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Nico had the advantage of being established at Mercedes before Lewis, beat a returning Schumacher 3 years in a row and still came off second best to Lewis, only winning 1 season in 4 after some serious good luck relative to Hamilton.
I don't think he would have done any better than Valteri if the positions were swapped and Nico had joined in 2017.
Nico had the advantage of being established at Mercedes before Lewis, beat a returning Schumacher 3 years in a row and still came off second best to Lewis, only winning 1 season in 4 after some serious good luck relative to Hamilton.
I don't think he would have done any better than Valteri if the positions were swapped and Nico had joined in 2017.
That’s because of the arbitrary nature of measuring seasons calendar yearly. If instead you make a season 19 consecutive races then Hamilton Rosberg competed in 60 of these and Hamilton won 62% of them making their share of world championships look reasonable.
Rosberg was a formidable teammate and ultimately honed Hamilton into the complete driver he is today.
Fortune favours the prepared; she has no favourites and takes no sides.
Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty : Tacitus
I think so too. Hamilton got the pressure from one of the best drivers in F1 at that time and had to deal with it in this marvelous superior ca r that both had. And he dealt with it. That has clearly made hin better and stronger.
Rosberg was a good challenge in the race and in qualifying. Bottas seems to need everything align and Hamilton to be off to come out on top.
Rosberg showed us, if you want to compete against Hamilton, you need to give everything every time, all of the time. It drained him so much he walked away from the sport when he finally won a season. One day of less focus, and you're done. Maybe this is getting to Vettel now as well. I think Bottas is doing the sensible thing and don't compete against Hamilton in that way, he would crush him as well.
Nico had the advantage of being established at Mercedes before Lewis, beat a returning Schumacher 3 years in a row and still came off second best to Lewis, only winning 1 season in 4 after some serious good luck relative to Hamilton.
I don't think he would have done any better than Valteri if the positions were swapped and Nico had joined in 2017.
Plus, as we now know, Schumacher was suffering the effects of a brain injury, after his motorbike accident, when he returned to F1.
Favourite driver: Lando Norris
Favourite team: McLaren
Turned down the chance to meet Vettel at Silverstone in 2007. He was a test driver at the time and I didn't think it was worth queuing!! 🤦🏻♂️
I'm rather doubtful Schumacher was handicapped to any relevant degree during those 3 years. If he was, I doubt he would have returned to F1 in the first place. Considering how good Hamilton irrefutably is and how close to him Rosberg was, I am closer to thinking Rosberg was just THAT good, plain and simple. I'm quite sure if you stick any of the old "legends" into todays cars, some might be disappointed or even shocked to see that reality doesn't quite live up to the hype.
Back many years ago, the driver was a much higher factor (relative to the car). Cars were more difficult to drive, allowing for very very good drivers to shine more. Thus we had drivers who were leaps and bounds better than their team-mates and competitor. I firmly believe the competition among drivers is much higher now days and aided by the fact that the cars make up a larger factor in overall performance, it's harder for very good drivers to stand out as much as some of the greats did.
Ergo, stick one of the old greats into this years car against a very good driver and I think it wouldn't be as one-sided as it was back then. Same applies to Schumacher. He was an incredible racing driver, no doubt, but his greatness is perhaps a little one-sided considering he was measured against a Rubens Barrichello in the dominant team for most of his successful career.
Why is Hamilton or Rosberg considered to be very good? In my opinion, because of Hamilton's consistent performance and competitiveness against Alonso, Button and Rosberg. Rosberg for his performance against Hamilton. Alonso for his performance against Hamilton/Button and how he pretty much annihilated any other team-mate he ever had. I certainly will not gauge Hamilton's greatness with his performance against Heiki Kovaleinen or Bottas. Neither would I gauge Alonso's against Massa or Kimi. To the same effect, I wouldn't gauge Michaels against Rubens.
Also, with the sport increasing in popularity, wealth and size, I would think that the field has attracted way more talent than it did back a few centuries ago. Just look at where Tennis is today compared to the old days when some of the "greats" played in what was pretty much a niche rich mans sport.
The greats IMO are not great because they were THAT good. They were in my opinion great because they raced in cars that were pretty much coffins on 4 wheels, risking their lives at ridiculous speeds to outshine each other.
Not for nothing, Rosberg's Championship is the only thing that lends credibility to Hamilton's recent success. Otherwise, he'd just be the guy who's had the best car. — bhall II #Team44 supporter
Rosberg was a good challenge in the race and in qualifying. Bottas seems to need everything align and Hamilton to be off to come out on top.
