Rosberg wins again as Hamilton salvages second

2016 Russian Grand Prix summary

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Nico Rosberg continued his perfect start to 2016 by winning his fourth consecutive race at the start of the season and his seventh since the end of last season.

The Mercedes driver was never headed from pole position while team mate Lewis Hamilton rose from tenth to salvage second place after a difficult weekend.

Kimi Raikkonen took the final place on the podium after moving ahead of Valtteri Bottas during their single pit stops early in the race.

The Williams pair completed the top five. Fernando Alonso took a strong sixth place as both McLaren drivers finished in the points, Jenson Button overtaking Carlos Sainz Jnr for the final points place late in the grand prix.

Kevin Magnussen claimed Renault’s first points since their return to Formula One while Romain Grosjean added to the Haas points tally and Sergio Perez recovered to ninth place.

The Force India driver was one of several involved in a first-lap collision which forced his team mate to retire along with Rio Haryanto and Sebastian Vettel. The Ferrari driver was hit twice by Daniil Kvyat in the opening corners, ending his race against the barrier at turn three.

The only other retirement of the race was Max Verstappen, whose suffered an apparent power unit failure while running sixth.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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60 comments on “Rosberg wins again as Hamilton salvages second”

  1. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
    1st May 2016, 14:52

    What a terrible track.

  2. Couldn’t watch the race live as my stream didn’t work, but I was able to refresh to get the latest frame from the race. It showed Vettel and Kvyat side by side through three, then the next one was Vettel in the wall, so very annoying.

    It was working before the race begun, however, and it appeared that Verstappen was already having problems with his PU before he had left the pits.

  3. MG421982 (@)
    1st May 2016, 14:57

    Awesome Rosberg!

  4. Wow nice chop of the corner by Hamilton turn 1 & 2 to gain 5 places….. No mention by Sky of course. Could have braked to avoid the cars in front (as others did), but floored it and chopped the corner from way back straight for the marker instead. Wow.

    1. RP (@slotopen)
      1st May 2016, 18:28

      It was nice. He dove for it so fast I suspect he positioned himself there just in case. Better than being on the inside w Vettel n Kvyat.

      Good strategy.

    2. Try to think who those 5 are! Vettel, both RBs, Hulk, etc. They all crashed out.

      Also, he wasn’t the only one to do so, and he went around the distant bollard as intended.

    3. Yes it didn’t get much of a mention on Sky.Even if I am a Hamilton fan, I think there should be some consequences, he wasn’t just avoiding an accident, it made his race.

    4. Chris (@tophercheese21)
      2nd May 2016, 6:04

      Hey backed off as soon as he re-entered the track to let Vettel and Perez through however they got caught up in all that going’s on, so he was able to take the places anyway.

    5. Are you blind or something? It was an avoiding action of the accident in-frond and he didn’t floor it at all since he went around at the distant bollard as the rules instigated you had to do to not gain advantage.
      Also other drivers behind him did the same to avoid the accident so why aren’t you blaming them too?
      The reason Sky didn’t mention anything about the whole thing including the other drivers is probably the same reason FIA didn’t bother with it. There was nothing to bother with.

  5. Why is Hamilton not spraying the Champagne like the two others?

    1. What has he got to celebrate?

    2. Martijn (@)
      1st May 2016, 17:51

      He shared his bottle with the Mercedes guy (sorry, don’t know his name) that collected the constructers trophy. That’s why it looked a bit strange

      1. Ah OK – Nice gesture!

        1. Nice, my @ss. He’s about the worst sore loser ever in the histroy of Formula-1. Not spraying champagne just because he didn’t win is not only childish, but is also very poor sportsmanship, an insult to his fellow racers and his team mate. Something that only a spoiled, undereducated egoist would do… oh wait.

