Over the last few races the Mercedes team have found themselves fending off conspiracy theories on social media of Lewis Hamilton’s car being tampered with for the sake of favouring Nico Rosberg for the championship because of the consistency in the unreliability the former has suffered.
I honestly haven’t seen the posts made to the Mercedes social media accounts on my timeline, namely Twitter, although I’ve seen screenshots from fellow F1 fans of posts which have been directed at Mercedes, saying that they were not pleasing to see would be a concrete understatement given the competitive, intricate nature that’s existent in Formula 1.
So – where do we start regarding these theories from the Hamilton “fans”.
We’ve got the “A German driver in a German car, with a German engine, team etc.” conspiracy. Not one team on the grid is purely 100% one nationality. Most of the teams, including Mercedes, are based in the UK and so theoretically-speaking Mercedes aren’t completely a “German” team. Hamilton made an amusing remark at Silverstone that Rosberg wasn’t really German and Rosberg kind of shrugged it off knowing it was just a joke and later said himself he wasn’t 100% German, so that writes off the meaning that theory had, with the team-mates somewhat agreeing that one is not a particular nationality.
That conspiracy has been used to explain Hamilton’s brake failure in Hockenheim and his most recent car failure in his engine going up in flames, a brake failure and engine failure are two of the most dangerous mechanical failures a racing driver can suffer from so why would Mercedes want to put a person’s, not to mention their driver’s life at risk intentionally? Or at least risk them sustaining an injury, therefore ruling them out for a part of the season and denting their constructor championship aspirations having to immediately pit a reserve driver with none to little experience with machinery that’s more complex and longer to rebuild than machinery in bygone eras of the sport.
The irony of Hamilton’s engine fire at Hungary is that Rosberg retired from an engine problem at the very same track a year before, four laps from the chequered flag.
The unreliability that’s put Hamilton on the back foot in the championship has been partly from the man himself, not able to put in a better first run in Q3 in Monaco exposed him to not being able to have that second chance with Rosberg’s controversial off-track excursion bringing the yellow flags, running wide on his final Q3 run in Canada losing him vital lap time and aborting his final run at Silverstone, has meant he’s fallen short multple times this season when the going gets tough.
Some have pointed out Hamilton’s slower pit-stops, Rosberg not being penalised for cutting the chicane when Hamilton was closing on him during the race in Canada and the Safety Car not being brought out for Adrian Sutil’s stalled Sauber on the track when Rosberg was leading comprehensively in Hockenheim, ironically the incident was caused by a German driver, so these theories probably target the FIA too. Historically, the FIA have shown to be inconsistent with the actions they take towards incidents in many seasons gone by, something that arguably angers F1 fans the most. As for the pit-stops, the driver plays a part in the pit-stops especially when positioning their car in the pit-box and it seems as though Hamilton may not be hitting his marks correctly, and that being an area he should look at, which would be particularly useful with him likely engaging in a very close, season-long battle and the time difference between him and Rosberg won’t be much in most races.
So the next statement would be that Rosberg’s advantage has mostly come from luck, well that’s just part and parcel in a sport that’s decided by the smallest of margins one can measure and before Hamilton this season they’ve been drivers with arguably greater misfortune: Mark Webber was renowned for having a motherlode of misfortune throughout his career spaning 12 seasons, Kimi Raikkonen likely lost the 2005 world championship because of constant race-ending failures and grid penalties from engine and gearbox changes, Sebastian Vettel’s first world championship was made challenging by the fast but very unreliable Red Bull RB6 and Hamilton’s 2012 championship challenge, when with McLaren bare in mind, was derailed by race-ending failures also in the second of that season, these are examples to name a few. Which touches on to another point: it’s not inconceivable for the fastest car in an F1 season to suffer from reliability issues: the Red Bull RB6, the McLaren MP4-20 and MP4-27 are three modern-era examples – and it’s possible that the Mercedes W05 Hybrid won’t be an exception.
Hamilton has had the backing of Mercedes in conjunction with McLaren since he was 13, during his karting days and paved the way for his friendship with Rosberg to be established, with their background featuring them being team-mates in a karting team known as Team Mercedes-Benz McLaren (Team MBM) and I think it would’ve been easier then for Mercedes to “sabotage” Hamilton than now (If they actually wanted to), with both drivers having reached the pinnacle of Motorsport now and the spotlight is firmly on them. In that spotlight, the bosses at the team being accused of espionage has publicly spoken of their desire to let their drivers race and take it upon themselves to push each other hard but with the knowledge of racing and team respect.
It’s exasperating seeing such controversial claims made from these “fans” in a sport renowned for near-supernatural unpredictability, If they’re backing Hamilton intensely then relentlessly supporting his team (like those fans probably did with McLaren before) would be one way of showing his backing and remembering that F1 is a genuine team sport, there’s a reason why the home page of Hamilton’s website boldly says: “We Win And Lose Together” because he acknowledges how important support is as part of the team sport he competes in. Others on social media have generalised the whole Hamilton fanbase, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that the minority are the majority and that the “majority” of Hamilton fans making these claims are actually a minority.
