Mercedes AMG Petronas
Nico Rosberg hung on to beat Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to victory in the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Rosberg held on across the final stint with Hamilton closing down a gap of seven seconds after he spun off at the end of the second stint of a race in which tyre wear was marginal.
The result means that Hamilton heads to Abu Dhabi with a 17 point advantage over Rosberg.
Home hero Felipe Massa was third for Williams despite a five second stop and go penalty for speeding in the pit lane, and accidentally entering the McLaren pit box at his final stop.
The start was a clean affair as Rosberg led away from pole, with Hamilton slotting into second place ahead of Massa and Valtteri Bottas. There were very few positional changes inside the top 10, with only Vettel losing significant ground when he went wide at Descida do Lago and dropped behind Kevin Magnussen and Fernando Alonso.
The high temperatures, allied with hot temperatures, led to drivers shedding their Option tyres fairly early on, with Massa coming in on lap six for Primes, though the Brazilian was deemed to have speeded in the pit lane and was slapped with a five second stop/go penalty.
Rosberg stopped on lap eight and Hamilton followed suit the next time around and the Brit came out fractions of a second behind his title rival as Rosberg suffered behind yet-to-pit rivals who started on the Prime tyres.
Rosberg made his way through on Romain Grosjean, Daniil Kvyat and Nico Hülkenberg to re-claim the lead of the race, with Hamilton following through a couple of seconds further back.
Hamilton cut the gap to Rosberg to around a second and the German reacted by stopping for another set of Prime tyres on lap 27. Both Williams drivers also made their pit stop but lost time, with Massa serving his penalty and Williams mechanics appearing to tighten Bottas’s seatbelts, dropping the Finn to 12th place.
Hamilton inherited the lead but spun under braking for Descida do Lago and lost around seven seconds, pitting at the end of the lap and emerging 7.2s behind Rosberg.
Hamilton set about reducing Rosberg’s advantage across the next stint and had the gap down to two seconds when Rosberg made his third stop of the race at the end of lap 50.
Hamilton stopped one lap later for another set of Primes and emerged from the pits within DRS range.
The gap between them never stretched to more than a second across the final stint of the race but Hamilton was never close enough to mount a serious challenge.
Massa was a lonely third, while Jenson Button secured fourth, ahead of outgoing world champion Sebastian Vettel.
Fernando Alonso beat Kimi Räikkönen to sixth place with a late move after the Finn lost time with a front jack problem in his pit stop.
Hülkenberg, Magnussen and Bottas rounded out the top 10.
Daniel Ricciardo spent the first half of the race in the lower half of the top 10 before suffering left front suspension failure on the approach to the Senna S. He cruised around for the remainder of the lap and retired in the pits.
