Nico Rosberg took a dominant victory in the inaugural F1 race in Baku on Sunday, the location for the 2016 European Grand Prix, taking the chequered flag seventeen seconds ahead of the Scuderia Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel.
The German advised that he had the perfect car to drive out there, which made the race an absolute dream for him.
“I really felt at one with the car in a way I’ve never felt before. I didn’t have the feeling that something would go wrong at any point today. The car was awesome this weekend, so thank you so much to the team for this.
“I already began to sense it in qualifying yesterday, this perfect feeling. We expected a Safety Car moment in this race, so I was hoping that it wouldn’t happen as that tends to mess up the race in general. But it was a pretty straightforward afternoon for me at the front.”
Like Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team-mate Lewis Hamilton, Rosberg also had an engine setting issue which left him down on power mid race. Fortunately for the German, he was able to find the source of the issue relatively quickly, after changing into that setting himself and therefore knowing what needed to be switched back more or less immediately.
“There was only one little concern when I felt that I was down on power a bit in the middle of the race. The engineers weren’t allowed to tell me what I had to do, so I had a look at my steering wheel and tried to fix it myself, which worked out well.
Rosberg has turned the tides once again in the championship race, taking the gap back up to 24 points from closest rival and team-mate Hamilton, giving the German the firm upper hand as we head to Austria in two weeks’ time.
