WINNING FORMULA
Nico Rosberg steered clear of teammate’s dirty tricks and drove off with his first Formula One season crown after nerve-wracking finale in Abu Dhabi,
ABU DHABI, U.A.E.— Lewis Hamilton may have won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, and he may have won10 races this season compared to nine victories for his Mercedes teammate, Nico Rosberg.
But Rosberg, who finished the race in second, has not only won the world drivers’ championship, having earned five points more than Hamilton this year, he has also proven that he deserved that title — and above all, that it is still possible in the cutthroat world of modern Formula One to win with style and grace.
After Rosberg conceded the title to his Mercedes teammate the last two seasons, and even when they were go-karting teammates as kids, Rosberg finally beat his nemesis.
“It feels like I’ve been racing him forever,” Rosberg said of Hamilton. “He has always managed to just edge me out and get the title, even when we were small in go-karts. He’s an amazing driver and one of the best in history, so it’s unbelievably special to beat him because the level is so high.”
It was not just the manner in which Rosberg succeeded, and his generosity in praising the fallen hero, but also the contrasting style with which Hamilton lost the title, that defined this final race duel of the 2016 season.
With just 12 points between them and Rosberg leading the series, Hamilton, who started from pole position — with Rosberg in the two spot — had to win and hope that Rosberg failed to finish in the top three.
There was widespread speculation before the race that Hamilton would use dirty tactics by trying to hold his lead to the first corner, and then driving slowly to force Rosberg into a battle with those behind him — notably the Red Bull and Ferrari drivers, who started from third to sixth.
“That’s not really ever been my thought process,” Hamilton said before the race, adding that it “wouldn’t be very easy or wise to do so.”
But that was exactly what Hamilton did, driving at one point as much as nine seconds slower per lap than he had in qualifying for the pole, and despite his Mercedes engineer regularly telling him to speed up as the team feared they could lose.
But even before that, Rosberg had fallen victim early in the race to a similar dirty tactic from a competing team, after Max Verstappen in one of the Red Bulls moved ahead of him after his pit stop, and Verstappen slowed to block Rosberg to help the other Red Bull driver, Daniel Ricciardo, catch up from behind Rosberg.
At this point, Rosberg thought he might end up behind both of the Red Bulls, with Hamilton winning the race and the title.
“The feelings out there in the battle with Max, unreal,” said Rosberg, looking emotionally and physically exhausted. “I hope I don’t experience that many times again.”
He then proved what a gutsy and precise driver he is when his engineer told him that he absolutely had to pass Verstappen as soon as possible. He did so on lap 20 of the 55-lap race, despite the knowledge that Verstappen has been criticized all season as a dangerous and unpredictable driver to pass. Rosberg then set several of the fastest laps of the race and caught Hamilton again.
But that bigger trial lay ahead in the final laps of the race: As predicted, with Rosberg less than a second behind him, Hamilton drove as slowly as he could to push Rosberg into Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari, who was catching him, and Verstappen.
Hamilton’s engineer continuously requested he speed up. But Hamilton kept his car as slow as possible, even answering, for an employee of a racing team, insubordinately.
“Right now, I’m losing the world championship,” Hamilton said with two laps to go. “So I’m not bothered if I’m going to lose the race.”
Rosberg had a dirty card of his own to play, of course, had he decided to act like drivers such as Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher in similar situations in the 1980s and 1990s, who all settled titles with knockout crashes into their own teammates. But before the race, Rosberg had said he would only do everything within the rules to win. And after the race, he said he never considered trying to pass in unrealistic circumstances.
There was a certain justice that dawned after the race about Hamilton’s tactic, as Vettel repeated twice that he could not have made an attempt to pass Rosberg because Hamilton was too close in front, and any leap past Rosberg might send him into a collision with Hamilton’s car.
Rosberg became only the second son of an F1champion (after Graham and Damon Hill) to win the title himself. His father Keke won the title with Williams in 1982, despite only a single victory that season.
“I hope my dad survived (Sunday’s) race,” said Rosberg. “I haven’t seen him yet. I’m sure it was pretty intense for him so I hope he’s OK.”