Rosberg showed he can out-race Hamilton

Could Nico Rosberg really beat Lewis Hamilton in a straight fight? It's a question we've been asking ourselves since he became a genuine Formula 1 title contender for the first time last season.

Ferrari's recent tendency to fade as an F1 weekend wears on turned the 2015 Austrian Grand Prix into another exclusive fight between the Mercedes pair, and presented an opportunity to answer that question.

Rosberg's stock has risen with the tide of Mercedes' dominance in F1, since the V6 turbo engine regulations were introduced for 2014.

Sure he won occasional races for the three-pointed star during the final two years of the V8 era, but last season was his first at the true sharp end of motorsport's pinnacle.

Although he won five races and led the 2014 title race until September's Singapore Grand Prix, there was a feeling his team-mate Hamilton could always dig that little bit deeper and find something extra to make the difference in the races, even if he qualified behind Rosberg, which he did more often than not.

Sochi was one of several races in 2014 where Rosberg cracked © LAT

If you analyse all the races Rosberg won last season, he never snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. In Australia he started behind, but Hamilton retired early with an engine failure.

Rosberg's other four wins all came after starting the race with the advantage. In Monaco, he won from a controversial pole position. In Austria and Germany, he started well ahead thanks to problems for Hamilton in qualifying.

Even in Brazil, where Hamilton qualified a close second to Rosberg, Hamilton was applying pressure before his brake-bias-induced spin that settled the matter.

By contrast, Hamilton turned the tables on Rosberg on several occasions to win from behind last year.

Rosberg was quicker in Bahrain but Hamilton defended brilliantly after passing him at the start; Hamilton pressured Rosberg into two braking errors at the first chicane in Italy; he drove around the outside of his rival in the wet in Japan to steal victory there; capitalised on Rosberg's massive lock-up at Turn 1 in Russia to reclaim the lead after losing it from pole; overtook his team-mate for the lead in the United States as Rosberg failed to use the correct ERS setting to defend position; and beat his rival into the first corner in Abu Dhabi before engine gremlins struck Rosberg's car.

Although Rosberg outqualified Hamilton more often than not last year, Hamilton often found a way to win anyway, and that made the difference in the final reckoning, as well as suggesting Rosberg had a severe deficit to make up in terms of Sunday afternoons.

Heading into this season Hamilton knew he had to drastically improve his qualifying form, in order to make his title defence a little easier than his second career title victory.

So far he has started seven of the eight races from pole position, putting yet more pressure on Rosberg to find ways to win from behind.

Going off when shooting for pole wasn't a good start for Rosberg © XPB

Rosberg has won one race starting behind Hamilton this year already, but only thanks to the strategic blunder that prevented certain victory for Hamilton in May's Monaco GP.

The jury was unequivocally still out on Rosberg 'the racer'. But his consummate victory in the Austrian GP of 2015 suggests, for the first time, that he can turn the tables on Hamilton when things don't go right for him on Saturday.

And how horribly wrong they had gone on Saturday at the Red Bull Ring. Rosberg was comfortably faster than Hamilton during Friday practice, and carried an edge through the first two segments of qualifying too.

Then he threw away a golden opportunity to claim pole position by going off on his final flying lap in Q3 (with Hamilton already having spun at Turn 1 on his final effort), and the stage looked set for another Lewis Hamilton cake walk.

Not this time. As the red lights went out to signal the start of the race, Rosberg gained a better launch than Hamilton, who was caught out by the amount of revs he got from his Mercedes engine and wheelspun away his pole advantage.

"I had a problem with the wait revs (the revs the drivers hold before dropping the clutch)," he explained. "I took my foot off the gas and it was still on - like the throttle was still on - and then I dumped the clutch and just [got] lots and lots of wheelspin.

"Not the best way to start a race, but something we will work on to improve on my side of the garage."

Raikkonen and Alonso's big crash paused the race © XPB

Rosberg powered up the inside of Hamilton, who edged across to try to block the attack, but to no avail. He tried to repass Rosberg on the run up to Turn 2, and on the run down to Turn 3, but Rosberg defended the inside line well both times, and secured the lead just as Fernando Alonso's McLaren-Honda and Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari were busy smashing into the barriers further back down the straight.

"We've been developing the clutch so that's a lot better now, more consistent, and I've had a lot of great starts lately in the last four races - and today as well," explained Rosberg.

"A lot of it is down to the clutch settings that my engineer put in, and reaction times and clutch settings, and the last part is me feeding in the throttle in the right way.

"The big one is the clutch settings and that just worked out today. Of course it's so important to get into Turn 1 first. Between the two of us that's the job done really."

Well, not quite. There was still the small matter of 70 more laps of the Red Bull Ring to negotiate - plenty of time for Hamilton to come back at his rival, as he has done so successfully in the past.

Once the stricken McLaren and Ferrari were cleared from the circuit under safety car conditions, Rosberg set about making sure this race didn't follow the pattern of history and prevent him securing his 11th grand prix victory.

A smooth track surface, cool temperatures (27C track and 15C air on race day), and relatively hard tyres meant this was always going to be a straightforward one-stop race, so Rosberg's task was to build a big enough gap to ensure he could make his without conceding track position to Hamilton.

