The race was convincingly won by Nico Rosberg, who finished over 30 seconds ahead of second-placed Sebastian Vettel.

Defending world champion Lewis Hamilton suffered a number of setbacks both in qualifying and during the race itself, eventually finishing in 7th place.

[9] In the first session, Nico Rosberg was fastest, setting a time of 1:38.037, 0.146 seconds ahead of teammate Hamilton, with Sebastian Vettel in third.

There was an early red flag period as Felipe Massa spun out in turn 6, triggered by a deflated left rear tyre, which reoccurred when he came back to the track later in the session.

A similar problem caught out Kevin Magnussen later on, who suffered a broken suspension in the process and crashed.

Championship leader Nico Rosberg was not without problems as well, as he nursed his car back into pitlane near the end of the session, caused by a fault in the power unit.

After quick laps on the supersoft tyre compounds, the teams then turned to race simulation runs on higher fuel loads, with Mercedes splitting their drivers on the soft and medium compounds, while Ferrari continued their long runs on the supersoft tyres.

Esteban Gutiérrez encountered problems when his rear brakes caught fire, causing him to spend much of the session in the garage.

[13] Further down the pack Romain Grosjean picked up some damage as well, while Lewis Hamilton collided with Felipe Nasr and got his front wing caught under his car.

Kvyat, Pérez, Vettel, Hülkenberg, Sainz, Button, Bottas, Verstappen, Ericsson and Magnussen all elected to make a pit-stop during this safety car period to pick up fresh tyres.

[14] After 9 laps, the order was as follows: Rosberg, Massa, Alonso, Wehrlein, Gutiérrez, Kvyat, Palmer, Pérez, Bottas, Button.

Hamilton climbed as high as fifth position but was unable to pass the Williams of Massa and was then overtaken himself by Ricciardo and Räikkönen, settling for seventh place.