The rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg has been comprehensively covered by the media over the last week, however, you can’t help but wonder, looking beyond all the hype, whether everyone’s missed a fairly fundamental point.
It’s quite possible that this entire ‘battle’ doesn’t even involve Rosberg, and that the question should really be whether Hamilton is self destructing all on his own.
Granted, Rosberg turned the wick up on his engine in Bahrain, however, Hamilton always had this choice available too, and then actually took it in Spain to preserve his lead. Doing this wasn’t illegal, and there wasn’t exactly a team ban on it either (even if they can’t do it anymore).
And yes, Rosberg found himself in an escape road at a convenient time during qualifying in Monaco, thereby ruining anyone else’s chance of improving their time. However, the stewards exonerated him and no-one has been able to definitively say it was deliberate.
And on the outside, Rosberg’s been super cool. Unaffected by the chaos around him, winning the last race, towing the company line and giving neutral, conciliatory answers to some quite leading interview questions.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing for or against either driver, but it does leave you wondering, if Rosberg takes such a passive and conciliatory approach, has the entire ‘war’ just been created by Hamilton in his own mind?
When only two drivers are competing for a world championship, the tension is always going to be more intense. Add to the mix the fact they’re team-mates and you could cut the air with a knife.
But what we’ve seen from Hamilton in the last couple of weeks is a paranoia and an attitude that’s out of proportion even in such a high-stakes battle.
Hamilton started by taking the on-track rivalry off-track and into the mind with a series of antagonistic interviews where he stated that he wanted to ‘dominate’ Rosberg before also stating that he felt more deserving of, and more driven towards, a world championship because of his less affluent upbringing. All of these comments weren’t abundantly necessary, and given the result of the next race, were also highly ineffective.
After being beaten on Saturday in Monaco, the paranoia went into overdrive, with Hamilton suggesting Rosberg acted deliberately. After back-tracking in light of the stewards’ investigation, Lewis acknowledged he should have produced a better ‘banker’ lap to begin with. But then a similarly emotional reaction re-appeared on Sunday after he was beaten again, with a podium performance akin to a child’s tantrum. The emotional accusations on Saturday followed by the refusal to acknowledge Rosberg on Sunday only served to heighten both the existing tensions as well as the media’s appetite to beat up the story.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to work out why Hamilton has felt the need to act this way, especially when faced with Rosberg’s completely disinterested demeanor. Ultimately, Lewis is an emotional character and he idolized Ayrton Senna as a child. So it could be a product of modeling himself on Senna’s psychological gamesmanship, perhaps also mixed with the effect of being subject to Fernando Alonso’s own attacks during Lewis’ impressionable and formative debut season in 2007.
Whatever the reason, Rosberg was having none of it, and went on to win in Monaco. I’m not going to call it a failed strategy, because Hamilton could very well still win the world championship off the back of it. However, the key aim was clearly to destabilize Rosberg, and from that perspective, it hasn’t worked.
All he’s got for it is a media circus, a lost lead in the championship, an emotional mess in his own mind and senior management at Mercedes who are upset with his handling of the situation.
And that’s the other element that hasn’t worked for Hamilton. Where in the past Senna and Michael Schumacher have galvanized a team behind just them and not their team-mates, Mercedes has steadfastly refused to pick sides or endorse Hamilton’s actions. In fact, the opposite has occurred, with Niki Lauda and Toto Wolff both stating publicly how elements of the Monaco weekend, especially the podium ceremony, saw things taken a step too far.
Lewis isn’t stupid, and perhaps he realized he’d both taken things too far, and that the psychological warfare in its current form wasn’t having the intended effect. Not only did he lose a Grand Prix, but his own team weren’t appreciative of the destabilizing effect it was having. Hamilton’s twitter post in the following week, stating that Rosberg and he remain friends and are all good with no problems, perhaps suggests that the escalated paranoia may be over for now. It may also indicate that Lewis backs himself to beat Rosberg in a straight fight in Canada, thereby removing the need to further engage in or escalate any mind games so immediately after Monaco. Whether the back-tracking was his own idea or not, is another issue altogether.
However, the psychological games are unlikely to be over for too long. For a driver who believes so strongly that Senna’s approach was the right one, mind games will always need to be an element of a successful title tilt. The form they now take will surely fascinate.
The trick for Lewis now is to ensure that whatever mental approach he takes to battling Rosberg, it’s less disruptive to the team than it has been so far, and also, it’s less emotional in order for him not to destroy his own on-track form with excessive and unnecessary distractions in his own mind.
As a former world champion, he’s got the ability to win again in 2014, and if he’s so sure he’s better than Rosberg, then Lewis is really the only enemy capable of defeating himself. But can he hold it together for long enough?
