Rosberg celebrates wildly as he pulls in – jumping up on the front of his car, arms aloft, shouting ‘come on!’ He then tries a bit of crowd surfing following a courteous handshake from Hamilton.
It started promisingly with the overtake on the first turn and there were slight concerns from Rosberg towards the end due to vibration problems but for the most part that was quite a dull spectacle. Still, another race win for Rosberg has livened up the championship considerably and on we go to Silverstone where Hamilton will be desperate on his home track. Thanks for reading – bye!
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NICO ROSBERG WINS THE AUSTRIAN GP!
Lap 71: Rosberg wins to reduce the gap to 10 points. Hamilton is second. Massa manages third to seal his first podium of the season. Vettel comes fourth. Bottas is fifth.
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Lap 70: We are into the final lap as Rosberg laps Verstappen and Maldonado but Hamilton is only 2.4sec behind him. The flag is coming just in time for the German driver!
Lap 69: Vettel is 0.5sec behind Massa now but we only have two more laps to come. Rosberg’s lead is 4.2sec and he should be fine despite those concerns.
Lap 68: Hamilton is gaining on Rosberg, who says he wants all eyes on his front tyre. His fears are allayed over the radio – the pits reckon his car is fine but he sound quite worried.
Lap 67: Hamilton is 5sec behind minus his 5sec penalty and despite Rosberg’s vibrations complaint, he does not appear to be slowing.
Lap 66: Now Rosberg is complaining of bad vibrations! Five laps remaining – it couldn’t go pear shaped now, could it?
Lap 65: Perez, in ninth, is complaining of bad vibrations. Somebody call the Beach Boys!
Lap 64: In more interesting news, Vettel is only one second behind Massa in third no! Who is going to spray the champagne? The German may not have enough laps to get in front of the Williams car.
Lap 63: To give you an idea of how dull this race has become, TV footage is now focusing on the battle for 7th!
Lap 62: Ricciardo has overtaken Nasr and is into 10th place. Maldonado sits in eighth and has Verstappen in his sights.
Lap 61: Quite.
@alansmith90 on a scale of 1-10 how bored are you right now!
— Fin Fin.. (@FinForThaWin) June 21, 2015
Lap 59: Rosberg leads by over six seconds from Hamilton, who is 15sec in front of Massa discounting the 5sec penalty he will incur at the end.
Lap 58: Vettel is 1.8sec behind Massa.
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Lap 57: Vroooom.
Lap 56: There is a good battle developing for the final podium spot – Vettel continues to close the gap on Massa; it’s now a little over 2sec.
Lap 53: I am still here but unfortunately there is not much to report. Although way back in eighth, Maldonado has passed Ricciardo.
*waves* at @alansmith90 who is probably nodding off
— pitflaps (@pitflaps) June 21, 2015
Lap 51: Twenty laps to go! Rosberg’s lead is 6.4 sec, Hamilton is 16sec clear of Massa in third. After a dramatic opening lap, it’s all been a bit tame.
Lap 48: Massa is 2.5sec clear of Vettel in third after the terrible Ferrari stop but the German is driving faster.
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Lap 46: Kvyat pits for a second time, while his team-mate Ricciardo still hasn’t come in.
Lap 44: Raikonnen, mumbling disappointingly, is asked if he had any medical issues after his crash. His answer: “No.” End of story.
Lap 42: Hamilton is over 5.5sec behind Rosberg now and 17sec clear of Massa. He is quite unhappy, as you can imagine.
Lap 41: As Hamilton was getting his penalty, Grosjean also departed. We’ve only 13 cars left out there.
Lap 40: Barring a disaster, it looks to be Rosberg’s race. Hamilton should be second despite the penalty – Massa and Vettel are too far behind to challenge.
Lap 39: Five second penalty for Hamilton! And Sainz becomes this sixth retiree of the race.
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Lap 38: Oh dear! Hamilton is under investigation for crossing the line at the pit exit. This could be very problematic for the world champion.
Lap 37: Vettel has an awful stop – over 13sec – due to a problem with his rear right tyre and he drops to fourth place.
Lap 36: Rosberg has also posted a fastest lap of 1:11.2 to see him overtake his team-mate and it very much appears to be as you were before they pitted.
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Lap 35: Hamilton is 19.2sec in front of Rosberg – but he comes in to the pits and makes it out after 3.1sec.
Lap 33: Rosberg pits. It’s a very good 2.7sec and he comes out in fourth. Hamilton leads but has yet to stop.
Lap 32: Make that 2.2. Hamilton is flying now!
Lap 31: Hamilton has reduced the gap to 2.7sec.
Lap 29: Sainz gets a five second penalty for speeding. He is unlikely to stop again, so it will be docked from his finishing time.
Lap 28: Sainz is under investigation for speeding in the pit lane. Bottas and Verstappen almost collide when the Williams pulls out and almost crosses in front of the Toro Rosso car.
A brief and very disappointing #AustrianGP for the team. Time to get our heads down for testing and Silverstone. More info to follow.
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) June 21, 2015
Lap 26: Bottas passes Hulkenberg to move into fifth. The latter and Sainz both pit and move to soft tyres.
