Niki Lauda says he always knew 2015 would be a tougher challenge for Mercedes.<\/p>\n
The German outfit utterly dominated last year, but so far in 2015 Ferrari has put up a fight.<\/p>\n
“The higher you climb,” the F1 legend and team chairman told Kolner Express newspaper, “the thinner the air.”<\/p>\n
Barcelona winner Nico Rosberg, however, said he is not expecting any other teams to intervene in Mercedes’ title push.<\/p>\n
“No,” he told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.\u00a0 “Just us and Ferrari.”<\/p>\n
Lauda continued: “It quickly became clear to us that Ferrari had found 40 horse power more compared to last year.<\/p>\n
“So we had to develop faster as well in order to maintain our competitive edge.”<\/p>\n
The strategy appeared to have worked in Spain recently, as Mercedes’ Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton easily finished first and second.<\/p>\n
Lauda said: “The victory in Barcelona was important because I know from experience that whoever is quick there is quick everywhere.”<\/p>\n
The great Austrian said he is also particularly happy for the pole and race winner Rosberg.<\/p>\n
“Until Barcelona, Lewis was driving like an extra-terrestrial, and I thought it would be impossible to beat him.\u00a0 But Nico recovered and managed to break Lewis’ run.<\/p>\n
“That’s good news for him and also for us,” said Lauda.<\/p>\n
Rosberg has won the past two Monaco grands prix, but Hamilton will be determined to resume his run of top form this weekend in the Principality, Lauda warned.<\/p>\n
“He (Rosberg) has to go there and be on pole again,” he said, “because if Lewis is on pole, it’s over.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Niki Lauda says he always knew 2015 would be a tougher challenge for Mercedes. The German outfit utterly dominated last year, but so far in 2015 Ferrari has put up a fight. “The higher you climb,” the F1 legend and team chairman told Kolner Express newspaper, “the thinner the air.” Barcelona winner Nico Rosberg, however, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,93,5340,154,1182,1534,4,598],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29261,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29260\/revisions\/29261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}