The smooth Rosberg...

[PlatinumZealot]

Is Nico's way an acceptable way to win the Championship?

Little sneaky, seemingly innocent acts to gain an unfair advantage such as:

Obliquely requesting Team Orders
cautiously losing control and cautiously reversing on track in Monaco Q3
Cutting Chicanes like a sharp knife through a baugette
Needlessly nicking (aka slashing the bejeezus out of) your Teammate's tyres with the flick of the wrist

Among many other sneaky little things that he always gets away with? This all around Nice guy's political savvy is also well observed in the paddock.

I mean, If he wins it... will you look back on his WDC with total appreciation? How do you view Championships that are won using Nico-lo Machiavellian tactics?

Niccolò Machiavelli



Nico Rosberg

[natehall]

The record books do not write down incidents like this, only the hardcore fans will remember what happened this year..

Personally, I do not recognise him as a true WDC contestant, whilst extremely talented he is no Schumacher, Senna, Alonso, Fangio or Prost..

He is doing a good job in a great car, just like button did with the BGP1, he has been particularly unspectacular in ever other season, unconvincingly beating a Schumacher who had been out of the sport for years, showing both the calibre of Schumacher that whilst age had taken its toll, he was still as quick as a above average driver in his prime despite being 16 years older - and probably 6-10 years past his prime!

Personally, I think it is all to sly, id like it if Mercedes had the guts to sideline him for a race , give lewis a chance to get the 18 points back and resume the challenge! or better still the FIA have the balls to DSq him for causing a collision as it clearly wasnt a racing incident, Vettel had the sense to back out and avoid a collision, Rosberg could have done exactly the same..

I wouldnt accept that sort of behaviour (you passed me and didnt let me passed last race so im going to crash into you and ruin your race *blows a raspberry and spits dummy out* ) From my 4 year old, but hes 29 and still acting like a spoilt 4 year old child!

Im not a Hamilton fan, personally im a Massa and Alonso Fan so have my dislikes towards Lewis , but after Nico's playing up im wanting Hamilton shows him how to drive!

[Moxie]

Oh please!!!

This stuff has been going on in F1 since I began watching in the 1980's. Personally I don't care for the sneaky stuff, but to pretend that it is not encouraged in the F1 environment is nonsense. Senna intentionally crashed into Prost to win the WDC. Prost intentionally crashed into Senna to win the WDC. Prost switched cars Mansell without Mansell knowing. Senna made a habit of running people off track. Shumacher intentionally crashed into Hill to win the WDC. Hamilton has a few instances of unsportsmanlike driving with his battles with Alonzo and Massa. And we mustn't forget the antics of Vettel. These men are revered for being "Champions."

Don't cry for Hamilton...he plays the same games.

[rayden]

I agree in that Nico is no schumi/prost etc. but neither is Hamilton.
To be only 30 pts ahead of Ricciardo at this stage of the season with the massive car advantage hes had is more than a bit ordinary.
Tbh they have both gone down in my estimation, this year, making very tough work of winning a WDC in what is one of the most dominant cars of all time.

[SiLo]

I agree in that Nico is no schumi/prost etc. but neither is Hamilton.
To be only 30 pts ahead of Ricciardo at this stage of the season with the massive car advantage hes had is more than a bit ordinary.
Tbh they have both gone down in my estimation, this year, making very tough work of winning a WDC in what is one of the most dominant cars of all time.

Quite certain he's not exactly had the best of luck this year. The irony is that Red Bull have been more reliable with Ric's car than Merc have with Hamiltons.

[gavingav1]

i think alot of hamiltons "bad luck" is down to him pushing the car to hard ,and nico is leading the world championship over hamilton in the same machinery,funny how hamilton thinks he is the past master of minds games but apply the smallest of pressures to him and he xplodes ,nico may well win the title because he can remain calmer -and just to be clear -i am not a rosberg or hamilton fan ,i am a long term wiliams sufferer

[natehall]

I dont think hamilton is a prost/schumacher/senna type driver, hes good but not that good!

I also think that this year is a blip for vettel, but then I have never rated him as a 4 time WDC calibre race (IE Prost, Schumacher and Fangio), he was in the absolute best car and did a good job in it!

I think the current driver of the field, who outperforms his car season in / season out is Alonso.. He has impressed me and should have more WDC's in my opinion if he hadnt been given a top end of midfield car at best the past few seasons - putting him next to raikkonen has proven his calibre in my opinion.

