Nico
Rosberg gained a foothold in the Formula One title race by securing his
first victory of the season Sunday in the Spanish Grand Prix in
Barcelona.
Rosberg has been a
frustrated bystander while Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton claimed
three of the opening four races of the 2015 campaign, but was never
headed after starting from pole at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Hamilton finished second, prevailing
in his own private battle with Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, a poor start
and botched first pit stop ending any hope of challenging Rosberg.
Britain's
Hamilton had to adopt a three-stop strategy, "plan B" as his engineer
relayed, to get the better of Vettel and has a 20-point lead over
Rosberg in the championship race.
Vettel is a further 11 points adrift after finishing a distant third, over 45 seconds behind the winner.
Fernando
Alonso's return to his home track, scene of his worrying crash in
pre-season testing, ended in what he described as "scary" fashion when
the brakes gave out on his McLaren-Honda.
It was left to his pit crew to bravely bring the car to a halt as he was forced to retire.
"I had no brakes for the whole in-lap, and for the pit stop it was even less," admitted the Spaniard.
Vettel's
teammate Kimi Raikonnen finished fifth, sandwiched between the Williams
pair of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa in fourth and sixth.
Daniel
Ricciardo (Red Bull), Romain Grosjean for Lotus, Carlos Sainz Jr. (Toro
Rosso) and Daniil Kvyat (Red Bull) rounded out the points scoring
positions.