Ideally things wouldn’t have worked out like this. After last week’s article about Mercedes addressing the rumours of a conspiracy, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton do their best to tear open old wounds by crashing into each other on the first lap at the Spanish Grand Prix.
You’ve probably all seen the incident, but don’t be fooled by the CSI-style analysis from the boffins at Sky Sport and motorsport.com about which engine mode Rosberg was in before the incident – at the end of the day it has absolutely nothing to do with which driver was to blame.
Whenever these analysts use words like “wrong” or “error” they are just attempting to pin the blame on Rosberg, and when you see them used you should close the tab or change channel.
Watching the crash unfold I wondered how Mercedes would have interpreted the incident. Would they be seething that Rosberg had shoved Hamilton off the track, or furious at Hamilton for selfishly challenging too aggressively and ruining the team’s chance of points.
The result was an unsatisfying fusion of the two, with nothing more than a few unhinged musings from Niki Lauda about Hamilton’s aggression to go by, the “behind closed doors” discussions seemed to remain just that.
Neither driver backed down, nor admitted fault, however there was a reservation to Hamilton’s response that was missing after their previous altercations.
Formula One brains-trust Jackie Stewart and Alain Prost lent their voices to the debate also, with the latter offering, “if you’re in Nico’s position, you want to protect your position, and that’s why he went quite a lot on the right. But it’s allowed by the regulations, and that’s a fact.”
Prost would know a thing or two about going toe-to-toe with the very best in the sport, having pushed Ayrton Senna to the limit a number of times.
“For me it’s more a race incident,” added Prost, “considering some different parameters.”
Race stewards reviewed the footage, spoke to the team and both drivers, and agreed that neither driver deserved a sanction. It was a common-sense decision considering that the incident didn’t effect any other drivers (except for promoting them all two-places) and the conflicting regulations that pit Hamilton’s right to challenge and Rosberg’s right to defend his position against each other.
I’ll be the first to admit that it looks like Lewis squeezes enough if his car alongside Nico’s to justify his claim for track space along side his teammate, however it was clear that the gap Hamilton was gunning for was always going to disappear before he got there, which goes a long way to discrediting his decision.
To some degree it should be expected from Hamilton, a racer who would rather plant his foot and work things out with the turn of a wheel. Certainly we saw a different side to Nico Rosberg who, in the past, has been criticised for his timid overtaking attempts, showed no sign of the hesitation that contributed to their most controversial crash at the Belgium Grand Prix in 2014.
“We have moved on from Spa in 2014 and it was a completely different situation in the team back then,” said team boss Toto Wolff.
“By continuing the approach of letting them race it was clear that eventually this could happen and we will continue to let them race. Today was just a couple of unfortunate coincidences that ended up in us losing as a team for me it was different than Spa.”
With his huge points lead we will see a very different Nico Rosberg for the rest of this season, and most importantly it’s given him the buffer that he needs to race at his best; elbows out, taking no prisoners and not giving an inch.
Rosberg has only raced against Hamilton for roughly six corners so far this season, but has come out on top every time. We’re going to see the best of Rosberg for the remaining sixteen races and it’s going to take a mighty effort from Hamilton to claim the drivers’ title, and having fallen behind Kimi Raikkonen it seems almost impossible on paper if not in practice.
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