It took Nico Rosberg barely 180m to take the lead in Austria, and once there he only relinquished it for four laps in the middle of the race as he collected his third win of the season and second successive victory in Austria.
It was Rosberg’s 11th career victory and moves him level with Jacques Villeneuve, Felipe Massa and Rubens Barrichello for joint 26th on the all-time wins list. More significantly it was the first time since Rosberg has been team mates with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes that the German has started behind the Englishman, overtaken him on track and gone on to beat him.
Despite earning a five-second time penalty for crossing the white line on the pit lane exit, Hamilton came home second to complete Mercedes’ fifth one-two finish of the season. Having taken his seventh pole of the year on Saturday, Hamilton was disappointed to have missed out on victory, but he did at least equal Sir Jackie Stewart’s record of 17 consecutive races led, a mark that had stood unchallenged since 1970.
Hamilton has also stood on the podium in 15 consecutive events, which ties him for second on the all-time list of consecutive rostrums with Fernando Alonso. Only Michael Schumacher (19) has been on the podium more times in a row.
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Behind the Silver Arrows, Williams’ Felipe Massa held off Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to claim third place and his first podium finish since Abu Dhabi last year. The result means Massa has now surpassed 1,000 career points - something only eight other drivers in history have done. The Brazilian also surpassed the 60,000km raced mark - only Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Jarno Trulli have covered a greater distance in an F1 car.
In the other FW37, Valtteri Bottas came home fifth to give Williams their biggest points haul of the season so far - 25. The Grove-based team have now picked up 20 or more points in three of the last four events.
Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg completed a superb week by following up his victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours with sixth place in Austria - his best result of the season. Team mate Sergio Perez finished ninth, ensuring Force India got both of their cars home in the points for the first time since the season-opener in Australia.
Elsewhere, Pastor Maldonado picked up his second points finish of the season, as did Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen, who was the first of the Red Bull-backed cars to take the chequered flag. In fact, it's only the second time this season that Toro Rosso have finished ahead of both Red Bulls, Australia being the other occasion.
Another notable element of the Austrian race was the relatively high attrition rate. Only 14 cars made it to the flag - the lowest number of classified finishers since round one in Melbourne when 11 cars reached the finish.
For the second race in a row - and third time this year - both McLaren’s bowed out of the race, though doing so within the first 10 laps represented a new low for the Woking team. For Fernando Alonso in particular this is unchartered territory - never before in his F1 career had he retired from four successive races. Things can surely only get better…
