Shanghai: Lewis Hamilton roared to victory at the Chinese Grand Prix but sparked a furious blast from Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg as their long-running feud reignited on Sunday.
The Briton made it two wins out of three races this year after the cars came home behind the safety car, with Rosberg second and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel finishing in third.
Rosberg, who reacted angrily to his near-miss in qualifying by snapping at mechanics, at one point demanded over the radio that Hamilton speed up as Vettel closed in behind him.
“I wasn’t controlling his race, I was controlling my own race,” shrugged Hamilton, when asked about orders to pick up his pace. “I had no real threat from Nico through the whole race.”
An infuriated Rosberg shot back: “It’s interesting to hear from you, Lewis, that you were just thinking about yourself.
“Driving slower than was really necessary at the beginning of stints opened up the opportunity for Sebastian to try to jump me,” added the German, still hopping mad.
“It compromised my race.”
World champion Hamilton extended his record number of wins in China to four, but victory was overshadowed by his latest spat with Rosberg.
“It’s not my job to look after Nico’s race,” insisted Hamilton, when offered the chance to respond to Rosberg’s accusation.
“My job is to manage the car and bring the car home as healthy and as fast as possible. And that’s what I did.”
The pair’s rivalry boiled over last year when Rosberg drove into Hamilton in Belgium, and Mercedes will be anxious to avoid any further bad blood spilling over to next weekend’s Bahrain race.
No points for Force India in Shanghai
Meanwhile,Sahara Force India returned without points for the second successive race as Sergio Perez finished 11th and Nico Hulkenberg did not finish the Chinese Grand Prix, here on Sunday.
After beginning with seven points from the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Force India have missed out on top-10 finish in Malaysia and now in Shanghai.
Perez though did a good job by getting close t o points bracket after starting 15th from the grid.
“We raced very hard today, but in the end it wasn’t quite enough to come away with some points. With the strategy we looked at all the opportunities and switched to three stops quite early in the race, which was the right decision. I was able to push hard all the time with the aggressive strategy and fight with the cars ahead of me,” Perez said.
“We are still not where we want to be in terms of competitiveness, but there are definitely some positives to take because we made an improvement compared to our performance in Malaysia,” the Mexican added. Hulkenberg, who was in race for just 10 laps, said,”It is disappointing to end the race early.” “It would have been interesting to see how our race would have developed because I made some good progress on the opening lap when I went around the outside of a few cars and then got a good run at Kvyat, which put me up in P12. We had the pace to keep up with the Toro Rossos and Saubers,” he added. (Agencies)