[Edax]

i think alot of hamiltons "bad luck" is down to him pushing the car to hard ,and nico is leading the world championship over hamilton in the same machinery,funny how hamilton thinks he is the past master of minds games but apply the smallest of pressures to him and he xplodes ,nico may well win the title because he can remain calmer -and just to be clear -i am not a rosberg or hamilton fan ,i am a long term wiliams sufferer

I don't see much proof for any of these statements.
- For one they are not driving identical machines, they have for instance different brakes. Would Hamilton have made it to the finish line in Canada if he had Rosbergs brakes or visa versa, would Rosberg have made it?
- On the other hand Rosberg is known to be harder on the gearbox, did that cause his gear failure?

I think that the answer to both is you don't know and you can't know. Maybe if you have access to all the telemetry you can say something about this, but not on the basis of a few random failures.

About the errors.
- Hamilton bumped in to Button breaking his wing. Rosberg collided quite hard with Bottas damaging nothing.
- Rosberg has botched about half of his starts, is that nerves / reaction time / or car setup.

Bottom line is I think that you have two quys in nearly identical equipment, putting in similar performance and so far making very little mistakes. And you have no sizeable competition, to seperate them points wise.

[Manoah2u]

Coming race Nico and Hamilton crash into eachother and take both eachother out, Nico will dive into a corner where there is no room slam into Luis' sidepod taking out the cooling of Ham and wreck his own suspension.

Ricciardo will then win the race - triple in a row with a RedBull! that means Ricky will be just 10 points shy of Hamilton, 39
shy of Rosberg.

Rosberg will have a diciplinary warning given to him by Toto Wolff himself. He'll get suspended for the next race by the FIA for admitting delibirately having run into hamilton who was about to win the GP, based upon 'delibarately bringing another driver into danger'.

That means we'll go into singapore Rosberg-free and a battle between Hamilton and Ricciardo for the win, with Vettel performing well there too. Engine troubles will have hamilton finish the race in 3rd with a Ricciardo win, Alonso second and Hamilton 3rd.

That means by singapore finish, standings are
1: Rosberg 220 points - 2: Hamilton: 209 points - 3: Ricciardo 206 points

Japan will be won by Hamilton from pole strong weekend all-out.
Nico will end up 5th after taking a puncture by debris from Maldonado's car that crashed into Bianchi.
Ricciardo 2nd Bottas 3rd.

Ricky will win additionally in Russia, with Rosberg taking a DNF thanks to engine problems.
Hamilton will finish 2nd after getting a drive-through penalty for getting repeatedly all 4 wheels off
the racing lines.

Hamilton: 252 points
Ricky: 249 points
Rosberg: 230 points

next 2 races USA + BRA will be won by either one of the drivers, a 1-2, 1-2,
having Hamilton 295 points, Rosberg 273 points, and Ricky 272 points.

Thus we will have a winner takes all final race where double points will mean everything to Rosberg and Ricciardo,
rosberg is 22 points shy of hamilton. Ricky 23 points.

There are 50 points to be given to the winner, 36 to 2nd, 30 to 3rd, 24 for 4th, 20 for 5th.

If rosberg wins the race, then he'll have 323 points in total. That means hamilton must score 28 points to win the championship, so he must be either 2nd or 3rd to still win the Title. The same goes when in some case, Ricciardo
will win the double-point championship. IF hamilton becomes forth, he will not be WDC.

It's all pure nonsense what i just wrote, but that's what the OP also did. nonsense, so i'll bring a little analasys joy
into a joyless discussion.

Fact is though, Hamilton won his championship with Mclaren by overtaking in the last corner, so it wouldn't surprise
me if such a scene might unfold again. Imagine Rosberg driving 1st all race and hamilton thanks to whatever happened
driving 4th will overtake Massa who got a team order ( oh the irony ) from mercedes-powered williams to move aside for Hamilton and thus winning the championship from 3rd despite the double-points championship (or thanks to the double points, however you put it).
Rosberg will be mad a team order was issued to williams for Mercedes so that Hamilton wins the 2014 WDC, which was unnecesary because Merc had the WCC in the bag anyway. with some political correct reply with a possibile DNF for Rosberg and Win for Ricci and WDC going to Rick instead of a MERC driver.

anyway, i've fantasized enough. have fun.

buy me a beer if it actually turns out like this (which, strangely, isn't even that impossible)

[zeph]

Are you the guy that wrote the scripts for Michel Vaillant?

