After perhaps the most exciting race from the start of this year´s season, Hamilton managed to put just enough pressure on teammate Roosberg for him to make not just one but two mistakes at exactly the same place. But the race itself proved to be a very exciting one with several drivers passing the mid train after the exciting start that saw Hamilton and Bottas loose several positions and had to then repass to recover some points.
Roosberg played his cards right at the start and managed to stretch a gap over a good starting Massa with the Williams that held Hamilton back for a few laps. Bottas was the other victim of a bad start but landed way back in the order and was the man who brought a series of agressive moves to overtake the train of drivers fighting for the forth place. Serious names in hand, with Vettel, Alonso, Button, Magnusen just to mention a few, fought intensely until the first and for most the only stop came along to sort the order but not the level of the battle.
Then came the first error on Roosberg´s race at the end of the main straight where he missed the all important braking point and had to go straight through the chicane without loosing position but loosing time to what Hamilton responded with a series of fast laps to cut the difference even further. After the round of stops, the difference between the leading two was merely the same and despite the engineers telling Hamilton over the radio to keep a 2 second gap, save the tires and attack at the end of the race, the Brit kept on putting pressure on Roosberg until he missed the braking point once again but without a big advantage over his teammate, there was nothig he could do to prevent him from snatching the race lead.
Vettel was the early pitter on lap 19 of 53, which in the moment allowed him to move up the order to 4th but with a difficult position to hold his tires together for 33 laps! It seemed he would make it work but the fight in the back continued and Bottas, despite loosing positions again after his pit stop, recoverd with a series of overtaking moves to wrestle his way past Vettel for 4th place where he finished. So it seemed at that point of the race that Vettel would end up 5th but an unexpected character came from way back with tires a few laps younger and with a strong character to pass the train of drivers and catch up his teammate and pass him with a very agressive and clean move to claim 5th.
Alonso had electrical problems with his Ferrari and had to abandon the race, Raikkonen caught up with the group by the end of the race but had no time to try a pass so a really terrible result and loosing 3rd place in the constructors championship to Williams. Magnussen had a 5 second stop and go penalty for driving Bottas out of the race track to hold position but the duo that really stealed the spotlights was formed by Perez in the Force India and Button in the McLaren, they had a very long fight with tires inches away through turns of all sorts, chicanes or anything that came along switching positions until the Force India driver finally managed to hold him off to the checkered flag.
Kvyatt did an amazing job and was strongly coming behind Ricciardo but lost his brakes at the end of the main straight just managing to ellude colliding Raikkonen in an incredible save and managing his pace to the checkered flag in 11th followed by Hulkenberg, Vergne, Maldonado, Sutil, Grosjean and an inspired Kobayashi who again proved a point beating the Marussias and his teammate once again.
Next stop is Singapure on September 21st.