ABU DHABI GP – Rosberg holds off Hamilton in a fair and free fight
Nico Rosberg held of Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to take victory at the season’s finale in Abu Dhabi. Rosberg took control of the race from the start holding of Hamilton in throughout the race forcing the brit to change strategy around his stop.
Hamilton tried using the softer tyres to try and catch his team-mate by using a different strategy but Rosberg had enough to catch him and hold him off in the closing stages. Rosberg tried to pit later giving Hamilton the chance to change his strategy.
Hamilton considered changing his strategy which the team left to him with his race engineer Peter Bonnington putting him on the soft tyres for his last run. However he later decided to switch to fresher softer tyres to match Rosberg’s plan.
He told the BBC “In hindsight, once Nico pitted I probably would have backed off and made the tyres go a lot longer. The tyres were fine at the end and I think I could have made them last. Going long was probably not the best thing to do but we gave it a try and I did the best I could.”
This didn’t pay off as he got caught up in traffic towards the end of the race which allowed Rosberg to re-open his gap to Hamilton winning the race by just over eight seconds.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen finished third ahead of Sebastian Vettel which allowed him to take fourth beating his Finnish countryman Valtteri Bottas in the championship. It was also an impressive drive from Vettel would started fifteenth and may show Ferrari’s potential for 2016.
Sergio Perez once again put a good performance in for Force India finishing fifth ahead of the Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo who tried but failed to pass the Mexican.
Nico Hulkenberg finished ahead of Felipe Massa in seventh and Romain Grosjean on his last outing for Lotus. Danill Kyvat rounded out the top ten taking the final point for Red Bull.
It was an interesting race between the Toro Rosso drivers, who fought with each other but it was Carlos Sainz who was the victor after Max Verstappen made a mistake causing a lock up and an extra stop. Verstappen also was given a penalty for ignoring blue flags (meaning the leaders are coming through.)
McLaren had another miserable race after Fernando Alonso hit Pastor Maldonado earning himself a drive through penalty. Alonso says he was pushed into the Venezuelan by Felipe Nasr. The Spaniard finished seventeenth.
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