Nico Rosberg ends 57-year drought for Mercedes

NICO Rosberg gave Mercedes its first GP victory since 1955 with a   start-to-finish win at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.

Nico Rosberg

NICO Rosberg gave Mercedes its first GP victory since 1955 with a start-to-finish win at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.

The  driver who had not won in his Formula One career took victory in the car they tried to ban for a team who have waited 57 years and spent hundreds of millions of pounds trying to relive old glory.

Formula One's historians can have a field day with this Chinese Grand Prix.Nico Rosberg took his first win, following in the footsteps of Keke, his father, who was world champion a nicely symmetrical 30 years ago. But it was the longer echo of history that captured hearts in the Mercedes garage: Juan Manuel Fangio was the last driver to win in a car with the three-pointed star on its nose, in 1955.

Formula One fans, though, will have pulses racing for the single reason that Rosberg was the third winner in three races so far this season. Wide open is the description of this season.

There have also been three World Championship leaders, an honour that fell to Lewis Hamilton last night after he registered third place.

Jenson Button, his McLaren team-mate, is only two points behind him and settled for second place when he was for so long teased by the prospect of victory until a final pitstop turned wrong and confirmed that this was not his day.

It was quite a podium, though: Rosberg, drenched in champagne, at the top with Hamilton, a team-mate in karts 12 years ago, and then Button, who, like the Mercedes driver, knows something about being patient; Button had to wait 113 races before he took his first victory, two more than Rosberg.

Button also knows something about dominant cars, even if his McLaren did not have the legs here in Shanghai as was expected. That was left to the Mercedes of Rosberg, described by Sebastian Vettel, the champion who finished a fifth, as "ridiculously fast".

It certainly was as Rosberg defied expectations, took two pitstops rather than three and finished with 20 or so seconds to spare. Yet late on Thursday night, Formula One was not even sure that the Mercedes was legal.

Ross Brawn, the Mercedes team principal, is the master of lateral thinking: it was the notorious double diffuser for Button's title in 2009 and it is the so-called W-duct now. Lotus protested but Charlie Whiting, the race director, gave the system, which channels air from the DRS drag reduction system to "stall" the aerodynamics of the front wing for extra speed, the green light.

Rivals might argue the W-duct was the difference but Rosberg had to make it work and he did, driving serenely way out in front, while the rest of the grid changed places as though they were throwing a hot stone around. A single pitstop could turn budding triumph into wilting disaster.

After 41 laps, Rosberg held an extraordinary 21-second lead - about the length of a pitstop - but the next nine cars were covered by just seven seconds. The timesheet gaps read: 0.2sec, 0.7, 0.7, 0.2, 0.4 and so on down the field.

That meant a mass of overtaking and fun for the huge crowd. Shanghai started out as something of a fumbling exploration of a new world. At the first race in 2004, a baffled crowd was bussed in with free tickets and instructions to enjoy themselves; this year, they packed themselves into the grandstands, fully understanding the nuances of a thrilling race and eager to see their racing heroes on the track.

They were richly rewarded by a race of epic proportions when no driver - except Rosberg, it seemed - could relax for a second. "Every time I looked up, the name of the person following me had changed," Rosberg said.

"I kept asking what was going on out there." Vettel was just one driver coping with the quickfire changes: he started in a remarkable eleventh, fell to fifteenth after his first pitstop and found himself battling Hamilton and Mark Webber, his team-mate, for third on the last lap.

He lost out as his tyres shredded and Hamilton took the podium prize and Webber the team honours for fourth. Vettel had to settle for fifth. Kimi Raikkonen was storming along in second place with ten laps to go but a trip to the rubber marbles had him going backwards and he finished fourteenth.

Fernando Alonso, winner in Malaysia and championship leader until this race, found the true measure of his Ferrari with ninth place, while Felipe Massa, the man under pressure at the Scuderia, could manage only thirteenth.

It was all such a wonderful, enthralling scramble. Except for Mercedes, although their one disappointment was that there was no perfect finish, as there was at that last big victory in 1955. It was a one-two under the Italian sunshine in 1955, but not here in Shanghai's murky smog.

Michael Schumacher had started on the front row of the grid alongside Rosberg, who was enjoying his first career pole position, but his race lasted just a dozen laps. He took his first pitstop but the clue that all was not well as Schumacher roared away was the right rear wheel mechanic banging his fist on the ground. The wheel was not attached and Schumacher was forced to cruise to a halt.

Nevertheless, Schumacher was happy to join the celebrations. He called his decision to join Mercedes a three-year project and the project is now officially ahead of schedule with this victory - not likely to be first and last victory for Mercedes or Rosberg this season, as Button pointed out."It is amazing how long it can take to win," Button said.

"You don't know whether you are going to be lucky getting into a quick car. But I am sure this is not Nico's last win. We are going to have a battle on our hands."

Some battle if the Chinese Grand Prix is anything to go by. Apart from Rosberg, it was almost impossible to call - great for fans worldwide who love wheel-to-wheel racing.

But Rosberg was reminded that his previous victory in a car of any sort was in 2005 in the GP2 series - in Bahrain, scene of the next race. F1 faces the trip next week to the troubled island kingdom, with its riots and sectarian fighting, with trepidation. Rosberg, Mercedes and F1 will have to hope they get the chance to race there peacefully.

The Times