          1. And here I tried to be a friendly politically correct observer. ;o)

          2. On the anniversary of Sennas death he decided not to spray champagne on the podium, yeah what a horrible person.

  6. Awful track, awful driving from Kvyat, awful… whatever it is Mercedes are doing on Hamilton’s side of the garage, awful attempt by Toto to try & convince us both cars had issues when Hamilton was told to slow down while Rosberg was free to set purple sector times & fastest laps, awful that we have to put up with the Putin Party Parade… just awful in General…

    1. your point what….? there is nothing wrong with Putin.in case you did not know he is president of russia

      1. Do be fair his presence in that room is a little cringe worthy. If he at least entered shaken their hands and left, it would have been fine but the whole standing there and asking threw the translator about how they find Russia and the GP is kind of cringe awkward moment.
        They just finished a race, their adrenaline is high, they are tired and may be upset or silly happy etc, is kind of a bad moment for them to have Putin standing there.

  7. “We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. Rosberg, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make the Rosberg name great again.’ You’re gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.’”

    Imagine if Rosberg had said this after the US GP last year…

    1. Whaaaaat?

    2. Was the Rosberg name ever “great”?

      1. It’s better than Traverse

  8. So what can/will Hamilton do about the Rosberg dominance?

    1. reliability for a start.

      1. edit: He needs reliability for a start.

    2. I think we have different definitions of dominance. Form a statistical point you are correct but when you break it down it’s not really dominance is it. You’re entitled to your own opinions though.

      1. I am not sure how we can break it down to get to a different story somehow. Maybe I am just too pessimistic to see any change to the WDC race any time soon? In the end it is the result that count. And so far Rosberg has plenty to show.
        After 4 races, Rosberg has:
        4 race wins.
        3 fastest laps.
        2 pole positions.

        Next to his record of 7 successive wins, only equaled ever by Schumacher, Ascari and Vettel. We have so far not seen anybody really challenging Rosberg for the win.

        Not including the race today (which will just add further to Rosberg’s favor), Rosberg has so far led 133 laps this year out of a total 170 laps, all races combined. Hamilton has led 1 lap so far this year. Ricciardo led 2 laps. Kimi 3 laps. And Vettel has led 31 laps in total.

        To me this is massive dominance.

    3. It’s not a genuine dominance, Lewis hasn’t had a chance to race him yet

  9. Two thoughts:
    1)I felt hamilton gained a MASSIVE Advantage by going Off track and i Feel it is wrong that is tolerated.
    2)watching a lot of Early 2000s footage Lately i do firmly believe it is not the cars thats not spectacular. It is solely the tracks. We need narrow! We need grass! We need bumby surfaces. THAT makes cars look Spectacular, fast and a handfull to Drive.

    1. Agreed on both points.

      1. Those Helicopter Shots Today……they just locked stationary….. quite awful really

    2. Watch again. Lewis took evasive action to avoid another car (I think it was Vettel). You can see this easily from the helicopter shot. It is not so obvious from his onboard

      1. Yeah he does. He still overtakes a Bunch of cars Flat out NEXT to the Track.

        1. So he is supposed to slow down, because he used the run off for the EXACT reason it was put there??

          1. @kbdavies

            Well, yes.

            You are not supposed to use the run off to gain an advantage. Typically cars are asked to let cars back through if they do so.

            I haven’t seen the incident. But I don’t think avoiding action changes that in terms of rules.

        2. “You are not supposed to use the run off to gain an advantage. Typically cars are asked to let cars back through if they do so.”

          – Not at the start, they are not.
          If you can find any car (this season, or any other), that gave a place back, after using the runoffs, at the START of a race, after taking evasive action, and so as to avoid a collision, i’d like to know!

          1. Name any car that slows down sufficiently under double waved yellows. Doesn’t mean it’s right.

          2. @kbdavies out of the top of head, Alonso in Singapore 2014 let one of the Red Bulls through after he cut short the corner at the start (Ricciardo I think).

    3. Neil (@neilosjames)
      1st May 2016, 15:33

      I don’t think Hamilton really had a choice… he ran wide at Turn 1 to avoid the collision between Vettel and the Bulls, and was in the process of giving the places back when Kvyat steamed into Vettel halfway through Turn 3.

    4. agree with both points, hamilton should have been asked to return those positions. Lets all be honest here he took advantage of the situation. I think that in this scenario it should have been penalised, nothing as serious as a time penalty but just return the positions he took by going off track during that safety car period.

