Driving a solid race in a field distorted by penalties, Nico held seventh position off the grid and went on to gain two places up the order before crossing the line in P5. Kazuki Nakajima’s 15th place finish, following a race beleaguered by traffic on a one stop strategy, compounded what has transpired to be a disappointing weekend in front of his home crowd.

Nico Rosberg: That was the best I could do today for sure. The car wasn’t as quick as we wanted it to be but we got the best out of it. I had a really good strategy which helped deliver this result. It was a tough race so overall I’m pleased.

Kazuki Nakajima: Obviously it was a difficult race for me. I was on a one stop strategy which was working up to a point but then there was just too much traffic and the safety car came out so it didn’t work out the way we had hoped. It’s a disappointing result at my home Grand Prix.

Sam Michael, Technical Director: We had an interesting race because our strategies were quite different to the cars around us due to the penalties imposed yesterday. Nico kept his head down and scored some points which was what was required today. He was competitive at the times he needed to be and this is a good result. Kazuki was on a one stop strategy, which was really dependent on something happening to help him up the order, but it didn’t unfortunately.