Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

'What?! Seriously?' - Hamilton recovery surprises Rosberg

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Nico Rosberg admits he was surprised to see team-mate Lewis Hamilton recover as high as third place in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Hamilton started from 21st on the grid as a result of power unit penalties, with Toto Wolff expecting a difficult race for the championship leader as Mercedes had struggled with its tyres throughout the weekend. However, a chaotic opening lap and fortunate red flag period helped promote Hamilton to fifth after the opening ten laps, with the triple world champion going on to finish third.

DRIVER RATINGS: Belgian Grand Prix

Asked if he was surprised Hamilton was as high as fifth when the race was restarted on lap 10, race-winner Rosberg admits the final result I surprised him.

"[P5 after the red flag] I didn’t see," Rosberg said. "I just saw the result at the end and I saw that Daniel was behind me and HAM was in P3 and I was like ‘What?! Seriously?’ But I didn’t know until after the race where he was."

Despite his surprise, Rosberg insists he does not feel disappointed that he is leaving Belgium having only taken ten points out of Hamilton's championship lead.

"That’s not what I’m focusing on. I came to the Belgium Grand Prix wanting to win it and the opposition was unusually close this weekend. Not eventually in the race, but up until then they were very close, but it worked out with a perfect weekend for me and Lewis did a great job to finish third."

Hamilton's 60-place grid penalty was mainly a result of taking three new power units, leaving him with more available than Rosberg is due to have this season, but the German does not see it as an advantage for his team-mate.

"I don’t think about it in that way, but I’m aware of it yes. But he had the big disadvantage today, so I don’t think about it in that way and I’m just focusing on my thing and that’s it. I don’t think it will make a big difference after this."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.