It was an eventful 1st race of the 2016 season from the start, with the 2 Ferrari’s of Vettel and Raikkonen squeezing through the 2 Mercedes. Hamilton came off worse, dropping down to 7th from pole position after a disastrous start. All would change on lap 19, a huge crash between McLaren`s Fernando Alonso and Haas’s Esteban Gutierrez saw the red flags brought out and the race stopped, thankfully both drivers walked away. There was a 20 minute break whilst they cleared the debris saw some teams re-evaluate their strategy.
Ferrari kept their drivers on the Supersoft tyre whilst Mercedes changed their drivers to the Medium compound. Soon after the restart saw Raikkonen retire with a suspected turbo failure with fire visible in his Ferrari’s airbox. As the race progressed saw Vettel having to stop again for new tyres which allowed Rosberg, Ricciardo and Hamilton to overtake him.The last part of the race saw Rosberg extend his lead to 10 seconds over his team mate, who was protecting his place from a surging Vettel.
With 2 laps to go a small error by Vettel gave Hamilton the breathing space he needed to finish in 2nd and Vettel taking 3rd. Ricciardo took 4th in front of his home crowd, Massa finished in 5th place whilst Grosjean finished in 6th, scoring points for new team Haas in their debut race. Force India’s Hulkenburg took 7th with Bottas taking 8th in the second Williams and the 2 Torro Rosso’s of Sainz and Verstappen rounded off the top 10.
