To me it only seemed there was a small chance that the backing up the pack plan would work.
Certainly shitty and unsporting. Personally I am very pleased for Nico who rarely makes a fuss. He comes across as a decent racer and a nice bloke. Good qualities in a world champion.
Well surely the best antidote to him being backed up, was for Nico to hold his head high and overtake!
Hamilton was driving up to nine seconds a lap slower than his pole time, but Nico didnāt try and overtake, anyone imagine any of the past greats putting up with that??
Would you take the unnecessary chance, of having Hamilton take you out, even if you won the championship?
I wouldnāt! Nico did the right thing; Hamilton should be ashamed to call himself a sportsman.
Why would you assume that Hamilton would take him out?
Doing that would endanger them both, and Hamilton would still lose the titleā¦
I think it was quite clear, that management were worried about, something like that, otherwise, why the instruction to speed up? That didnāt want any unnecessary risk, for either of them.
Well the best answer for Nico, would have been to take pole, and then drive off into the distanceā¦
But as he didnāt, then that made the race a bit uncomfortable for himā¦
Nothing more, imoā¦
Only been to F1 once.
Me only one 1980 F1 Brands Hatch - Hopped over a very large fence to get in for free - Was chased by the marshalls but managed to out speed them (would not today). Historical note Keke Rosberg along with Desire Wilson did not qualify for the actual race.
Last year, British GP after I bought the tickets from someone on the Wam, mate is the gearbox mechanic for Mercedes so I took the old man and and my 9 year old nephews and got a tour of the team garage right after the race. Used to watch the German GP when I lived there as good seats were only 40 euros, prices these days are a fucking rip off.
Used to get BTCC tickets for Brands Hatch through Alfa Romeo which I prefer as itās a much better day out than F1.
Very rarely watch F1 now as I just donāt find it interesting anymore.
Well done Nico.
Great to see Nico win.
He did it by making fewer mistakes and Lewis having a bit of bad luck with reliability during the season. Which given that Lewis had won the previous 2 seasons, makes it even more impressive that Nico kept believing that he could win and then pulled it all together to win this year.
The article is longer than the three letter word āyesā and doesnāt need to be.
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For those who wanted Hamilton to win the 2016 championship, there are two races that will stand out.
Barcelona, where Rosberg took both himself and Hamilton off the circuit, and Malaysia where Hamilton experienced engine failure while leading and Rosberg gained 15 points.
If either of those events had not happened, it might have been a very different story.
Hamilton experienced engine problems or failures in 6 races this season. Rosberg had one race where technical problems affected his performance.
Hamilton won more GPs this season than Rosberg. Where Hamilton finished outside the top 3 in any race, it can be attributed to engine problems of one sort or another.
Mercedes (as a team) got their act together and sorted reliability issues towards the end of the season. By that time, it was almost a maths problem - so long as Rosberg was no worse than one place behind Hamilton at the end of any race, he would win the championship.
Of the two, I think Hamilton has been the better racer. But maybe, like Colin McRae, heās just too hard on the car? Maybe Rosberg has more mechanical sympathy, ultimately making him the better driver (this year)?
Suggesting Hamilton would take Rosberg out in Abu Dhabi is silly. That would most likely result in neither finishing the race, and Rosberg would have been champion anyway.
Hamilton played the hand he was dealt the best way he could. Had Rosberg been driving a Ferrari in second place, the Mercedes team would have been telling Hamilton to slow down in the hope that Rosberg would have been passed in the closing stages.
It could be interpreted that the team orders (would have) favoured Rosberg on this occasion, while Hamilton still had an opportunity for a win. Whether that was deliberate or not is speculation.
You have missed Baku off the list as that was under Lewisā control (partly an ERS setting problem, that Nico resolved quicker than Lewis). If he had finished 2nd or 1st instead of 5th, as the car was clearly capable, then it would have been a different championship.
Hamilton spent part of the race in wrong engine mode as team were not allowed to tell him how to change it.
I donāt know if it is something he should have known and Rosberg did know, or if Rosberg may have pitted and been told face-to-face what was needed, but yes - Rosberg fixed a very similar problem faster and thus more effectively.
Nico worked it out for himself, but he had used the mode before.
I would argue that given the ruling re radio comms from their race engineerās, that they should have known more about the powerplant operational modes. It is something that they could have trained for. This is what can and in this case did, separate one driver from the other and really mattered at the end of the year.
Oh come on, please: he didnāt have problems in 6 races, he had problems in 6 sessions: thereās a world of difference between the two.
ERS failed in China quali. Started 22nd and only finished 7th. The car had pace to burn and some (thatād be me) would suggest that 7th was a poor effort.
Barcelona was a racing accident
ERS failed in Russia quali, he finished the race 2nd. Not 2nd to last, 2nd. (And not 7th as in China)
Baku: Ianās covered it
Hydraulics failure in Singapore second practice. Rosberg absolutely nailed that weekend, Lewis only came 3rd.
Malaysia - fair enough, this directly affected his result
So of the 6 Horsemen of Lewisā Apocolypse, only one of them had a direct affect on the race weekend. All the others are, IMHO, part and parcel of dealing with an F1 weekend, and half of them are relatively minor.
Blinkers off, itās been Mercās strongest season yet for reliability and leaving Nico aside, Lewisā has had a more problem-free season than the ENTIRE GRID bar Dan Ricciardo.
Albeit under a different (better) leadership, itās not so long since Schumacher was at Merc: I canāt imagine how ripped-up their playbook would have been had he been in a championship winning car.
Never mind the nerfs, swerves and proper dirty tricks, how I wonder would they have overdealt with Rascasse, Australia 94 and Jerez 97???
Niki Lauda, no stranger to āsportsmanshipā needs to read them the riot act: Iām no Hamfosi to put it mildly, but Lewis drove brilliantly to his circumstances, not poorly.
Lewis would have been better off disappearing into the sunset and then everything would be saying that he would have won the championship but for reliability.
Now he just looks like a bit of a twat. By turning it into a slow race he gave away a lot of the moral high ground.
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The record books will show Nico Rosberg as World Champion 2016 because he scored more points than anyone else; Thatās the way itās always been. Well done Nico.
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