Rosberg cruises to victory in Spain as Hamilton fumbles

Nico Rosberg finally opened his victory account for the 2015 Formula 1 season with a well controlled victory in the Spanish Grand Prix, while Mercedes teammate and championship leader Lewis Hamilton fumbled the start and spent his afternoon working hard just to finish second.

After qualifying on pole with a scintillating lap, Rosberg made a perfect start and then proceeded to control the race, virtually unchallenged, right to the very end and with it bagged maximum points in what was a pretty dull affair at Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona.

Sebastian Vettel claimed the final podium spot, but never looked like challenging Rosberg and also had little ammunition to fight off a resurgent Hamilton who the Ferrari driver beat off the line at the start.

Credit to Rosberg who did not rise to the bait and kept it steady all the way to the flag, making it all look terribly easy on a sunny afternoon in Spain and with it injecting some much needed life into the championship battle.

In fact Rosberg arrived in Barcelona with his game face on, and knowing that psychologically he had to own the Spanish Grand Prix. Which he did starting by out qualifying Hamilton by a quarter of a second and then doing the business when it really mattered - he sent out a clear signal: game on!

Rosberg said on the podium, "It was a perfect weekend. Perfect to be on pole and then to win the race like this. The car has been awesome all weekend. Really perfect."

"Finally I got a perfect start, it's been a long time coming. I'm just enjoying the day today. Winning here in Barcelona is great and then we'll look forward to the next race."

"At one point I thought maybe, who knows, maybe Sebastian can keep Lewis behind, which on the one side isn’t good for the team, but in terms of my points, it’s always a compromise, for my points that would have been better."

"Seven points is better than nothing and a fantastic team result to be first and second, especially after the two and a half week break. Everybody brought upgrades here but still we’re dominating in such a way and that’s fantastic to see and more than at the last race," added Rosberg

Hamilton's early mistake inadvertently injected some interest into the race, after dropping down to third (almost fourth in fact) he then chased Vettel to the first stop where he attempted to undercut the German, but a tardy pit-stop messed up that plan.

His crew then reverted to a three stop strategy, with Hamilton delivering an enormous stint with the harder Pirelli tyres, which saw him do enough to leapfrog Vettel in his third and final stop and even looked game to give Rosberg a run to the line.

The reigning world champion gamely pursued Rosberg, and even when asked to hold station by the pitwall he popped two laps that were each 1.5 seconds better than the leader, but then ran out of laps to really challenge and by the end his tyres had cried enough.

He reflected, "I just clearly got a bad start, got lots of wheel spin but I'm grateful to get back up to second place. This is a difficult weekend for me, I'll take it,"

"I did enough in the first stint. I had a very long pit stop and then had to do it all again but at the end on a three stop had enough to get by. Grateful to get points for team but it was damage limitation," conceded Hamilton who still leads the standings by a healthy 20 points after five rounds.

Ferrari talked a good race prior to Barcelona, but in the end Vettel was 45 seconds down on the winner and at no stage did he look like challenging Rosberg, and when it came to defending second place he was forced to capitulate without a fight and third it was.

Vettel summed up his day at the office, "We were hanging there pretty well. We had a good start, able to get past Lewis and we did the right thing covering him at the first stop."

"But when they switched to the three-stop we couldn't keep up, they were too quick. We tried everything we could. Going through traffic is never easy. Sometimes you're lucky and sometime you lose a bit more," added the quadruple world champion.

Fourth place was a Finnish civil war as Valtteri Bottas in the Williams slugged it out with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. The latter reeling in his younger compatriot, but then faced a brick wall as the Williams had the legs on the straight and Bottas had the racecraft to keep the red car behind. They crossed the line fourth and fifth respectively.

Up next in sixth was Felipe Massa in the Williams, ahead of seventh placed Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull. Both having a low key, out of the limelight, afternoon.

Romain Grosjean in the Lotus survived an early wheel-to-wheel skirmish with teammate Pastor Maldonado, which damaged the Venezuelan's rear wing and in the end led to his retirement. His French teammate finished eighth despite knocking over his front jackman during a pitstop.

Right at the very end of the race there was a mighty threeway battle between the other three Red Bull backed drivers - Carlos Sainz versus Daniil Kvyat versus Max Verstappen.

Local hero Sainz, who shone in qualifying, botched his start and spent the afternoon fighting for places, including wheel banging with Kvyat on the final lap with Sainz coming off better to finish ninth. The Russian bagging the final point while Verstappen finished eleventh.

At time of writing race stewards were investigating the Sainz-Kvyat incident...

It was another torrid day for McLaren-Honda, and if there was any progress it has been snail paced because the two world champions tasked with driving the heap were way off the pace, and make that the mid-field pace.

Fernando Alonso struggled gamely before he ran out of brakes and also nearly hospitalised his front jackman before he retired the car. This was only the second time in Alonso's career that he has failed to finish the Spanish GP, 2008 being the other one.

Teammate Jenson Button toiled at the back only quicker than the woeful (slower than GP2 cars) Manor duo.

The situation at the back of the F1 field is really sad and that McLaren is down there, with little if any light at the end of the tunnel, is even sadder.

[highlight ]Spanish Grand Prix, Circuit de Catalunya = Sunday, 10 May 2015[/highlight]