Formula One returns to its "spiritual home" this Sunday as Silverstone hosts the 2016 British Grand Prix. This was the circuit where the first F1 race was held back in 1950, and in that inaugural season, Alfa Romeo was the team to beat in the seven-race championship. As compared to two drivers per team now, constructors had as many as four in those early years to be able to constitute a healthy grid.
Given the incidents of last week’s Austrian GP and its aftermath in the Mercedes garage, it makes for some wonderment how the 1950 champion Juan Manuel Fangio dealt with his three teammates in a superior car.
Split wide open
There has been a lot said and done after the two Mercedes drivers clashed at the Red Bull Ring. Some would argue that it doesn’t really matter, like McLaren’s Fernando Alonso who reportedly said that "they will still win the championship, whether they collide or not". The Mercedes view is different though, and why not, after investing so much time and money into building two winning cars every race weekend.
The events last weekend ought to have pinched because Nico Rosberg suffered a crash in final practice on Saturday and then Lewis Hamilton’s mechanics were called over to rebuild his car. With so much effort gone into getting the cars on track just in time for the qualifying rounds, and to later see them collide on the last lap of the race throwing away a 1-2 finish, it has to be demoralising for the team.
Team principal Toto Wolff talked about team orders almost immediately. Non-executive chairman Niki Lauda was then quoted saying that "Hamilton trashed his room(s) in Baku after making serious errors in Qualifying [for the European GP]", thus handing the advantage to his teammate. Taken in summation, these statements were already a PR disaster for a team that has been unchallenged in F1 since 2014. Since then, they have gone into damage-control mode, issuing new "rules of engagement" for their drivers with the rider of heavy penalties.
But will that be enough to deter two championship contenders who are clearly no longer, putting it mildly, on friendly terms?
The Hamilton viewpoint
The three-time world champion knows he is the alpha driver in this team. When he signed for Mercedes in 2013, he was already a former champion (after his 2008 triumph with McLaren-Mercedes) and subsequently won the titles in 2014 and 2015.
Truth be told, he has always been in the mix for victories, even if not championships during the Red Bull domination, and that has partly been down to his driving style. He is a pure racer, perhaps on par with Alonso and ahead of the rest of the field in that sense. The Spaniard will vouch for the fact that his former teammate doesn’t really believe in team orders.
Yes, Hamilton is no stranger to intra-team politics. In his very first season in 2007, he had to contend with Alonso and such was the intensity of their rivalry that the duo ended up gifting Kimi Raikkonen the drivers’ championship. Again, it was mainly down to the fact that McLaren did not enforce team orders back then, so Hamilton is indeed not used to such enforcements.
On Thursday, he put up a smiling front, saying that he is "a team man and an employee", and will comply with the new rules of engagement. However his argument also stands that in a sport where two drivers are going hammer and tongs at 300-plus kmph, such incidents will happen.
“We have had five incidents in all these years. And in all those races, the stewards deemed me racing, so I will still race like that. Not much has changed in that regard,” the defending champion had said.
The Rosberg viewpoint
What is different, though, is how Rosberg approaches his own driving style and in keeping with how Hamilton drives. There is a new edge about his racing this season and, perhaps, it stems from the ending races of last year, when he had lost the championship in the United States GP. The two drivers had clashed on the opening lap in Austin, with Hamilton going on to take the championship. But then Rosberg went on to win the remaining races in 2015 and carried that hot form into the early part of 2016, winning seven on the trot.
Then, the Spanish GP clash happened. There was no blame game and the team hushed it all up. There was even an undertone of friendliness to their relationship. Then, the Austrian GP clash happened and the stewards penalised Rosberg, a first for their five-clash history. Clearly, this was unacceptable for Mercedes and, yet, the surprising bit is how Rosberg has stayed adamant that it wasn’t his fault.
“From my point of view it is not black or white. I do respect the stewards’ decision, and that they came to that decision as a group, but this does not mean that I have to fully agree with it and my view can be different,” he said, still standing his ground, even in the build-up to the British GP.
Maybe, with the cushion of his three championship wins, Hamilton can still choose to live in his own bubble and believe nothing has changed. Running out of time in a winning car, clearly, Rosberg believes otherwise.
