Lewis Hamilton celebrates his fourth win of the season Sunday in Spain. The Briton edged teammate Nico Rosberg by less than one second. [Photo by Getty Images]
BARCELONA, Spain- After fending off a last minute challenge by teammate Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton managed to set a personal record as the Briton just edged the German by sixth tenths of a second to win the Spanish Grand Prix Sunday at the Barcelona Circuit de Catalunya. Daniel Riccairdo took third for Red Bull, his first podium of the season.
“I wasn’t fast enough really today,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton had no trouble from the start of the race, as both Hamilton and Rosberg created a gap that was five seconds by the beginning of the sixth lap. Hamilton had no problems holding a 1.6 second gap at the halfway point and continued the lead as high as 3.8 seconds by lap 40.
However, Rosberg began to close in for the next 20 laps as Hamilton began to struggle with his rear grip and the lack of trust in his engineers. With only seven laps to go, Rosberg, despite his graining tires, managed to close the gap to only 1.4 seconds behind Hamilton. But the 2008 world champion held his lead and ended up taking the checkered flag just under one second to win his fourth in a row, and continuing the domination so far this season by the silver arrows.
As it usually is, there were only a small amount of retirements in this race, with only two drivers, Jean –Eric Vergne on lap 25 and Kamui Kobyaschi 11 laps later.
Sebastian Vettel had a great recovery to a most miserable weekend by taking fourth after starting from 15th position, while Valterri Bottas finished in fifth for Williams, while the Ferrari duo of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen were sixth and seventh, respectively. Romain Grosjean gave Lotus their first points of the season by taking eighth, while Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg rounded out the field for Force India.
Although it was Hamilton’s fourth consecutive victory, he could not rely on his own instincts, and needed assistance from his engineers.
“Nico (Rosberg) was quicker” Hamilton added. “I had to rely on my engineers to tell me where I could find time and what the gap was.”
Mark Gero has written formula one racing stories since 2002 on the Internet for such sites as Motorsport.com, Racing Information Service News and for a brief time at the Munich Eye newspaper in Munich, Germany along with Autoweek online. Mark also has a diploma in journalism from the London School of Journalism in London, England and in addition a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa.