A fluffed start cost Nico Rosberg the chance of giving team-mate Lewis Hamilton more of a challenge than he did at Spa-Francorchamps, with the German driver eager to find out what went wrong.
Rosberg dropped from his second position on the grid to sixth heading into turn one, but made his way past Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas on track, before finding time in the pit stop cycle to pass both Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez, but could not make up the deficit to his Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team-mate Hamilton to fight for the win.
“Unfortunately I messed up the start,” said Rosberg. “Maybe the extra warm up lap had an influence on that – we need to find out what exactly happened but, in any case, I definitely have to improve that for Monza.
“Because of this I had to play catch up, which worked out well to a point. I managed to be second again and also was able to close the gap to Lewis a bit – but I didn’t get a chance to come within overtaking distance.
“He deserved the win today and it was also a great result for the team. The car they gave us was awesome here, so thank you to them for that.
“Hopefully we can have the same level of performance in the next races. I’ll be pushing as hard as ever for sure.”
