So he got his tire sliced, and you chide Hamilton? Clearly, Rossberg was more in the wrong this time.
Haters gonna hate.
Well, it sure looks like the knives-out season has truly begun, with Lewis being his usually classy self.
At least in the ATG league this result got me closer to being back at the top, while in my other league every Ricciardo victory is a huge loss
Can't wait for Monza.
So he got his tire sliced, and you chide Hamilton? Clearly, Rossberg was more in the wrong this time.
Haters gonna hate.
You do see the difference right?I chide Hamilton for how he dealt with it. Rosberg had his Hungary victory stolen by a very strange safety car call, sure he complained about it, but he didn't insinuate anything beyond that.
If anything ever happens to Hamilton, that isn't is fault, everything he says appears to indicate that he's fully expecting everyone to be out for him. That kind of childish paranoia and whining simply does not endear him to me.
Race drivers are supposed to be cool, professional gentlemen, or Finns, but not bloody divas who continually get their knickers in a twist.
Considering how Lewis crowded Nico off track in Budapest (sure, that pass wasn't going to happen, but he definitely risked both of their races, by taking such an aggressive defensive stance) this kind of thing was bound to happen. Hamilton insinuates that Rosberg is happy - I very much doubt this, I'm sure he would have preferred to beat him on the track in a clean race, they just ran out of luck.
I do hope Mercedes don't discipline their drivers too harshly, since if they don't get to race, this season is going to be all about qualifying. And in racing, contact can happen. It will happen eventually. It's unlucky that it happened on the second lap, but at the beginning is where most of the positions are changed, so that's always a risk. Rosberg should probably have tried to wait until DRS was activated to attack, but then it's hard to back out of an opportunity that presents itself...
Hamilton definitely did nothing wrong in this incident and he has every right to be pissed but at the end of the day he is still a member of the team and he has to put this behind him. Unfortunately for Lewis this is something he seems to have trouble doing.
I've watched the collision a number of times and honestly, it just looks like an unfortunate racing incident despite what you read in the British press. It definitely hampered Nico too and could have very well put them both out of the race.
The championship is still wide open and Hamilton needs to get on with it. I think he seems to be able to get just that little bit extra out of the car, especially during the race. The question is, can he put this behind him?
I chide Hamilton for how he dealt with it. Rosberg had his Hungary victory stolen by a very strange safety car call, sure he complained about it, but he didn't insinuate anything beyond that.
If anything ever happens to Hamilton, that isn't is fault, everything he says appears to indicate that he's fully expecting everyone to be out for him. That kind of childish paranoia and whining simply does not endear him to me.
Race drivers are supposed to be cool, professional gentlemen, or Finns, but not bloody divas who continually get their knickers in a twist.
Considering how Lewis crowded Nico off track in Budapest (sure, that pass wasn't going to happen, but he definitely risked both of their races, by taking such an aggressive defensive stance) this kind of thing was bound to happen. Hamilton insinuates that Rosberg is happy - I very much doubt this, I'm sure he would have preferred to beat him on the track in a clean race, they just ran out of luck.
I do hope Mercedes don't discipline their drivers too harshly, since if they don't get to race, this season is going to be all about qualifying. And in racing, contact can happen. It will happen eventually. It's unlucky that it happened on the second lap, but at the beginning is where most of the positions are changed, so that's always a risk. Rosberg should probably have tried to wait until DRS was activated to attack, but then it's hard to back out of an opportunity that presents itself...
The controversy that has resulted from the collision between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg during the early stages of Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix is gold dust for Formula 1.
This is an emotional roller-coaster. This is man and machine on the edge with high-pressure stakes. And Mercedes are doing a very good job of giving the public exactly what they want.
The incident was messy and responsibility for it lies with Rosberg.
Hamilton was entirely blameless. He took the normal racing line, as he was entitled to do, and did not try to squeeze Rosberg.
I stand by what I said in commentary that Rosberg was of the mindset: "I have to show Lewis that I am not prepared to keep opening the steering in these situations."
He opened the steering in Bahrain and Hungary, because he had no choice, and that's what he should have done in Spa, because again he had no choice.
As it was, he did open the steering. Then, when he realised he was going to run off the circuit, he turned back in again and, in a clumsy manoeuvre, clipped Hamilton's rear tyre with his front wing, causing a puncture.
