Hamilton starts to lay down new rules
After year of tension, Mercedes plans how to stay on top of world
AT MERCEDES’ space-age fortress on the fringes of Brackley, north west of London, emotions are raw. Lewis Hamilton is still lamenting the world championship that slipped from his clutches in the Abu Dhabi sunset, while Nico Rosberg, his friend-turned-usurper, is paying his final visit to the factory after a retirement announcement that left Formula One agog.
Urbane team principal Toto Wolff is thrust into his familiar role of having to keep the peace.
In many ways, Mercedes, who have just wrapped up a treble of constructors’ titles, are a remarkable organisation: slick, ultra-disciplined, relentlessly forward-thinking.
Unsurprisingly, they guard their secrets ferociously. Underneath the interview room is the wind tunnel, where they are plotting a meticulous path to a fourth straight year of dominance next year. Access to this area is harder to obtain than for a nuclear bunker.
And yet in a more fundamental sense, this team are an open book.
Their insistence on putting two star drivers on an equal footing, with absolute freedom to race each other, has created the type of tension that could be sliced with a knife.
Since last month’s season climax in Abu Dhabi, where Hamilton deliberately backed Rosberg into the chasing pack in a desperate last-gasp ruse to thwart his rival, the two have made a few stabs at being civil towards one another.
Hamilton even posted a touching picture on Twitter of them together in Greece as teenagers, congratulating his teammate on the fulfilment of a childhood dream. But the lines of fracture are still clearly visible. Hamilton, who should be in serene mood as he heads off for a surfing holiday in Mexico, cannot hide his bitterness about how the final grand prix unfolded.
He remains angry at his team for instructing him to speed up over the closing laps, believing that this negated his natural racer’s instinct to win the championship by whatever means.
Hamilton said publicly he felt disrespected by the team orders. Diplomatic subtlety has never been one of his strengths, but this still represents a remarkable broadside against employers who have steered him to two titles and 31 race victories in three years.
Rosberg gives the impression that he has had enough of Hamilton’s constant needling.
Next season, Hamilton can be assured there will be no doubt over his alpha-male status at Mercedes. Even if the team prise Valtteri Bottas from Williams to fill the vacant seat, Hamilton will feel more empowered than ever to lay down the rules. Already, he is doing just that. Hamilton is unhappy at how Mercedes switched several of his engineers and mechanics to Rosberg’s side of the garage early in the season and has urged Wolff not to meddle again.
“Before next season, I’m going to say to Toto, ‘I don’t want these guys to be changed. Please just leave us to do our job’. I want to keep them all.”
At times lately, Hamilton has acted as if he glimpses a conspiracy around every corner.
When he found himself in the lead in Malaysia, only for his engine to blow up, he all but accused Mercedes of sabotage.
Hamilton’s pain turned out to be Rosberg’s gain. Fortified by the expertise of a sports psychologist, the German won three grands prix in succession to establish an advantage he would never relinquish. He knew that the champion’s crown was his to lose.
Nothing, though, could quite steel him for the strain he would come under during those nerve-shredding final laps at Abu Dhabi as Hamilton slowed and Rosberg’s second-place finish was being threatened.
But Rosberg held on – and the realisation dawned that he had followed his ambitions to their fullest fruition.
Then the question was: did he have the appetite for another grinding eight-month battle with a crafty provocateur like Hamilton?
He decided, even if it meant giving up an £18-million (R316-million) salary, that it would be better for his life, his family and even his sanity that he stepped out of the cockpit entirely.