Rosberg reigns supreme in Spain, Hamilton forced to settle for hard-fought 2nd; Vettel in the mix for Ferrari with another podium

Pictures courtesy GrandPrix247.com

After being thoroughly dominated by his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in the first four “fly away” races of the 2015 F1 season Nico Rosberg desperately needed to reestablish his bona fides as a championship contender. The question on everyone’s mind as the series returned to European soil this past weekend was a simple one: could he muster the will to throw a scare into Hamilton and truly make a fight of the championship? In Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix the world received an answer. Rosberg emerged form the three-week break refreshed and relaxed and proceeded to do some dominating of his own for a change. Starting from the pole, the sensitive German put his self-doubt and the rest of the field in the rearview mirror, checking out on the first corner of the first lap. With an all around impressive race weekend in which he was undoubtedly the fastest man on the track, Rosberg put Hamilton on the defensive for the first time this season and the victory revivified the prospects for an authentic intra-team battle for the championship. With Monaco coming up in two weeks, the jewel in Formula 1’s crown and a race Monte Carlo resident Rosberg has also won the past two years, it would seem to be game on again for the two Mercedes rivals.

Because of his teammate’s untouchability on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Hamilton’s race came down to damage limitation after a poor start saw him immediately overtaken by Sebastian Vettel Ferrari. Hamilton was then forced to spend nearly the entirety of the race pursuing Vettel, who masterfully held off the Englishman until the reigning champion jumped him on a late pit stop. Despite Vettel’s feisty performance, Ferrari must be well and truly flummoxed after their “improvements” over the break gave them no advantage whatsoever on the Mercedes factory team. As if to ram that point home, Kimi Raikkonen could do no better than 5th in his Prancing Horse, directly behind the Mercedes-powered Williams of fellow Finn Valtteri Bottas, who drove a superb race and justified all the recent rumors about his taking Raikkonen’s seat at Ferrari next year. Bottas’ teammate Felipe Massa had a gutsy race of his own, rebounding from his disappointing 9th place qualifying effort to finish 6th with a slew of aggressive passing and a three-stop tire strategy. However, it’s clear that the veteran Brazilian needs to improve his qualifying to get closer to the Ferraris at the start and fight them for the points Williams are so desperate to have.

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was another big mover and worked his way through the pack late in the race to claim P7 after qualifying a lowly 10th. That he was able to wring that result out of his underperforming chassis once again showed the fine racecraft of the young Australian ace. With his Renault-powered Red Bull down on overall pace and unlikely to earn a podium position, Ricciardo still gives it all he’s got when the lights go out. But it would behoove Red Bull to show major improvement by the end of the season lest he be tempted to jump to a faster ship. Teammate Daniil Kvyat finished back in P10 and was bested by both Lotus’ Romain Grosjean, who posted a very solid P8, and rookie and native Spaniard Carlos Sainz’s Toro Rosso. The 20-year-old Sainz pipped Kvyat for P9 with a forceful move on the very last lap. Sainz’s countryman and national icon Fernando Alonso was forced to retire with brake issues on lap 26 to the great and audible disappointment of the massive partisan crowd. His teammate Jenson Button also had an alarmingly poor race for McLaren despite the team’s hopes of finally scoring points with the new Honda engine this weekend. Instead, the veteran Englishman and 2009 World Champion ended up with a wickedly skittish machine that he was forced to handle like a box of nitroglycerine, nursing the evil thing home to a lowly 16th place finish. The good news for McLaren is that speed is not a priority on the tight and twisty streets of Monte Carlo. The bad news is that handling certainly is!

Top 10 finishers in the Spanish Grand Prix:

Complete race results available at Formula1.com.

The next race is in two weeks and is part of the best day on the motorsport calendar — the Grand Prix of Monaco leads off Memorial Day Sunday before the Indianapolis 500 gets started in the afternoon. And that’s when we’ll find out if hometown hero Nico Rosberg has truly got it in him to take the fight to Hamilton on the legendary street circuit that he’s owned the past two years or if his dominant showing in Barcelona was just a fluke. Hope to see you then!