Nico took his fourth win of 2014 today and the team's ninth in ten races, taking a lights to flag victory in commanding fashion
Hockenheim, July 20, 2014 – Nico Rosberg has extended his championship lead by winning his home grand prix, using a two-stop strategy. It was the first time that Rosberg had ever finished on the podium at the German Grand Prix, but the 300th podium finish for Williams, courtesy of Valtteri Bottas – on the podium for the third consecutive time.
Rosberg’s team mate Lewis Hamilton made up 17 places by finishing third, having started from 20th on the grid due to an accident in qualifying. Hamilton moved from a two to a three-stop strategy in the race, starting with two stints on the soft tyre and using the extra speed of the supersoft for his final two stints. His last supersoft tyre stint was 17 laps, during which he set fastest lap. This enabled him to close up to Bottas in the closing stages and finish only 22 seconds behind Rosberg, despite a damaged front wing.
The frontrunners on the grid all started on the supersoft tyre, which was around a second per lap faster than the soft tyre. Track temperatures were more than 20 degrees centigrade lower than they had been over the past two days, giving the teams a new dimension, but the expected risk of rain did not materialise. The drivers were able to push as hard as they could with some very close racing from start to finish: the gap at the end between Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo in fifth and sixth was less than a tenth of a second, after 306 kilometres of racing.
Nico Rosberg, Winner-Wow, what a great day after so many great events for me this week! I came here hoping for a win and it worked out perfectly. My Silver Arrow was so dominant, thanks to the team for this fantastic car. Before the race I was worried that without the FRIC system the gap in the race would be smaller. But we were again the quickest out there. I did a two stop strategy, which was difficult to manage at the end of the stints as the tyres were almost gone. I’m so happy for Mercedes; it was the first win for many many years in Germany. Thanks for the support here at Hockenheim, the fans were amazing to me. Also at the start I saw a Mexican wave, which was great. Now I look forward to Hungary.
Valtteri Bottas 2nd: I am really happy with the way the race went today. As a team we have been unlucky not to have both drivers on the podium as we had the pace. To keep a Mercedes behind at the end of the race was promising showing that it is possible, and the car is very strong. The engineers shared a lot of information with me about the tyres and where Hamilton was and that team work was the key to the good result.
Lewis Hamilton 3rd:-First of all, congratulations to Nico on winning his home race; it’s a special feeling and I am very proud that we could put both cars on the podium for Mercedes-Benz in Germany and represent for all the Mercedes employees and fans here this weekend. From a personal point of view, I can’t be too ecstatic about the race because it has been a tough weekend for me and I’ve ultimately lost more points to Nico in the championship battle. But I’m grateful that I could limit the damage with a podium finish. When you are sitting on the grid basically in last place, with no other cars in your mirrors, it’s very hard to imagine that you could be standing up there two hours later. I’m so grateful to the team for this car, I really take my hat off to them for building a machine that can put in that kind of performance. To be honest, it was a pretty straightforward race for me, although I had some trouble following what was going on and where I was running at times. I had a nice battle with Kimi early on, when I was lucky not to damage the front wing, then the incident with Jenson was just unfortunate. He has been such a gentleman this year and not given me too much trouble getting past but it was just a misunderstanding today. I wasn’t close enough to try and pass but I was on the inside line in the corner. It looked like he had gone wide, then he cut back across the corner and perhaps he didn’t see me there. I lost quite a bit of downforce with the damage and it made it very hard to look after the front left tyre. I had a lot of understeer and the tyre was degrading fast, which is the reason why we converted from a two-stop strategy to three. Then the team called me in early on the first set of option tyres because we expected a Safety Car to come out – and I was surprised that there wasn’t one, to be honest I caught Valtteri pretty fast in the final laps but he just had too much straightline speed to get past. I’m doing absolutely everything I can to get back on level terms with Nico in the title battle: I can’t focus more or work harder than I am doing right now. This championship is proving a big challenge for me but that’s how I love it – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
