Rosberg: “One more lap” and he would have passed Hamilton

The 2014 Spanish Grand Prix race was once again summed up at the front by a battle between Lewis Hamilton’s and Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes cars. And as in the previous four races, it ultimately swung to the Briton’s advantage, in a different style this time as he had to withstand the constant pressure from Nico Rosberg in the last 10 laps.

The German, precisely, failed six-tenths short of victory, in Hamilton’s exhausts. But then, how many more laps did he need to pass Hamilton? « One more, I think, to be honest. I could have overtaken him. I wasn’t close enough, but with one more lap, I would have been. I’m a bit disappointed, » he says as reported by Autosport. « I was close, and at turn 10 of the last lap, I could have attempted a kamikaze move, but it wouldn’t have worked, so no extra points. »

A second place that signifies the loss of the championship leadership. A large part of the race was played at the start, where Rosberg failed to threaten No. 44: « The start was bad, unfortunately. It’s a bit of a weakness I have at the moment. Three bad starts in a row, and it cost me dearly. It’s not good, and we need to work on it. » Indeed, in Bahrain notably, despite a pole position, the German was unable to keep the lead at the start of the first corner.

Despite everything, he believes that everything was good, particularly the choice of a two-stop strategy with medium/hard/medium tires: « The race pace was good, the best thing to do was to change the strategies, and it worked perfectly. But it’s really a difficult track to get close to the guy in front. »

He is determined to do better and beat his teammate: « Lewis did a great job all weekend and was a bit ahead, but there’s a lot of positives to take from that. I am fully motivated to find that little extra and get ahead of him next time, it’s doable. »