Now on to Japan... Hamilton had one win..in his first year there. Since then I don't think he had any other spectacular results there since..maybe one podium or so? Thing is Rosberg has been worse than him.. He has never had a podium there...so who will come out tops there should go a long way towards having the real upper hand.
Was gutted with today. Mainly because the rest of the season is now spoilt. We all know Hamilton is the faster and generally better driver. All Rosberg had on his side was consistency and luck but they appear to have given up on him. It was building up to be a nice fight to the end It's going to be Hamilton all the way from now on I think.
That Merc is pretty temperamental. To be honest, the title will most likely be decided by who has the least bad luck through the end of the season. It could be either of them.
You know, given how badly reliability has started to affect this season, I'm starting to think Abu Dhabi will be won by whichever car is still in one piece at the end. Also I would love it if everyone broke down and after all the hype they had to award the 50 points to Ericsson I wonder if we'll see some tactical engine part changes at Brazil, actually.
First of all congrats to Lewis. Was away and just seen the highlights. Very unlucky for Rosberg but nice to see he tried all the options before giving up. Also good touch from Lewis managing his race well and a swift overtake with no issues to retake the lead. Special mention to Felipe, Jean Eric, and Vettel as well as Marcus Ericsson for strong performances which was unexpected. Feel bad for Sauber and Kamui going through a dark patch, the sun will shine again soon. Alonso and Raikkonen extracted what they could. Danny Ric with a smooth drive and Hulk once again in the points. Bianchi again adding to his CV class act... The title battle has just got sticky. With only a few races to go. Ps. Was a safety car really required?
Lewis nudged ahead once before and still ended up back 29 points behind so I wouldn't lose too much heart. Also, of the two, it seems more likely that Lewis will have to take an engine penalty; or, at least, he suggested as much himself, for whatever that's worth, could just be his paranoia perhaps. Edit: Silly me, Lewis had that engine fire; not paranoia then Yeah, I've been wondering the same thing. I mean, a grid penalty at Abu Dhabi is a double penalty.
Also special mention to all the drivers who had the tenure to keep the car between the walls this race.
Things I took out of that: 1) Massa did a humongous number of laps on his tyres, how he kept that going I don't know 2) Vergne and Kvyat were on basically the same strategy 3) Force India pitting Hulkenberg after the safety car, in hindsight, probably cost him any chance of decent points 4) The driver who was most gentle on the supersoft tyres was Max
I suspect he's actually fuelled lighter, and the TV graphics don't show that, assuming everyone puts the maximum possible fuel in. If you can bank on him using less fuel, why put it in in the first place? He'll still have the same allowance if he needs to do some serious hot laps, but overall his fuel load is likely lower.
He's debunked that as paper talk on twitter: "BTW some newspapers say I had burns and had medical treatment for it. That's a bit exaggerated, I was just hot and sweaty! #notdead"
I saw it on Autosport so it's their fault to be fair if he had full-on burns I think Charlie would have made him stop the car.
I thought Lewis did an excellent job and delivered what he had to on what turned out to be a relativily straight forward race for him in the end. Dissapointed that the follwing pack never challenged him even when gifted the opportunity after the saftey car, it seemed they were happy to race for position rather than challenge and see what may happen - however, Lewis demonstrated what car advantage they have over the rest so it was probably the most sensible decission for the rest to make. McLaren were shocking and I cant see any improvements since Ron's return except that alot of people including the drivers appear to be in fear of losing their jobs. Felt really sorry for Kimi, he seemed really on it this weekend and it was good to see both Red Bulls near the front, even though it is likely to be track specific. Top job Massa and Vergne who bettered their team mates significantly. In relation to alot of Hamelton statements made, its probably just best not to comment - its a pointless task and franky quite boring. There are 21 other drivers.
It was a tale of two races for him. Pre-safety car he was holding a small advantage to Vettel without pushing the car to its limit and looking after tyres and mechanicals. It was totally under control and without the SC I doubt he would have won by more than 10 seconds or so. After the SC, he had to wring the true pace out of the car, along with being on the softer tyres, knowing he would then be on the slower tyres after he pitted. Didn't make a mistake, kept it aggressive but clean and dispatched Vettel whilst he had his fresh tyres. Possibly one of his most mature and controlled races to date (if you ignore the paniced messages about his tyres going off!)
Can I ask what is potentially a really silly question, so excuse my ignorance please?! Whilst watching Rosberg toiling behind Ericsson, it seemed really obvious to me that the car was doing a double up-shift rather than anything Nico was deliberately doing. If that's the case though (and I know he had several other issues at the time, but this seemed to be the largest inhibitor for speed), why couldn't he instantly downshift one gear each time it did that to him? Or am I missing something here? (like I said, my knowledge of the gear workings are almost nil, so bear with me on it!)
Electronics. Everything and anything wasnt working in its correct order, but I would imagine manually overiding a double upshift with a down shift would have been impossible and would have undoubtedley demolished the gearbox with excessive stress. I would imagine there were additional issues with varying parts of the powertrain aswell either not functioning or not functioning correctly, meaning that even if he had been able to overcome the gearbox issue the perfromance would have been hindered anyway. You only have to look at Canada and see how the Mercs were hindered by a faulty power unit.