Rosberg had a lifetime of knowing Hamilton as an advantage, he also had the knack as Jensen Button did, of bringing a team around to their cause, a easy thing to do leveraging Hamilton's insistence that all he needs is things be level, consequently both Rosberg and Button found a way of gaining an advantage there. When there's a talent deficit you need everything you can get.
How weird what that move on Mercedes' part that the two drivers swap garage teams? That was in 2016 if I recall. Also Rosberg has the dirty pool gene which Bottas simply doesn't have. It's what enables someone to live with themselves after parking the car in a run off area in Monaco ruining everyone's lap, ensuring he'd get pole then walking around celebrating the result. I'm not passing judgement on whether or not this is good or bad, simply saying that the biggest difference between Bottas and Rosberg is the killer instinct or lack there of in Bottas. Playing fair and reliability not coming into play, I genuinely believe that Hamilton is unbeatable and that's exactly what we've seen over his career.
Mercedes swapped/shuffled the garage teams because there was an increasing competition building up and presumably increased animosity among them. From a teams-perspective, I can now absolutely understand the reasoning behind not wanting that to happen further, thus they needed to shuffle the pack.
It's dangerous when your team is starting to compete internally against each other. It forms packs and hostility towards each other. It might be ok when you have such a dominant car that you are only really battling yourself, but it can have lasting consequences for the team as a whole.
Just look at the reports about the internal Ferrari battle between Binotto and Arrivabene. Apparently it's 'tearing the team apart'. With the competitive nature of Rosberg and Hamilton and the psychological warfare going on (Monaco, collisions, data being shared etc), one can understand that the situation at Mercedes probably was quite bad and in order to not have that tear up the intra team harmonics, they needed to step in.
Not for nothing, Rosberg's Championship is the only thing that lends credibility to Hamilton's recent success. Otherwise, he'd just be the guy who's had the best car. — bhall II #Team44 supporter
My point exactly, Rosberg like Button both struck me as master manipulators of their environment. A skill that can come in very handy when there's a talent gap. I'm sure the animosity didn't start with the guy that had won the two previous years championships and ultimately the reliability of Hamilton's car is what cost his the third year running title.
I see there is too much of hype for Rosberg as a driver here. No other driver, other than Prost had that lucrative opportunity of qualifying right behind his team mate, regardless of how poor he performed in qualifying, because there was no credible competition. MP4/4 and MP4/5 had no competition and I had posted comparison runs in the McLaren thread of Prost and Senna, where the average gap between the two was more than a second! Yet, no one in between them. Same applies to Rosberg, while the qualifying performance difference was an average of 0.3 to 0.4 second (thanks to modern sophisticated cars and obviously, learning from the team mate's data), there were times when Lewis got pole by over half a second and yet, it was Nico who was next to him. 2016 Monza was a classic example where Lewis got pole by half a second and when he fluffed the start, it was Rosberg who was taking advantage. In all his years, Rosberg never had any issues in qualifying, whereas Lewis had a number of failures that didn't allow him to challenge Rosberg in quali, which in turn gifted wins to Rosberg.
Unlike no other teams before, Mercedes brought rules of engagement that always preferred the leading driver the right to pit first. Despite that, a number of times Rosberg was the beneficiary of the rule break (Bahrain 2015, Austria 2016), while Lewis never enjoyed that. In 2015 Monaco, a win was taken away from Lewis and gifted to Rosberg. Austria 2016 was almost a gift too. In Russia 2016, Lewis was asked not to charge towards Rosberg by quoting a water issue in engine. 2016 was full of questionable decisions from Mercedes and not to mention the mechanics swap. Despite having a absolutely trouble free year on mechanical side, Rosberg still needed a host of issues for Lewis in the early part of the season, that forced Lewis to take an extra PU and penalty for that, and most importantly, a Lewis' DNF to get the title.
No other team mate ever enjoyed so many advantages against one of the potent drivers of all times, which enabled an average Joe to come across as more than that. In the end, Rosberg appeared more competitive than he really was, due to various factors. His race craft was as good as that was on display in Spain and Austria 2016 and not to mention the hydrophobic driving qualities.
Rosberg and button shouldn't be discounted yes they only have one world championship but button destroyed Rubin just like Michael. Rosberg stuck around with Michael and was generally better. Managed to get the better of Hamilton for one season as did button.
In terms of proof I would actually argue that both are better than Alonso as he got his championshipa in a great car and poor teammates so no competition.
He couldn't deal with Hamilton yes he beat Massa and Kimi as teammates but Massa was never the same after the accident and Kimi wasn't great either as proven by vettel.
