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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Roseberg-Hamilton: On a short fuse
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Roseberg-Hamilton: On a short fuse

The Mercedes Formula One drivers will be competing with each other for the top slotthey're not the first to put their team in that tough spot though

Mercedes’ drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton during the Canadian GP on 8 June in Montreal. Photo: Ryan Remiorz/APPremium
Mercedes’ drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton during the Canadian GP on 8 June in Montreal. Photo: Ryan Remiorz/AP


OTHERS :

The opening race of the 2014 Formula One (F1) season at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia, in March was a pointer to how the championship battle would pan out. Mercedes would be leading contenders for the season’s Constructors’ Championship, while its two drivers—Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton—would fight for the Drivers’ title.

Victory in the Australian Grand Prix (GP) gave Rosberg 25 points; Hamilton had to retire from that race. Hamilton, the 2008 champion, spent the next few races trying to catch up. He did just that, winning four on the trot and turning the deficit into a lead by the time the F1 circus arrived in Monaco in May.

There, something untoward happened. Rosberg parked his car on the track during the last qualifying run, impeding Hamilton and others. The German finished on pole, but was later called up by the race stewards to explain the incident. Not penalized, he made his pole position count and won the race.

Hamilton’s attitude thereafter was telling. The two drivers didn’t celebrate their one-two finish together, wandering off in different directions, and the British driver came out with a none-too-surprising statement. “Well, we’re not friends, we are colleagues. We will work together to get the team as many one-twos and points as possible," Hamilton said after the race, putting their relationship under the scanner.

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Roseberg (left) with Hamilton. Photo: David J. Philip/ AP

This is certainly not the first time it’s happened. In 2009, the first scenario played out, when team Brawn GP exploited a loophole in F1 rules to introduce something called the double-diffuser technology, which helps reduce drag and increases downforce, allowing for more speed. Jenson Button beat his teammate Rubens Barrichello to snatch his first title that year.

In 1989, at the Japanese GP, the penultimate race of the year, McLaren’s Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost clashed on track, with the latter winning his third F1 title. When teammates take each other out in such a fashion, it is a hair-pulling moment for any team management, as it was for McLaren chairman Ron Dennis at the time. But such moments arise only because of a breakdown in relationships, and the Senna-Prost one had been non-existent as early as the second race that year.

In that second race in San Marino, Senna had passed Prost despite a pre-race agreement to hold station if either of them led the race. Afterwards, Prost refused to talk to his teammate, walking away from podium celebrations, and even celebrating with rival Ferrari’s fans when he won the Italian GP later.

It was a point of no return, and an expected one. In their two years together at McLaren (1988-89), Senna and Prost had a stunning, winning car available to them. They were racing drivers with an insatiable desire to win, saddled with a team management unable to deal firmly with them. Fireworks were a given.

This season, Rosberg and Hamilton clashed before the Monaco GP too. In both the Bahrain and Spanish GPs, the two drivers were jousting for victory, and in each of the two races, one changed the engine settings while the other didn’t, breaking a sort of pre-race pact to not gain an unfair advantage over the other. The matter was hushed up, but it came to a head at Monaco. “In the last couple of races, we had some little fouls left and right. The most obvious bit is you can play around with the engine modes, so this is not happening ever again," Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said after the Monaco GP weekend, trying to douse tensions.

Hamilton has been in this particular position earlier too. In his rookie F1 season (2007) with McLaren, he ran his two-time world champion teammate Fernando Alonso ragged. The rookie didn’t relent in his bid to gain a championship, while Alonso tried every trick in the book to get team orders working in his favour, even blackmailing team principal Dennis regarding the now infamous Spygate controversy (Ferrari car designs were copied by McLaren). Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen stole the championship from under both their noses.

Mercedes, though, should have no such fears this season. In the recently concluded Canadian GP, both their cars were caught up and overtaken by their closest rivals, Red Bull, only when they lost engine power to the tune of 160 hp. It was the first time in seven races that a non-Mercedes car won this season, and it will take another double failure on their part for this to happen again.

While Rosberg’s car recovered mid-race and finished second, Hamilton suffered a crushing blow—he had to retire from the race. Once again, this leaves him off the top of the drivers’ standings by 22 points. He is back to where he was after the Australian GP.

In other words, the entire team is back to square one. One of their drivers has a minimal lead and the other will be chasing him, both looking for equal support from the team.

“Lewis, from my point of view, has a 0.1s or 0.2s advantage on Nico because he can get the laps in qualifying in order," said Mercedes non-executive chairman and former F1 world champion Niki Lauda after the Monaco GP incident.

“So we have one natural talent, who is very emotional, and we have another guy who is doing the same job in another way. We have to make sure in the team that the tension doesn’t get out of hand. If they don’t say hello in the morning any more to each other, then I think it’s out of hand," he added.

This is where Mercedes need to be commended. With two equal drivers in equally matched cars, they have almost made sure that neither of them derives unfair advantage, and no team orders come into play, giving both an equal chance at the title. In turn, Rosberg and Hamilton have provided some classic racing, with breathtaking stuff on display at Bahrain and Barcelona, Spain.

All this builds up to a classic championship fight, starting this weekend at the Austrian GP.

Chetan Narula is the author of History Of Formula One: The Circus Comes To India.

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Published: 18 Jun 2014, 07:57 PM IST
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