Hamilton holds off Rosberg to win 4th straight in Spain

Lewis Hamilton will be the 2014 World Champion. His Mercedes is superior and he has the measure of his teammate

Lewis Hamilton held off pressure from his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg by 0.6s to win his 4th straight F1 race at the Spanish GP. Once again the superior Mercedes cars led 100% of the laps and even lapped the 7th place Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen. What an insult in Maranello.

Daniel Ricciardo was 50 seconds behind in third in his red Bull Renault. 50 seconds behind and he is driving a Red Bull! It was the first ever F1 podium for the Australian rookie after losing a podium in Australia because of a penalty.

Sebastian Vettel finished 4th after starting way back in 15th in the Red Bull lemon. The four-time world title winner produced a sensational performance to climb from 15th on the grid to finish only one place behind his teammate.

Red Bull pitted Vettel early to get him out of sequence with the rest, and the German made full use of an aggressive three-stop strategy to climb the order on fresher tires, producing some aggressive overtaking moves to pass.

Valtteri Bottas rounded out the top-5 for Williams.

Much to the delight of the Spanish crowd, Fernando Alonso finished 6th by passing his Ferrari teammate Raikkonen with 2 laps to go

Nico Rosberg believes that he might have been able to pass Lewis Hamilton and win the Spanish Grand Prix had the race been one lap longer, after finishing just 0.6 seconds behind the Briton in second place today.

Hamilton won the race from pole position, but he came under significant pressure from Rosberg in the dying stages of the race as the German driver caught up on quicker tires. Despite getting within DRS range, he was never close enough to try and make a pass, but he believes that a 67th lap could have provided this.

"I think one more, to be honest," Rosberg explained on the podium after the race. “One more, I could have given it a good go.

"I wasn’t close enough to give it a go there, but next lap I would have. But unfortunately that was it.

"A bit gutted, but still, second place, still close in the championship and many more races to go anyway."

More to follow…..

Mark C. reporting

Results

Fastest Lap: Sebastian Vettel 1m28.918s on lap 55