Hamilton's pitstop was slightly slower and ended in a penalty, but Rosberg had the race won anyway © LAT

Rosberg's advantage across the start/finish line during the first phase of the race was never more than 4.287s (at the end of lap 25), and his average pace through the first stint (until his pitstop on lap 33) was 1m12.568s.

Hamilton went two laps longer before making his own stop, and his average laptime until then was 1m12.634s.

Rosberg thus had a 0.066s per lap advantage over his team-mate on the super-soft tyre - small but crucial.

Rosberg actually made a small mistake on his in-lap, locking up under braking for the Turn 2 hairpin, and then locked up again as he tried to attack the pit entry without breaking the speed limit.

Hamilton's in-lap (1m15.964s) was 1.196s quicker than Rosberg's (1m17.160s), but his pitstop was 0.4s slower and overall he lost 0.101s in the pitlane.

But Rosberg was faster on the out-lap (1m29.701s compared to Hamilton's 1m30.436s) and also set the fastest lap of the race (1m11.235s) on his first proper flier on the harder compound tyre (Hamilton's in-lap).

All this meant Rosberg actually increased his lead over Hamilton around the pitstops, to the point that Hamilton actually questioned over the radio why Rosberg was so far ahead.

Rosberg maintained a comfortable advantage to the finish © LAT

Rosberg's average pace on the soft tyre (discounting the final two laps when he cruised home) was 1m11.642s, while the equivalent pace from Hamilton (discounting a slow last lap) was 1m12.008s, suggesting Rosberg had an even bigger (0.366s) advantage per lap on the harder of the two tyres.

"It was an added, extra bonus that I was quicker today and that was great to see," Rosberg said.

"It was one of the easier wins, there was no pressure - except for a little bit at the pitstop - but I was stopping first so I was pretty comfortable about that.

"And that's great to see, because racecraft was the area where I needed to push on a little bit from last year, and this year it's really coming good so I'm happy about that."

Perhaps more impressive than the fact he was faster throughout the race than Hamilton was how Rosberg delivered those fast laps when they mattered around the pitstops. It's so easy to lose races in these moments, and the best drivers usually make sure this is where they really turn up the heat.

How many times did Michael Schumacher win races by being fast around the stops during his long and distinguished career? OK, so Rosberg was a bit scruffy on his in-lap, and had the advantage of running new softs for two laps while Hamilton drove on with old super-softs, but his out-lap and pace just after that were superb, and ensured he would win the Austrian GP even without the five-second time penalty slapped on Hamilton for crossing the white line at the pitlane exit.

Hamilton insisted afterwards that he didn't feel he "went over anything", but he'd been pushing the limits of the pit exit since practice and TV replays showed he'd clearly crossed the white line.

Rosberg's former team-mate Schumacher made an art of nailing laps around pitstops © XPB

"You can see he's pushing really hard on that in-lap, like Nico with the locking wheels [on the pit entry], and if you know that this is probably the only chance of passing your team-mate you need to take some risks," Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff explained.

"I think I saw a little bit of a snap on the right hander and he [Hamilton] was on the throttle early to have the best possible go at Nico, and then he just crossed the line with that snap.

"When you push yourself so much to win the race these things can happen."

Hamilton kept the pressure on as best he could over the remainder of the race, but Rosberg's extra advantage on the soft tyre told and prevented Hamilton producing the sort of attack that worked so well for him in 2014.

But as strong as Rosberg was here - now twice unbeaten since this circuit returned to the F1 calendar - was Hamilton below par?

We know he's highly sensitive to the feeling he gets under braking, and it's possible something isn't working quite right in this area on this particular track.

He's now twice spun under braking on his crucial lap in qualifying here, which features an odd blend of severe up and downhill braking zones, which make it tricky to achieve the correct braking balance.

Wolff was unsure why Hamilton could not get on terms with Rosberg around the Red Bull Ring.

"I can't really tell you," he said. "This is a particular circuit - very different to all the other circuits and very different asphalt.

Rosberg's crew was pleased too © XPB

"I think it's just very close between the two of them. We've seen last year that it can vary who has the edge."

And this time it was emphatically Rosberg, who was clearly delighted to achieve what he described as "one of the easier wins" over his arch-rival, and hack Hamilton's lead in the world championship back to 10 points.

His only real concern was a front-right tyre vibration that developed with around half-a-dozen laps to run, but Wolff said afterwards that this was stabilised by "tuning down" the brakes, and it made no difference to the final result, or the emphatic statement made by Rosberg's overall performance.

This was arguably the first time that he has genuinely out-raced Hamilton since they began fighting for F1's ultimate prize, and although he dislikes talking about momentum, Rosberg will undoubtedly draw strength from the fact he has won three of last four races, and the last of those with one of the most impressive drives of his career.

But one question mark still remains. Cast your mind back to the Bahrain GP of 2014, where Rosberg was faster in race trim than Hamilton but could not find a way back past after falling behind. Rosberg has still yet to make a genuine passing move on his rival stick, beyond overtaking him at the start.

That Hamilton has managed this several times before should provide some small crumb of comfort on a day in which he had to admit he was simply out-raced.

Rosberg's task now is to make sure he can do it consistently.