Niki Lauda says he feels for Nico Rosberg after his title hopes were all but ended by reliability issues in the Russian Grand Prix.
Rosberg held the upper hand over Lewis Hamilton throughout Saturday to take pole position, and held off his team-mate at the start of the race to lead during an early safety car period. However, Rosberg then complained of a throttle problem which started costing him time and forced him to retire after he twice ran wide in hard braking zones.
“I feel really upset and sad for him because when you are in the lead and you can win a race and you lose it like this, it’s bad,” Lauda told F1i. “But we have to find out what the cause was - I know it was a throttle pedal problem - we’ve got to fix it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Saying Hamilton is doing “a perfect job”, Lauda admits he has been impressed by how settled Mercedes has been this season as it defended its constructors’ championship.
“Yeah, this is what we all try to do - everybody here - to be better than last year and it is going very well, I can’t complain.
“It’s the same thing again [in 2016], but every challenge after you won is even harder because if you want to get better and better you have to get better and better. This is the same in any work or sport or wherever.”
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AS IT HAPPENED: Russian Grand Prix
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