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2014.01.aust r a l i a • melbourne • season opener • rosberg cool
ILLUSTRATED • mercedes set pace
australia
rosberg strikes first
CONTENTS the australian grand prix edition 06
walk in the park
08
australian grand prix result
26
championship standings
28
tricky qualifying
34
great to be back in the car
38
big pictures from melbourne
86
final frame
FIRST WORD
2014.01.aust r a l i a
Finally the waiting was over and the all Formula 1 V6 turbo era got underway at the opening round of the 2014 F1 World Championship in Melbourne. From the outset it was clear that Mercedes had the upper hand, while their main rivals seemed to be playing catch up. Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton sensed the opportunity to maximise their advantage and did so throughout the weekend - the pair slugged it out for top spot of the timing sheets in FP2, FP3 and qualifying and there was little to separate them. In the race Rosberg made a rapid start from row two on the grid, and led into Turn 1. For teammate Hamilton it was a short race as he was called in to retire the car early on with an engine problem. At the front Rosberg did not put a foot wrong and powererd to what was an easy victory, his fourth career grand prix win. Here we present the story of Rosberg’s victorious 2014 Australian Grand Prix weekend in his own words.
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Formula 1 world championship Round 1, australian GRAND PRIX albert park, melbourne 16 MARCH 2014
walk in the park for rosberg 1
Nico Rosberg
2
Kevin Magnussen
McLaren
3
Jenson Button
McLaren
4
Fernando Alonso
Ferrari
5
Valtteri Bottas
Williams
6
Nico Hulkenberg
Force India
7
Kimi RäikkÜnen
Ferrari
8
Jean-Eric Vergne
Toro Rosso
9
Daniil Kvyat
Toro Rosso
10
Sergio Perez
force india
Mercedes
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GRAND PRIX
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“What a car you have given me!” T
he proverbial headline “it was a walk in the Albert Park for Nico Rosberg” was inevitable after the German capitalised on the early retirement of pole winner and Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, and with consumate ease proceeded to notch up an historic Australian Grand Prix win - the first race of the Formula 1 V6 turbo era and Round 1 of the 2014 World Championship. Behind him young guns Daniel Ricciardo (later disqualified) and Kevin Magnussen heralded their arrival in the big league with podium finishes. Rosberg managed a great start from the second row, leading into Turn 1 and simply blasting into the lead as pre-race favourite Hamilton struggled off the line, and got swamped by the pack. By lap three he was out of the race. Up ahead Rosberg proceeded to edge away, and even an early race Safety Car period failed to give the others a chance. As he crossed the finish line he bellowed over the radio: “Fantastic boys. What a car you have given me, what a car!”
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It’s been an amazing time here in Melbourne. Thanks to all of you, you’ve made though Daniel got a little bit more support than us. Anyway that’s normal. It’s be has worked so hard over the winter and now to have such an amazing Silver Ar was good also, so it was just the perfect start to the season. I’m really thankful
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e it all the more special, all your support has been fantastic this weekend. Even een an amazing day. I’m just over the moon really. It’s incredible, everybody rrow to drive is just unreal. This thing was unbelievably quick and the reliability to Mercedes, they have done an amazing job over the winter.
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We’ll definitely evaluate everything that we’ve learned now from this weekend because for sure there’s some way to go. We still can improve a lot. We must, because our competitors aren’t going to be asleep. Definitely they are going to try to catch up quickly, So just try to learn as much as we can, improve the car, go on holiday a little bit next week and then get ready for Malaysia.
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The start was just... off like a bullet – or off like a Silver Arrow – thanks to Evan he did a great job on my start – my engineer who’s responsible for that. And then after that the car was just really, really quick and the whole team did such a good job on it. Engine: really good engine, not much of a problem with fuel consumption, didn’t have to worry much about that, pretty much as usual. It just all worked perfectly. Reliability was great. So, fantastic. I’m just so happy for everybody. They work so damn hard, I don’t think people can really imagine how hard everybody works in my team and I’m sure in other teams too – so that’s just the best reward possible. To dominate in such a way the first week, the first race out.
GPi
Got into a bit of a strange situation in that middle stint because I got g temperature and somehow it started to get really difficult out there. S said try to stay out, try to stay out and I did and then the graining clea bit of a strange period but then it was fine again after that.
