Spielberg, Austria: Nico Rosberg celebrated his 30th birthday with a third win in four races on Sunday when he beat Mercedes teammate and series leader Lewis Hamilton to triumph in an incident-filled Austrian Grand Prix.
The German driver, who left his twenties behind on Saturday, repeated his 2014 success when he came home a comfortable 3.8 seconds clear of the defending world champion and reduced his lead from 17 points to 10.
After eight of this year’s 19 races, Briton Hamilton, who picked up a five seconds penalty in the race, has 169 and Rosberg, who won last year’s Austrian event, 159. It was Rosberg’s third win of the season and the 11th of his career.
Brazilian Felipe Massa came third, 17 seconds adrift of the two Mercedes men, six-tenths of a second ahead of four-time champion Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari, Finn Valtteri Bottas in the second Williams and German Nico Hulkenberg, who one week after winning in the Le Mans 24 Hours race, finished sixth for Force India.
Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado was seventh for Lotus ahead of Dutch teenager Max Verstappen of Toro Rosso, Mexican Sergio Perez in the second Force India and Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who picked up a point for Red Bull, after starting down the grid.
The race began with drama as Rosberg sped into a first corner lead and almost immediately a spectacular collision between two-time champion Fernando Alonso and 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen caused the race to be halted with the introduction of a safety car.
Alonso’s car landed on top of Raikkonen’s car. Both drivers were unhurt and walked away, shaken but not injured.
It was another hugely disappointing day for the struggling McLaren-Honda team. On top of Alonso’s first lap crash, Briton Jenson Button had to make an early retirement in the other car with engine problems.
In dry and mild conditions in the Styrian Alps, Rosberg made a perfect start as the lights went out, drawing alongside pole-sitter Hamilton to take the lead at the first corner.
The world champion attempted to regain the lead at the next two turns, but Rosberg defended adroitly while, behind them, a serious collision involving Raikkonen and Alonso caused the race to be stopped and run behind the safety car until the debris was cleared.
Alonso’s McLaren Honda appeared to crash into Raikkonen’s Ferrari from the rear and rose to land on top of the Finn’s car as they skewed into the barriers. Both men were unhurt and walked clear from the debris.
Button saw the crash. He said: “It looked like Kimi tried to get on the power, went one way, tried to correct and went the other way... A horrible accident. I’m glad they are OK. A pity for us, as it’ll make the test a lot trickier next week.”
Briton Will Stevens of Manor Marussia also retired with an oil leak on the opening lap and, after the hiatus for the safety car, when the racing resumed, the rest of the field trod delicately to avoid more mayhem.
At the front, Rosberg managed a comfortable 2.8 seconds lead ahead of Hamilton with Vettel third, but more than six seconds adrift, ahead of Massa and Hulkenberg. By lap 30, as the two Mercedes men began lapping the field, they were more than 12 seconds clear of Vettel’s Ferrari and in a race of their own.
Button, fighting his dejection, made a wry observation on his retirement and McLaren’s woes. “I don’t know what’s worse: doing the whole race 30 seconds behind the back of the field or stopping on lap two.
“It’s a pity, reliability-wise. We haven’t broken anything, but there was something wrong and it could’ve gone that way so that’s why we stopped.” Alonso’s car, which was running with an updated package, was “now in the bin”, said Button.
He added: “It’s been a pretty bad weekend for all of us, but we won’t let it get us down.”
Alonso was required to undertake a medical examination after which he said: “It was obviously quite scary. The start was very good. Kimi had a lot of wheel spin out of turn two. We were overtaking him and he lost the car on the left.
“I was on the left. I could not see anything. I looked in the mirror and saw a car under my car. I jumped quickly to see he was OK. I saw he was - and so I was happy.”
The leaders made their scheduled pit stops after 33 and 34 laps respectively, Hamilton crossing a white line as he exited, for which he was given a five-second penalty. Behind them, Vettel lost time when his right rear wheel caused problems at his stop.
