On Thursday, before the season finale of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix over the weekend, title contenders Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton attended a special press conference. It was just the two of them, posing for pictures and answering questions about what has been an eventful battle for the drivers’ championship.
Hamilton said he was proud of how his teammate has driven this season. Rosberg recollected how they had spent their childhood, chasing dreams of Formula One glory, before seeing them come to fruition. They both spoke about personnel interchanges in their respective engineering teams (part of their crews were exchanged before the start of this season on Mercedes team orders).
Hamilton talked about the various technical issues he has faced this season, and how he had come back from a 43-point deficit, and then a 33-point deficit. Rosberg spoke about his mental strength, and how he took every race as a singular, distinctive event, never thinking about the end-of-season result.
Hamilton said he would not back his teammate into Red Bull or Ferrari cars, instead doing the best he could to win the race in dominant style. Rosberg too admitted that foul play, or even playing safe, were not thoughts crossing his mind ahead of the championship battle.
Both believed they deserve to win the title. Both refused to shake hands while posing for the cameras.
This exchange of words – along with that never-happening handshake – encapsulates the Rosberg-Hamilton relationship today. At the core level, there is an immense, obvious respect, given how they spent their formative years racing together. In 2013, when they joined hands at Mercedes, it was a fairytale come true.
Respect and rivalry
Things ignited in 2014, at the Monaco Grand Prix, when Rosberg pulled off that braking stunt in qualifying. Then, they clashed in Spa and battle lines were drawn. When you are a simple youngster, dreaming to make it big one day, victories and intra-term rivalries matter little. Years later when you are driving in F1 for the only team capable of delivering the world titles, friendship is the easiest thing to do away with.
A racing driver sits alone in his cockpit, and in F1, his first job is to beat his teammate. Hamilton did that, in 2014 and 2015 with aplomb. The latter – wrapping up the championship in USA with three races to go – particularly hurt Rosberg. He has been a different driver since then, especially coming into this season when he kept that poker face on and never let it off.
Sure, Rosberg has been helped by various technical issues creeping up on Hamilton’s side of the garage. But it does not take away from his driving, or ability to win races. On count of his two consecutive titles, if Hamilton’s is the lead car that failed to get going, it is Rosberg’s duty – and prerogative – to pick up the pieces for his team. And he did, but more for himself.
In doing so, he drove immaculate races. Rosberg’s win in Singapore was a pertinent marker of this heightened prowess and underlined his future champion status. When he happily closed down into Hamilton in Spain, or did not turn his car at all in Hungary (causing another collision), it was a marker of his ruthless streak. Champions cannot afford to be soft, and Rosberg has shown amply this season that he can take that leap.
Champions do not give up either, and Hamilton’s twin comebacks – first in the European leg and later after his engine blew in Malaysia – have shown the fight in him. However, since that blowout, the British driver has known very well that he is only chasing a mathematical possibility. And yet, so far, he has done everything asked of him, ticking the winner’s box in the last three races.
As such, this last racing weekend of the 2016 season comes down to simple mathematics, again.
It’s all down to Rosberg
If Hamilton wins, Rosberg must finish fourth or lower. If Hamilton finishes second, Rosberg mush finish seventh or lower. If Hamilton finishes third, Rosberg must be ninth or lower. And Hamilton cannot win the title if he finishes outside the top three, even if Rosberg does not score points.
Simply put, Hamilton cannot win the title on his own. He needs Rosberg’s luck to run out, hoping the technical issues that have plagued him since the onset of this season turn to the other side of the garage for once. If not, he needs help from other drives. Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo are expected to be in the mix, as are Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.
But Mercedes have been quick enough to fend off these challenges all year round. So, what makes it seem probable that they could indeed find that extra pace, and step in to help Hamilton?
Vettel can provide that answer, referring to his first championship win in 2010. Going into the final round, he lagged behind teammate Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso (then driving for Ferrari) in the championship calculations, yet drove an immaculate race to victory. Webber finished seventh and Alonso got held up in traffic, finishing eighth while the German went on to celebrate his first of four titles.
Hamilton can conclude that it can be done, that history can repeat itself, that he can drive a similarly immaculate race. But he also knows that the margins between Mercedes and the rest are greater today than they were between Red Bull, Ferrari and the rest back in 2010. “It doesn’t help me (thinking about what happened back that year),” he said, in that pre-race press conference.
Clearly, Hamilton knows only too well that it is Rosberg’s title to lose.