Spanish GP – Drivers' Scorecard
Fifth success in as many races for Mercedes, with the first official podium for Daniel Ricciardo. Let’s start with the votes.
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg – 9 From Friday to Sunday evening, they have been able to dominate the situation in an absolute way.
Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel – 9 While Ricciardo achieves his first official podium, Vettel performs a good comeback (starting from 15th place), finishing at the foot of the podium – despite a car which is not yet at the top, still evolving and trying to exploit the chassis as the best of its strength points.
Valtteri Bottas – 8 He did a great job, placing his Williams between RB and Ferrari, something which the team-mate failed to achieve. Thanks to the German power-unit, the English team is able to compensate for some chassis problems.
Roman Grosjean – 8 He finished behind the Ferrari duo, scoring the first points of the season for his Lotus.
Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen – 7 They went into an incredible struggle to be able to bring a car into the score-zone.
Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez – 6 A vote of encouragement: again, new points for them and Force India in Spain.
The other drivers are at the same level, with Button and Magnussen who pay the price of finding themselves in a season of transition. McLaren is not helped by Mercedes and pays the duty; in the future, it will be a machine of which we will talk about. Magnussen has the opportunity to reinforce his experience in view of 2015.
At this time, the Constructors’ rank reflects the forces in the field, with Mercedes before everyone, with a technical advantage that makes it hard for rivals to catch up. From what we can imagine, they still do not exploit their power-unit at 100%. Behind them we find Red Bull, Ferrari, Force India and Williams. RB is trying to make the most of his chassis, despite some reliability issues, trying to make up to a Renault engine still not at the top. Ferrari is the third force, but they have so much work to do.
As said before, Williams takes advantage from the best engine of the lot, as well as Force India which hits consistently the score-zone.