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graining on the front and then somehow I was losing So, I thought I was going to have to come in soon and they just ared on my tyre and I was off, I was able to go again. It was a
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I don’t think about the championship. I’m really just in the moment. That gives me a lot of… you know, it’s such a pleasure to drive. It’s such a great feeling and I really look forward to the next races so much now, having this..it’s so fast, it’s great. Of course, it’s still going to be tough and reliability is not 100 percent sorted, there’s still lots of work we need to do and there’s a lot of work ahead of us but it’s a great start and I’m just excited about the result and sharing it with the whole team. It’s just fantastic.
GPi
I’m not sure what happened to the other car [Lewis Hamilton] but for sure it’s a fact that we’re not 100 percent sorted yet. We know that and the team did a great job to get my car working so well in the race but there’s still work to be done. We have two weeks now. We need to identify all the things that we can still do better because even leading up to this weekend, there were still a lot of changes on the car and you don’t really want to be doing that just going to the first race. And also in testing there were still a couple of problems at the end there, so great job, but still things to get sorted.
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There are some small bits an at the start, and then getting the gears, getting that right, apart. I think my start was sp like last year.
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nd pieces that are different g away, upshifting through but in the end it’s not too far pectacular, it felt great, felt
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Honestly our engine I think even with [fuel consumption] they’ve just done a Power Unit not just engine, they’ve done a great job because it’s not much different than last year, a little bit more than last year but it’s really straightforward and quite easy and this being the most difficult track, it’s really impressive.
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2014 Formula 1 world championship standings after round 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Driver Nico Rosberg Kevin Magnussen Jenson Button Fernando Alonso Valtteri Bottas Nico Hulkenberg Kimi Raikkonen Jean-Eric Vergne Daniil Kvyat Sergio Perez Adrian Sutil Felipe Massa Marcus Ericsson Jules Bianchi Daniel Ricciardo Lewis Hamilton Sebastian Vettel Max Chilton Romain Grosjean Pastor Maldonado Esteban Gutierrez Kamui Kobayashi
Team Mercedes McLaren McLaren Ferrari Williams Force India Ferrari Toro Rosso Toro Rosso Force India Sauber Williams Caterham Marussia Red Bull Mercedes Red Bull Marussia Lotus Lotus Sauber Caterham
Points 25 18 15 12 10 8 6 4 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Constructor McLaren Mercedes Mercedes Ferrari Williams Mercedes Force India Mercedes Toro Rosso Renault Sauber Ferrari Marussia Ferrari Red Bull Renault Lotus Renault Caterham Renault
Points 33 25 18 10 9 6 0 0 0 0 0
2014.01.aust r a l i a
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australian GRAND PRIX qualifying saturday, 15 march 2014
rosberg: tricky qualifying 1 Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes
2 Daniel Ricciardo
Red Bull
3 Nico Rosberg
Mercedes
4 Kevin Magnussen
McLaren
5 Fernando Alonso
Ferrari
6 Jean-Eric Vergne
Toro Rosso
7 Nico Hulkenberg
Force India
8 Daniil Kvyat
Toro Rosso
9 Felipe Massa
Williams
10 Valtteri Bottas
Williams
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That was a really tricky qualifying session out there this evening. Starting from that I have a good race car and that makes me quite confident. With a good star a very interesting race because fuel consumption and tyre wear will be on the e
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third place on the grid is not the optimum but okay for me. I know rt, I should have a nice chance of scoring a strong result. It will be edge. So there might be some surprises in the race.
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australian GRAND PRIX free practice 1 & 2 friday, 14 month 2014
rosberg: great to be back in the car It was so great to be back in the car and I’m very pleased with the progress that we made. As always on a Friday, we don’t really know where we are in terms of pace yet and how much fuel everyone else was running in comparison to our programme. It’s definitely going to be very tough on fuel here, as we expected. The screen on my steering wheel shows the fuel target for each lap and we’re going to have to be very disciplined in the race. It’s a pretty good start for us overall and I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend.
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big pictu
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big picture thursday
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big picture thursday
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big picture thursday
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big picture friday
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big picture friday
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big picture friday
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big picture friday
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big picture friday
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big picture friday
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big picture saturday
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big picture saturday
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big picture saturday
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big picture saturday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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big picture sunday
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the final frame
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