- Japanese GP - Race
'Lewis just did a better job' - Rosberg
Nico Rosberg admits Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton "just did a better job" to win the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday.
Hamilton passed Rosberg on track to take the lead of the race after Rosberg qualified ahead of his team-mate on Saturday. The win moves Hamilton 10 points clear in the drivers' standings and marks his third consecutive victory, while Rosberg has not won since the German Grand Prix.
"All in all, Lewis just did a better job today and deserves to win," Rosberg said. "Okay, second place is damage limitation and taking everything into consideration, it was very, very difficult conditions out there on this track and everything so seven points lost to Lewis... you know, there's worse than that."
Rosberg said he used a very similar set-up to Hamilton but was just struggling more than his team-mate with the way the car was behaving.
"I was definitely not happy with my balance but I think we had pretty much the same set-up so Lewis must have had the same oversteer. I just wasn't happy with that and tried to figure out a way to reduce that and found some improvements then with the pit stop, put down the front wing so that was a bit better but still not good so just need to look into that."
The race was stopped after Jules Bianchi crashed into a recovery vehicle on lap 43 as it lifted Adrian Sutil's Sauber away, which had crashed at the same corner a lap earlier. Rosberg said the corner was still fine for him but cars with less downforce may have been struggling in the conditions.
"It was fine but the thing is that we have so much more downforce than some other people, so I can imagine that maybe for them... because it was starting to get a little bit more difficult for us and maybe for them, with so much less downforce, it was already on the limit of needing to go to full wets. That's very possible and I myself was a little bit surprised to hear that other people were already going for full wets but I guess that must be the explanation."
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