[f1-neil]

i think alot of hamiltons "bad luck" is down to him pushing the car to hard ,and nico is leading the world championship over hamilton in the same machinery,funny how hamilton thinks he is the past master of minds games but apply the smallest of pressures to him and he xplodes ,nico may well win the title because he can remain calmer -and just to be clear -i am not a rosberg or hamilton fan ,i am a long term wiliams sufferer

A lot of Lewis machinery break downs have happened on the 1st lap of qualifying or a race, please explain how he has pushed the car too hard?

Nico didn't seem that calm this thursday or on sunday.

[Stradivarius]

I agree in that Nico is no schumi/prost etc. but neither is Hamilton.
To be only 30 pts ahead of Ricciardo at this stage of the season with the massive car advantage hes had is more than a bit ordinary.
Tbh they have both gone down in my estimation, this year, making very tough work of winning a WDC in what is one of the most dominant cars of all time.

This doesn't really make much sense. If you look at Rosberg's results, he has 4 victories and he has 4 second places behind his team mate, which of course means he beat everyone with a different car. (No matter how quick your team's car is, it doesn't help you beat your team mate.) That leaves 4 races where Rosberg didn't beat everyone in a different car. The first of them was Canada, where his ERS/braking system let him down when in the lead, but he was able to salvage 2nd place. The second time was Silverstone where he was leading the race when his gear box failed. The third time was in Hungary where he was leading the race when the safety car came just in the wrong moment for him, giving his opponents a big advantage. His last chance of winning the race was taken from him when Hamilton refused to follow team orders. Then we have Spa, where Rosberg had to change his front wing and lost so much time that he couldn't catch up and pass Ricciardo. But he did take 2nd place. So Spa is actually the only race where you can blame Rosberg for not beating the drivers in different cars. But he did take 2nd place and scored 18 points. Are you saying that these 7 points (14 points if you count the 7 points that Ricciardo gained) make that big a difference?

Looking at Hamilton, he has retired 3 times with car trouble. Apart from that he has been on the podium in every single race. He has only been beaten twice by drivers from other teams when his car didn't fail in the race. That was Germany and Hungary. But both of these races he started from the back as a result of car problems during qualifying. So in Hamilton's case it is safe to say that nobody, except Rosberg, have beaten Hamilton this year without a de facto car advantage, except for the last race at Spa, where I agree that the drivers (both of them) were responsible for messing up their cars.

So the only sensible conclusion I can reach is that Mercedes doesn't have one of the most dominant cars of all time. Not at all! The car is fast, but it's also very unreliable, similar to McLaren in 2005. In order to dominate, you need to finish the races. Mercedes still has the best car, though, but I see nothing that suggests the car advantage isn't reflected by the championship points.

[Gaz.]

i think alot of hamiltons "bad luck" is down to him pushing the car to hard ,and nico is leading the world championship over hamilton in the same machinery,funny how hamilton thinks he is the past master of minds games but apply the smallest of pressures to him and he xplodes ,nico may well win the title because he can remain calmer -and just to be clear -i am not a rosberg or hamilton fan ,i am a long term wiliams sufferer

A lot of Lewis machinery break downs have happened on the 1st lap of qualifying or a race, please explain how he has pushed the car too hard?

Nico didn't seem that calm this thursday or on sunday.

Iirc, when his brake disc broke in Germany it was the only the 9th time he had applied the brand new brakes as they were assembled as new for that session. Also wasn't the DNF in Melbourne down to a plastic dowel holding a fuel injector in place cracking? I don't see how a driver can influence something like that.

[JoaoB]

I think this Rosberg-bad-guy thing is realy unfair.
If you look at the record of each driver, Hamilton is a much harder (or even harsher) driver then Rosberg.
Normaly it's Hamilton the pushes others to the limit-decision of keeping the car where it is and having contact or giving the space away to avoid the crash and Rosberg usualy is the guy that brakes or steers off to avoid the crash.
But not this time and probably not ever again with Hamilton... I think that was the point that he wanted to show.

[garagetinkerer]

I think this Rosberg-bad-guy thing is realy unfair.
If you look at the record of each driver, Hamilton is a much harder (or even harsher) driver then Rosberg.
Normaly it's Hamilton the pushes others to the limit-decision of keeping the car where it is and having contact or giving the space away to avoid the crash and Rosberg usualy is the guy that brakes or steers off to avoid the crash.
But not this time and probably not ever again with Hamilton... I think that was the point that he wanted to show.

My first post...

I agree! That is just on-track. Off the track, he maneuvers a fair bit too. Between the two of them, hands down, i will say that Rosberg is a whole lot more tolerable, and i found his behaviour far more acceptable than Hamilton both on and off track. His free pass to Hamilton at Monaco on accusations of cheating, and upbringing and hunger etc., it was just as classy as they come.