Hamilton vs Rosberg Version 2015

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Sharpe*

Sharpe*

Senior Member
Jan 25, 2011
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Hamilton vs Rosberg resumes!

Off the back of the latest win by Lewis Hamilton at the Chinese Grand Prix ahead of his teammate Nico Rosberg - the lid has come off and the true feelings between the drivers has come out ahead of the team lead PR that everything was rosy again after last year.

In the post match press conference Hamilton responded to the accusation that Rosberg had been compromised in order to create a buffer between Lewis and Sebastian and that Lewis had backed him up:

"It is absolutely not the case. I wasn't really looking in my mirrors and I wasn't trying to back Nico up to Sebastian.

If he wanted to get close and overtake he could have done. He was always about four or five seconds behind.

He never got close so I don't know what his problem is. I did what they asked me to do. There shouldn't be too much aggro".
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Rosberg responded with the following:

"He (Hamilton) compromised my race massively at the time because the best possible race for Lewis was to back me off into Vettel so that Vettel would try to undercut me with an early pit stop.

Then I would have to cover him and then I would have such a long stint at the end of the race that I would be without a chance.

That was very frustrating that Lewis was taking at easy as that on the tyres at the beginning of the stint. Interestingly, he said he was just thinking about himself and that says it all.

What upsets me is that my race was massively compromised and we went through that scenario before the race".
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Rosberg has even followed this up with the accusation that Hamilton caused an "unnecessary risk" to the chances of a Mercedes 1-2:

"It was always very close with Sebastian Vettel coming out of the pits and that was completely unnecessary risk to put me in because we had a pace advantage over him.

But we were taking it so easy in that stage of the race that he (Vettel) was right behind me, putting me under pressure and went to try to get me in the pit stops.

It didn't compromise the team result but put unnecessary risk to the one-two and we went through that scenario before the race, which is frustrating.

We'll have a discussion and see how it goes. I'll let you know."
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Has Rosberg completely lost the plot here or does he have a point?

Is this another example of Rosberg being unable to budge Hamilton and simply not being able to take it?

Where does the rivalry go from here?
 
I think Rosberg is crying for nothing. If anyone is at fault it's Mercedes. Mercedes asked Lewis to do 1:44.7's (I think that was the time?) and he was doing that. They again came on the radio and asked him for 1:44.3's (again, not 100% but my point remains) which he again did. As I said in the Chinese Grand Prix thread, if Merc underestimate how quickly Vettel can catch them and give a target time which isn't quick enough then that's their fault. It's not like Lewis was going slower than the team had asked him to. Saying that though, I think Nico is being a bit childish with this as ultimately he should be trying to win the race and he should put pressure on Lewis and try and overtake. Had it been the other way around you could bet your house that Lewis would at least try and pressure Nico and even try to get a pass on Nico.

I say this is 1:0 to Lewis and he'll be sitting back loving how easily he has gotten into Nico's head.
 
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jonnybaws said:
If it does and its deemed Nico's fault, he'll be on thin ice with management!
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Yes, I was thinking that surely he wouldn't be so foolish again; not just for how the team would respond but last year's antics really sunk his estimation in the eyes of the public. Surely what little remains of his reputation couldn't stand another hit? Then again, I used to think he was an intelligent man; there hasn't been much evidence of that lately.
 
I don't know whether he has a point, but he isn't doing himself any good airing this stuff in public. Whoever is right / wrong, this should be sorted out behind closed doors.

Maybe he doesn't have any faith in being able to do that. Maybe he feels that Lewis is treating him as the 'de facto'' number 2 already, and the team isn't doing much about it. But it's down to him - he has to show that he can beat Lewis on the track. If he can't do that, he's on a hiding to nothing.

As long as Mercedes is scoring 1-2's towards the WCC, they probably don't care much which driver wins. I'm sure they'd love to see the WDC go to a German driving a Mercedes, but he's not showing the WDC mettle that Lewis is showing, and they're not going to risk letting the WDC slip through their fingers because they favoured a weaker driver. Mercedes would rather see the WDC going to an Englishman driving a Mercedes, than to a German driving a Ferrari.

Nico has to wake up - he's up against two World Champions, possibly 3 if Kimi comes good. None of those guys are going to give any ground. In boxing parlance, if Nico wants the belt, he's going to have to take it from them.

As for where the Nico/Lewis rivalry goes from here, I don't think Lewis really sees Nico as a genuine rival any more. He sees his rivals as Vettel and (if he can get a competitive car) Alonso.
 