It's easy for people sitting outside the cars to say Rosberg deliberately hit Hamilton's rear wheel with his front wing. But I cannot believe for one moment a driver would consciously damage his own car.
Drivers know you can't nudge someone with your nose, because you lose your front wing. It's just not a viable strategy.
There is also no way a driver can judge where exactly to hit a rival's tyre with his wing to guarantee a puncture.
Rosberg has taken a big hit in the popularity stakes as a result of this.
People have also taken Sunday's incident - and the words spoken after it - and linked it to what happened in Monaco qualifying, where the rift between the two really started.
But I don't think for a second Rosberg thought he was going to puncture Hamilton's tyre. He was just clumsy.
Rosberg wanted to prove a point, to be more robust with Hamilton. This was his first opportunity, but he was a bit ham-fisted and got it wrong.
Why? Because he is just not as good a wheel-to-wheel racer as Hamilton.
If you need someone to play the percentages, keep calm, put the pressure on a team-mate by intelligently managing a race weekend, you'd pick Rosberg.
But if you had to choose someone to muscle his way from the back of the grid to the front on a difficult track, you'd choose Hamilton.
Rosberg is a fast driver, an intelligent guy who is leading the world championship, but he will not win these sorts of fights with Hamilton. You have to play to your strengths - and his are not toe-to-toe racing.
I still think the race stewards did the right thing at the time by not imposing any penalties during the race. If we want the drivers to race hard, then it's right that, under those circumstances, the stewards decide to let it be.
However, Sunday's incident had huge consequences for Hamilton, so, arguably, the stewards have to have a back-up plan.
Should they take a different view of such instances when they occur between two title rivals? Arguably, yes.
Rosberg caused this incident and has badly affected Hamilton's title chances. In that scenario, there should be something that helps neutralise the consequences, especially in a championship year.
Otherwise, two drivers can go to the last race and the one ahead on points can take the other guy out.
A world championship is so important that someone would do that. It has happened before and it could happen again. No-one wants to see that.
Should Rosberg have said he wanted to make to prove to Hamilton he can't be pushed around? If that is what he feels, he should say it, within the confines of the team.
Should Hamilton have told the outside world what was discussed in that post-race meeting on Sunday? In the interests of the team, arguably not. But then, in the interests of the team, Rosberg should not have been racing him at that point.
Drivers have to be full and frank with their teams, whether it makes someone happy or it makes someone sad. It is the only way it can work.
That's exactly what we did at McLaren on the occasions I crashed into Mika Hakkinen.
I spoke my mind with Mika and team boss Ron Dennis. We argued and all the rest of it. But when we came out of that room into the public, Mika would say nothing and I would toe the company line.
The key difference here is that we already know that Hamilton is more difficult to manage from a team point of view than Mika or I were.
A couple of years ago, he tweeted a picture of confidential information about telemetry when he had been out-qualified by McLaren team-mate Jenson Button at Spa.
The only other person to do something to the detriment of the team is Fernando Alonso, when he was driving for McLaren. Mercedes have to know Hamilton has that potential.
During the race at Spa, we saw Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff and non-executive chairman Niki Lauda in discussions with Mercedes board member Prof Dr Thomas Weber.
When they eventually made a public statement about what had happened, they were all very firm in saying that what Rosberg had done was not correct.
I was surprised by that, because teams tend to want to look after their troops as best they can and we are used to hearing them say: "It was unacceptable they crashed together, but we will deal with it internally."
The fact they did not do that is obviously a bit of a slap in the face for Rosberg, but we should admire Wolff and Lauda for having the strength of character to say what they did if they think a driver has messed up.
Just because Lauda, a three-time world champion, has been there and done that and just because Wolff is the boss doesn't mean they have control over these guys.
They can influence the drivers and lay down the law of the team, but they can't control what they do in the car, any more than Frank Williams could control Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet or Dennis could control Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna or Hamilton and Alonso.
Some things in life you just accept you cannot do. You cannot herd cats, you cannot control a volcano and you cannot control two top racing drivers in the same team. If you can, you probably have the wrong drivers, because you don't have the spark that makes them great.
