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The Roar

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Has Lady Luck left Lewis Hamilton?

Lewis Hamilton. (Photo: GEPA pictures/Daniel Goetzhaber)
Expert
9th May, 2016
11

“Lewis pole-axed”, “Hamilton feels ‘helpless'”, “Hamilton vows to ‘never give up'”.

Just three of the many headlines to bemoan Lewis Hamilton’s misfortune after power unit problems smote his hopes for pole in Russia. Woe is he.

Unlucky it certainly was, particularly after an identical problem struck down his Mercedes in China a fortnight earlier. Mercedes thought they had found and fixed the problem. Obviously, they hadn’t.

The ‘luckless Hamilton’ narrative was an attractive one – a triple world champion robbed of his ability to defend his title by the cruel hand of fate, his bubbly season-opening attitude giving way to his old monosyllabic self under the sheer weight of being unable to deliver natural justice.

Nico Rosberg cruising out front, perfectly managing his weekend, warranted only a mention when it involved questioning the value of his wins when the Rightful Victor was racing handicapped.

From there it was only a short jump for the lunatic fringes of the internet to accuse Mercedes of deliberately undermining their champion. The reason was left unannounced, other than ‘because obviously’.

The undertone is clear: Rosberg doesn’t deserve his lead, or at very least not all 43 points of it. But pause to consider the numbers and it’s obvious there’s more than the desertion of good fortune behind the yawning points chasm.

In Melbourne, there was no poor luck of which to speak. Hamilton topped every practice session and took pole in what was assumed to be a return to regular programming, but the Australian Grand Prix refused to stick to the script.

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Hamilton executed a poor start under the new single-paddle clutch rules, designed to make getaways trickier. He was then subjected to some hard racing by Rosberg, who had leapt ahead of him – but even Hamilton acknowledged that it was fair, and it was, in any case, no more aggressive than some of the moves Hamilton had put past Rosberg in recent years.

The story was much the same in Bahrain, where the Briton again conceded pole position to his teammate – but this time he was punted by Valtteri Bottas at the first turn.

The Finn was in the wrong and later penalised for sending Hamilton tumbling to ninth on the first lap, and Hamilton spent the race recovering lost track position to finish 20 seconds behind an excellent Kimi Räikkönen and controlling Rosberg.

Hamilton can claim three points were lost after the unnecessary first-lap clash, but Rosberg was master of his destiny once in the lead.

The Chinese Grand Prix is the race for which the world champion can feel most aggrieved. An uncharacteristic power unit problem left him scrambling to recover a place in the top ten – never mind on the podium – on Sunday, but his efforts were frustrated by the first-turn melee.

A collision with Felipe Nasr tore off his front wing, damaging the floor. He fought back to seventh by the end of the race, three seconds behind a staunchly defensive Felipe Massa.

On a weekend Ferrari and Red Bull Racing were in fine form it is difficult to say a podium, much less a victory, would have been Hamilton’s by right, but third place would have been the minimum expectation – meaning a loss of nine points.

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Which brings the championship to Russia, where Hamilton’s race and qualifying power unit travails have been well documented.

A solid start from P10 on the grid put him at fifth behind the safety car, and with the rudely competitive Mercedes at his fingertips, he was able to effortlessly recover second place shortly thereafter.

He was closing in on Rosberg in the middle of the race when his second power unit problem forced him to temper his pace – but Rosberg was also running a detuned car with his own power unit problems, so basing the result on a subsection of lap times is misleading. Second was a well-deserved result.

Hamilton lost points in Bahrain and China, and on these calculations the reigning world champion can lament the loss of 12 points from his title bid, which would leave the deficit at a still significant 31 points.

There is no evidence that it is by some cruel twist of destiny that Hamilton doesn’t find himself leading or more closely contesting the championship.

What instead is interesting is that he hasn’t won a race in six months – and if his reason for losing the concluding three races of 2015 was that he had already won the title, what’s behind these four straight defeats?

Instead, it might be time to recognise that Rosberg, like a number of drivers on this grid and those past, is capable of growth and development.

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Meanwhile, Rosberg is driving more assuredly than he has in recent times, and with every win his confidence in the car grows.

So perhaps it’s time we consider the opening stanza of the season through the lens of Nico Rosberg being a worthy championship leader, rather than that of a forlorn Lewis Hamilton regretting the absence of Lady Luck.

We’ll see in Spain.

Follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter during this weekend’s #SpanishGP.

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