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He has track position and he has earned the right to run the race how he sees fit. I understand that Nico was potentially compromised but the alternative was to pressure Lewis - assuming that is/was allowed at this point in the race. This is always the issue when ultimately the team prioritise the 1-2 over who finishes in what position.
 
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Even if Nico does have a point, which I don't believe he does, he should moan about it to the team, who instructed Lewis to drive to a time, and do it behind closed doors. Lashing out at Lewis in public just makes him look like a sore loser.
 
I thought Mercedes handled this perfectly by telling Lewis if he backed Rosberg up they might have to pit Rosberg first. I don't think he'll **** about like that again. I really don't know what his motive was, why does he feel the need to spoil Nico's race? Surely he doesn't see him as a threat.

Rosberg's ballsed up again here. In Malaysia it was him trying to **** with his team mate by blocking in qualifying, and Hamilton denied it even happened. Boot on the other foot, and Rosberg very publicly makes it clear that he's been rattled by it. He's cracking up, Hamilton and Vettel have both scored psychological blows over him now.
 
I still think that there is too much control in the Merc team. Let the drivers pick their own strategies, split or counter strategy over their team mate and race from lap 1 until the end. This like for like tyre and lap number pit is really quite tedious. Let them race and who knows, with a dnf or two we could have a 3 or 4 way fight for the championship.
 
It's just conflict of interest.

Mercedes want what's best for them, that is a 1-2 they will rein them both in if needed.

Lewis and Rosberg want to beat the other and be the guy who wins the race / wdc.

On one hand you can say it's a complete non story and Rosberg is being petty in being humbled again. But playing devils advocate here, you could say Nico had a point in Lewis backing him up to Seb. He had the race won and that was it and Rosberg knew that and was an easy 2nd... but 10 pts on your team mate on the day is better than 7.

Unlikely but not impossible, but quite frankly, I don't give a ****, I have more important things to give a crap about.
 
Worth mentioning that native Germans don't really support Nico either. Just the mass non-European population.

So Mercedes wouldn't gain anything from backing Nico over Lewis. It is already over for Nico lets face it. And I don't criticise Lewis one bit for that, he came out the better man after his move to MGP. I didn't expect it.
 
Anyone know where you can find lap times? I know Mercedes were dictating a target time to Hamilton, which so long as he was hitting, I don't see he has a case to answer.

But Hamilton's comments are spot on, the gap was never significantly reduced, Rosberg should have applied pressure if he was worried, then at least Hamilton would have sped up to defend his position.

Rosberg wanted to just keep driving target lap times, and how dare he be forced to work for his position. Ridiculous comments from him.
 
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In the end it seems Mercedes are doing what they and McLaren have agreement wise in the past with a dominant car. Who ever gets 1st into the first corner, it then stands for the whole race until they secure the wcc and phase seb out of the wdc.

It might be why Nico REALLY got so irritated about it and that qualifying and race start is even more critical for them than the race at this point. But this is just my hypothesis.
 
DHCanary said:
Anyone know where you can find lap times? I know Mercedes were dictating a target time to Hamilton, which so long as he was hitting, I don't see he has a case to answer.

But Hamilton's comments are spot on, the gap was never significantly reduced, Rosberg should have applied pressure if he was worried, then at least Hamilton would have sped up to defend his position.

Rosberg wanted to just keep driving target lap times, and how dare he be forced to work for his position. Ridiculous comments from him.
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After the pit stop both Nico and Vettel were catching at a reasonable rate. When Nico first moaned Lewis was given a delta time of 43:7 and Nico and Vettel were still catching and then the delta was revised to a 43:3. At one point the gap to Nico was down to 1.9 secs but then it sent back up just before Nico pitted. At one point Lewis, Nico & Vettel were covered by under 4 seconds at the early part of that stint. Obviously Lewis would have Known that Nico was pitting which I think resulted in Lewis taking the piss with his extra pace.
 
a team mate getting owned, his team-mate stirring it in the press, the nationalities are reversed and so are the opinions. When webber was doing a Rosberg he was 'honest', Rosberg doing it is whining.
funny that.

Do the talking on the track, unless your German.
 
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Rosberg moaning about his race being compromised is hypocritical after what happened in Monaco (qualifying) and Spa last year and Malaysia qualifying this year. What Hamilton did was nothing major, he was looking after his tyres but okay maybe a bit too much. Still though, Rosberg is cracking big time and it's only a matter of time before he goes back to his 2014 tricks to try and halt the momentum of Hamilton.
 
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