Mercedes have employed two number one drivers and nothing Wolff or Lauda can say to them will stop them going out and racing.
All the team can do is give their opinion and continue to be unusually honest in their approach.
The public does not want PR nonsense. They don't want drivers talking generic rubbish.
The modern world is about instant information and live high-definition video streams. People make their own minds up long before team bosses say anything.
Wolff and Lauda should be applauded for being honest and, in the interests of the sport and of Mercedes, they should carry on doing exactly what they're doing, because this is fantastic for everyone.
Hamilton and Rosberg are this decade's Senna and Prost. This year is a 1988 or a 1989 for the 21st century.
It is a season that will go down as an all-time classic and we should savour the fact that Mercedes have been prepared to let it happen. Let's hope that carries on being the case.
So they were 2 seconds per lap quicker than anyone else in Q3, and they couldn't win the race?
So they were 2 seconds per lap quicker than anyone else in Q3, and they couldn't win the race?
Q3 is usually run at quali-pace.
In quali, even in the wet, they had a huge advantage.
In "race trim" (i.e. worn tires and a full fuel load) such advantages can easily disappear.
Just look at Mercedes quali vs race performance in the first half of 2013.
Well, qualifying was in the wet and then Rosberg took Hamilton out on the 1st lap and damaged his wing... so, there you go.
So they were 2 seconds per lap quicker than anyone else in Q3, and they couldn't win the race?
And that's if they were on different teams. Given they were on the same team and on lap 2 he should have given in and tried again.
Hardly. The fact they're on the same team is a technicality. You see Seb and Webber behave any differently?
Hamilton is the Hamilton show. Oh, poor is me. His attitude Sunday was every reason why I dislike him rolled up into a couple of hours. While I agree it wasn't his fault, he flat out gave up. I can't do this. Save the car...Mercedes was looking for a reason to pull him in beyond Hamilton tossing his hands in the air.
He also should have known not to run as fast as he did back to the pit after the blow. He ruined his own car at that point. We've seen him at the back and charge ahead before...not out of the realm of impossible to do it again after this incident.
or go back slow and risk being even further behind.
I also did see Seb behave differently because he had a greater chance to overtake on lap 1 but bailed out because he knew it was not going to work.
I think he should have gambled on going back slower, and hope for a safety car. But of course, hindsight is 20/20.
Seb has much less to lose this season. He's still trying to adapt to the car, he's not in it for the championship, and arguably one of his best overtakes was a very high risk move against his team mate, violating team orders, to make sure he gets every little point he can get.
Now, there's no denying that Rosberg was a bit clumsy there, but he also HAS to assert himself against Lewis, or he will not win the championship. Especially with his recent streak of bad luck in Silverstone and Budapest, where Lewis got away with making mistakes, while Rosberg got punished through no fault of his own, he knows he can not afford not to take risks.
Lewis might have made the same mistake.
Actually this is a bit reminiscent of the Massa-Hamilton series of incidents in 2012 (and other seasons as well, but 2012 was the most prominent) where cars that end up on the same piece of track regularly, get into contact from time to time, especially when a lot is on stake, and egos are big.
I would say that Nico just got lucky this time, that Hamilton's tire did get slashed, or that would have been it, in regard to his championship lead.
Conversely, this was unlucky, for the most part for Hamilton, because Rosberg was taking the brunt of the risk with that move.
If you compare this to Vettel's clumsy move on Webber in Budapest in 2010 (or 2011?) which almost ended both of their races, but did put Vettel out, this was a far more subtle incident. Yes, it happened much earlier in the race, but getting into the clean, cool air is so important at the start, that I can't really fault Rosberg for trying. It makes him no les guilty of being the one responsible, and it's ultimately shoddy driving, but other world champions have had the occasional mishap.
Hamilton always plays hardball and if Rossburg doesn't then he's the number 2 and that's that. F1 isn't T-ball and Rossburg should not be faulted for trying to pass. Mind you it was borderline, but being borderline he wasn't beyond it.
Brian
Well, Rosberg apparently admitted to hitting Hamilton on purpose, and Mercedes has disciplined Rosberg for the incident.
Well, Rosberg apparently admitted to hitting Hamilton on purpose, and Mercedes has disciplined Rosberg for the incident.