European Grand Prix: Resurgent Rosberg coasts to victory

It's getting tiring to type - this was won in qualifying, it seems, but not by Nico Rosberg. It was won when Lewis Hamilton made such a hash of the session and could secure only tenth on the grid. The defending champion recorded the quickest lap times of the day, but was too far back to challenge his team-mate, who finished nearly 17 seconds ahead of Sebastian Vettel in second. After a chaotic and intriguing qualifying, the front of the race proper was quite calm - with no safety car seen at all.

Two stars out of five. He began at a steady pace, settling in nicely to tenth - caution was the watch-word. Towards half-distance, he was up to ninth, but still struggling to keep the car on track, running wide at the turns. Then on Lap 31, in fifth place, he threw a bit of a tantrum over the radio, complaining about his car - there were lots of warning lights on the dashboard, and all his team were allowed to tell him was that he was in the wrong mode. "I don't know what you mean, man!" he whined - but there was nothing more they could do.

In the end he managed to press the right combinations of buttons and flick the right levers, getting pace back in time for the final eight laps and matching race leader Rosberg for speed. Interestingly, Niki Lauda hinted after the race that both the Mercedes cars had the same problems - but Rosberg fixed his much more promptly than Hamilton managed.

Psychic Nando. How on earth he can spot that at high speed, I've no idea, but it's impressive.

A respectful nod to Kimi Raikkonen, allowing team-mate Sebastian Vettel past him into second in Lap 28 without too much of a gripe. He and the team in the garage obviously agreed that Vettel was the man most likely to close down Rosberg, a good 18 seconds in the lead at that point. When his race engineer thanked him, he got the ungracious response: "Yeah, well, now you tell him to push." His hope was evidently that Vettel's pace would take him along too - and make a five-second penalty for crossing the line at the pit lane early on less of a problem.

Lots of good overtaking in the pack during this race - nice straights and tricky corners, all sorts of fun. It was great to watch the McLarens have a bit of a fight 12 laps from the end - Jenson Button made it past Fernando Alonso on the straight, but the Spaniard hit right back at him into the turn, forcing him to pull away as quickly as humanly possible.

The tactical masterstroke happened long before the race. Nico Rosberg, it's reported, spent his prep time this week walking the unfamiliar street track and did a hundred laps in a race simulator, just to make sure he knew what to expect. That paid off in qualifying - and in the race.

After that grid penalty yesterday, Sergio Perez started in seventh rather than second. He did fabulously to overtake Kimi Raikkonen on the final lap and secure himself third place on the podium by right. He got chants of "Checo! Checo!" as he led the trio out to take their applause - richly deserved.

This is awarded to whoever it was who thought it'd be fine to drop their bright blue plastic sheeting somewhere in Baku. They ended up flying on to the track and spending a good proportion of the first quarter of the race tangled up in Sebastian Vettel's nose cone.

On the plus side, it did give us Kimi Raikkonen's first obscenity of the day over the radio, complaining about the plastic clogging up the circuit in front of him.

That Fernando Alonso has so many famous friends. Enrique Iglesias popped in today.

Other than that, there were rumours of Pharrell Williams being around and about yet again, plus the president of Azerbaijan.