Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Wolff: 'Nico at his best' in Bahrain

40

Toto Wolff says Nico Rosberg was "at his best" in the Bahrain Grand Prix despite only finishing third in the race.

Rosberg started from third place and dropped to fourth at the start before fighting his way past both Ferraris at Turn 1 later in the race. Rosberg actually had to pass Sebastian Vettel on three occasions due to strategy but lost out to Kimi Raikkonen on the penultimate lap as a result of a brake-by-wire failure. Wolff says the attacking drive showed both Rosberg and the sport at its best, which tempered the disappointment of Mercedes missing out on a one-two.

"It was a good race and the changes we put on the car after a hard Friday into qualifying proved to be the right ones," Wolff said. "The car was the quickest car out there on both tyres and nevertheless it’s a pity … first of all we must be happy with one and three, no doubt about it, but losing second place with Nico, everybody who ever doubted Nico saw Nico at his best, fighting hard and overtaking.

"Losing that position because of a brake failure is a bit of a pity, but all in all a one, three must be satisfactory and that is Formula One at its best I would say."

With Lewis Hamilton also suffering the same brake issue, Wolff confirms Mercedes will have to take a different approach in future races.

"It is never one single solution, so you try to tackle the problem that we had on the Friday and the Saturday afternoon with a couple of adjustments. One of them was linked to the capability of brake wear, so in hindsight and knowing that this caused a problem and nearly cost us the race and P2 we will probably look at things again and do things differently in the future."

Click here for analysis of the development war between Ferrari and Mercedes

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.