona, May 11, 2014–Lewis Hamilton achieved his fourth victory of the season today with team mate Nico Rosberg finishing just 0.636s behind in second place. Barcelona is renowned for being one of the most demanding tracks on tyres of the entire year, but eight of the top 10 finishers all completed the 66-lap Grand Prix with just two stops. Last year, the race winner stopped four times in Barcelona, underlining the further improvements and increased durability built into the tyres this season. Mercedes AMG Petronas took the first one-two finish for a team at the Spanish Grand Prix since 2009. Lewis began the race on option tyres, stopping for a second set of options on lap 18 and primes on lap 43. Nico also started on options, switching to primes on lap 21 and then back to options on lap 45.
Lewis Hamilton take fourth consecutive win for Merceded
Lewis Hamilton 1st:-It’s fantastic to get my first win here after eight attempts and it’s really difficult to put that feeling into words right now. We have our bosses from Mercedes-Benz here today and it’s great for the team that we were able to give them a one-two finish. In all my career, I’ve never before had a car or a performance gap like this. Nico drove a fantastic race and I struggled to keep him behind, but I just managed it at the end. I had the same problems with the car this afternoon that I found yesterday in qualifying: I couldn’t attack the corners properly because of snap oversteer and that’s where Nico was catching me. I’m just so proud of this team: we are looking very strong and I’m enjoying every moment and every step of the way. There’s still a long way to go this season, though, so we are staying humble, getting our heads down and working hard. I still have a bit more time to find from the car because it’s very, very close with Nico, so I have to keep working on that. But it’s a great feeling to be leading the championship.
Nico Rosberg :2nd-The race was so close at the end today and with one more lap, I could have tried to overtake Lewis for the first time. My start was bad. It is a weakness that we have and we will try to improve. Once it was clear that I was in second place, we chose to go with the slower strategy using the prime tyres in the middle stint to get a shot at Lewis at the end when I was on the options. It was very close but not quite close enough so naturally I’m disappointed but I can take a lot of positives from this weekend. We have an amazing car and my pace was really strong here so I just need to find an extra little edge to capitalise on. The next race is Monaco which is not only my home race but has some great memories from my victory there last year.
Daniel Ricciardo: 3rd – “Holy Doly! The race was not overly exciting, although I don’t know how it was behind, maybe there were a lot of fights going on and for viewers there was a bit more to watch, but for us it was a good result. We knew we could not catch the Mercedes, but we believed we had better pace than the guys behind, so before the race we’d said that third was going to be a good day. It’s nice to stand back up on the podium – I actually still feel a bit awkward up there, but I’m sure I will get more comfortable. It seems at the moment it’s Mercedes who are battling between themselves and they are doing a tremendous job. With Seb coming through the pack for fourth today, it seems we have been the second best team this weekend. I think it is still going to vary a bit, but maybe it will be a battle for that last place on the podium with me and Seb in Monaco, we will see. Monaco should be okay for us and hopefully we can get a bit closer to the Mercs there. It will be interesting and we will try as much as we can to catch them!”
Tyre strategy was instrumental to the Spanish Grand Prix, with Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton claiming his fourth consecutive win to move into the lead of the drivers championship. The Englishman, who went on a medium-medium-hard strategy from pole, beat his team mate Nico Rosberg by just six tenths of a second, who chose a medium-hard-medium strategy. The two strategies ensured a thrilling wheel-to-wheel battle as Rosberg was able to take advantage of his newer and faster tyres at the end of the race.
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel started from 15th on the grid but finished fourth with a three-stop sprint strategy, running mostly on the faster medium tyre and setting fastest lap. He was also able to make up several places in the closing stages.
The second two-day in-season test of the year now takes place after the Spanish Grand Prix, from Tuesday. Sauber and Toro Rosso will be testing 2015 tyres for Pirelli on the opening day of the test, followed by Force India and McLaren on day two.