      1. That was Lewis’ luck for the weekend. And a bit ironic that it handed him a reprimand the day before. I found it pretty entertaining. But probably not as entertaining as listening to the Merc boss(es) try to make it look like Lewis was on equal footing with his teammate.

        Lewis has a problem, his power unit might fail, Nico has a problem, he has to adjust his fuel map. Comedy really.

        1. Well that migh be part of the explanation of why after 3-4(or more) laps with pretty even lap times HAM started to gain on ROS quite a bit every lap.

      2. Yeah, he took advantage of a race situation, rather than colliding or getting smashed and satisfying what you wanted. You should ask him to apologise personally!

  10. Michal (@michal2009b)
    1st May 2016, 15:29

    It’s good they are changing the cars for 2017, otherwise we would have been stuck with results like today’s till 2020.

  11. Hamilton made up 5 places un turn one by running off track. His return to the track led to vettels crash, how on earth was hamilton no penalised?????? This was the most blatent case of not sticking to track limits, he short cut!!

    1. His return to the track lead to crash? Are you feeling ok?

      1. He’s right… Vettel used his X Ray vision & saw Lewis coming, & stood on the brakes… but his brakes didn’t work. Everybody knows Russians aren’t allowed to have X Ray vision, so obviously Kvyat couldn’t see through cars like Vettel can… Russians are pretty tough though, so maybe that’s why Kvyat thrice tried to punt Seb out of the way… either way though, it’s pretty clear that it’s that brat Hamilton’s fault…

        1. Exactly – Just like it was Kimi’s fault last time! =8-! ;o)

  12. Well, I for one enjoyed the race. Was eventful, I think people are over reacting to Kyvat, but it’s a pity it took Vettel out of the race.

    I think Bottas spent much of the early race over achieving. Clearly the Mercedes was a much quicker car. I think he did well to hang on as long as he did.

    Great recovery for Lewis, it was about time he had some luck on his side.
    Rosberg is doing everything he needs to do so far, I look forward to seeing him and Lewis battle.

    You can see how strong the Mercedes engine is at this track, but even so, Red Bull were well down on pace.

    Good result for Haas.

    1. I tend to see things as racing incidents, but damn. He hit him three (3) times within 200m? That surely is a big cock-up

  13. Toto wolf telling tales about Nikos car is not going to lay the conspirancy theorists to rest

    1. You got Inside knowlegde? How do You get to such a conclusion….?

    2. MG421982 (@)
      1st May 2016, 16:37

      Yup, true that. HAM just have to mirror Senna’s carreer 100%. Whenever Senna had the best car on the grid… everything was so great, best driver ever OR the team is favouring the team mate etc, when another team came up with something better and had a caliber driver behind the wheel to make everything line up perfectly, like Benneton+Schumacher in 1994… Senna said “hey, they’re cheating, I heard some strange noises from the engine, that’s why they’re beating me”. Go figure, Honda’s engine sounded/sounds “weird” too compared to the other engines, but nobody complained about it… ’cause it’s the least performant. Just think what HAM would have said if Honda’s engine would have been the best right from the start…

  14. Big Mag (@)
    1st May 2016, 16:38

    By getting in the point Kevin Magnussen may have earned the team more money than hes yearly salary. Well done Kevin.

    1. Hahaha, that was a really good point you made there! ;o)
      Do you think the cash awarded for the points also adds up to more than what Palmer’s dad/relations amounts to or the cash that Sirotkin puts on the table?
      Still surprised that it was Magnussen (considered Renault’s most experienced driver) that had to give up his seat on the Friday for a test driver to play around. One would think that doing everything possible in prepping to get the max out of their car on the Sunday would be priority #1.

      1. Big Mag (@)
        1st May 2016, 23:12

        Maybe Kevin will be rewarded in Spain. Ocon is driving on the Friday practice, so maybe Kevin can relax in hes chair all day eating Haribo sweets. (Irony intended)

        1. Thought Kevin was more into Hundeprutter, Mågeklatter, Tissebleer, Ørevoks, Kloakslam and Andemad from Bonbon?

  15. It never rains but it pours.

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