German driver wins by over twenty seconds; Engine failure leaves Hamilton powerless; Ricciardo disqualified five hours after race; McLaren return to podium; Kvyat becomes youngest points-scorer in F1; Williams better 2013 points haul after Bottas' recovery to sixth
Sunday 16 March 2014 14:30, UK
The sound of the new V6 engines may be too much of a whimper for most tastes, but F1's new turbo era has started with a dramatic and head-spinning bang.
For the latter the result represented a double milestone - at 19 years and 10 months old Kvyat, by just less than a month, beat Vettel's mark as the youngest driver to ever score a point in F1. After Toro Rosso's winter misery, their double-points finish represented an astonishing turnaround, matched only by the sight of Ricciardo and the hitherto-unreliable RB10 fending off Magnussen for second as a recovering Button made it a three-way fight to be the best of the rest behind the long-gone Mercedes. By that stage, Vettel had long since left the arena, the World Champion rendered a passenger at the start of the race when his car developed a crippling engine fault. Down to 15th by the end of the first lap, his retirement just a few laps later felt like a blessed relief. For Sebastian, the start of 2014 couldn't feel any more different than his run of nine successive victories at the conclusion of 2013. But a German winning with comfort to spare and turning a race into a procession up at the front? In F1, some things never seem to change. PG