Lap 25: Rosberg is four seconds ahead!
Lap 24: Jenson Button on his DNF: “It’s been a pretty bad weekend for all of us but we won’t let it get us down … we have to be positive still, we have to keep everyone positive and geed up. We’re doing all we can to stay strong and hopefully Silverstone will be better.”
Lap 22: Almost a third of the way through, that gap is up to 2.7sec. We should see the first pit stops soon.
Lap 20: Rosberg sets the fastest lap of the race so far and the gap has become 2.4sec.
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Lap 18: Rosberg is a smidgen quicker than Hamilton and the gap is now 1.88. Kvyat has a bodywork issue towards the rear of the pack.
Lap 16: Bottas has made his way past Verstappen and into sixth place. Hamilton is now only 1.8sec behind, gradually closing the gap.
Lap 15: The Alonso-Raikonnen incident will be investigated after the race. On the track, the order remains the same.
Lap 13: Hamilton’s lap is faster than Rosberg’s by .1sec – so at least he’s closing the gap, eh?
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Lap 12: Button is back in the pits and is off for an early shower – though you could say he might not actually need one having spent only 20 minutes on the track.
Lap 11: Rosberg’s lead is now 2.3sec clear of Hamilton, who is also increasing his gap to Vettel in third.
Lap 9: What a terrible weekend for McLaren again – Button’s race looks to be over, they are clearing a space for him in the pits. Struggling to think how things could get much worse.
Lap 8: Sainz and Grosjean did touch cars but hard to see if one is to blame. Jenson Button is in trouble too – his car is just not up for it today.
Lap 7: Rosberg maintains his lead – 1.5sec in front of his team-mate. Back in 9th and 10th, Sainz and Grosjean almost collide.
Lap 6: Safety car is still out … but the lights are out so we are about to race again!
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Lap 5: Safety car is still out but both cars have been lifted over the barrier so we should be back racing in the next lap – I hope, for watching them line up behind a slower grey car with orange lights is quite tedious.
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Lap 4: The safety car remains out as the wreckage is being cleared by an army of men. Rosberg, Hamilton, Vettel, Massa, Hulkenberg are the leading five.
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Lap 3: Will Stevens is out of the race – it looks to be a mechancial fault as he drives into the grass and stops. That’s three of the 20 drivers already out of the race.
Lap 2: Both Alonso and Raikonnen are walking off – replays show that Alonso clipped the back of Raikonnen’s car leading to a very dramatic collision indeed. Kvyat is into the pits with the safety car out having broken his front wing. Rosberg leads behind the safety car, with Hamilton perched immediately behind.
Go! Go! Go!
1 lap: We are away in the eighth race of the season. Rosberg starts brilliantly and around the first turn he overtakes Hamilton! Behind them, Raikonnen and Alonso have crashed, with the latter’s car sat on top of the former’s car. Both drivers have climbed out and look to be OK. The safety car is out.
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Almost set! The final preparations have been completed and the cars are about to set off on their formation lap.
An email! From Elliot Wilson, on Hamilton’s taste in music.
Lewis Hamilton is into, I’m guessing, Thomaten und Beeren, a sort of tangerine dream style rock joint from Swiss Germany. Saw them at the Cully jazz festival this year and they were bonzer. Or he could be into Jacques Brel?
He is more likely to have this on his Spotify playlist before races:
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I’m watching this on a broken TV where the sound keeps skipping and the footage keeps flickering – cough, IT department get a move on, cough – so here is a musical interlude before the race begins.
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Behind the Mercedes procession in qualifying yesterday, Kimi Raikkonen got hot and bothered and blamed a lack of communication for his early exit. The Ferrari driver was knocked out in the first session having been caught out in preparing for a final quick lap. And he took to the team radio to ask “How the fuck did that happen?” He starts way back in 14th.
Here is a picture of Lewis Hamilton playing the drums – but can he play as well as Slim Borgudd, who not only scored a grand total of one point during his time in F1 but also smacked some snares and crashed some cymbals for some band called Abba?
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Preamble
Lewis Hamilton likes pole position. Today he takes his spot at the front of the grid for the 45th time in his F1 career. It is his seventh pole in the past eight races. And it is entirely unsurprising that it is Nico Rosberg who sits immediately behind him.
Everybody knows it was was a two-car race for the championship before the season even started in Australia back in March, but at least that duel has been fascinating thus far – though another win for Hamilton here would open up a gap that could well be considerable. The constructors championship is a done deal, not that anybody within the Mercedes camp will mention that despite having a 105 point lead over Ferrari.
The drivers will have to undertake 71 laps of this 4.326km track. The lap record is 1:08.337sec – set by Michael Schumacher in 2003.
While we wait, here is Paul Weaver’s report from yesterday’s dramatic qualifying session.
Lewis Hamilton’s strutting domination of the 2015 Formula One season continued when he won his seventh pole position in eight attempts, despite spinning off the track. The two-times world champion has failed to win three of the seven races to date but another victory was thrown away in Monaco, where he bestrode the weekend only to be denied at the end by his team’s poor decision-making.
Some pointless and unrelated film nonsense: today’s race takes place in Spielberg near the birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
