The Belgian Grand Prix last weekend made for quite some story as the inter-team and championship rivalry at Mercedes between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg reached new heights when the pair came to blows on the second lap, with Hamilton’s race suffering more than Rosberg’s, the latter ultimately being beaten to Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo for the race win while the former was ultimately forced into retirement in the latter stages of the race.
Spa was one of many tracks playing host to events that have left the relationship between the two childhood friends on the brink of an explosion and F1Update takes a thorough look back at the painful points for the Mercedes team and its drivers:
Painful Point #1 – Bahrain 
The Bahrain Grand Prix was the scene of many regard as some of the greatest piece of wheel-to-wheel racing from drivers since Formula 1’s inception and went some way to silencing the early season criticism of the sport, this majorly came from the fierce battles both on-track and on strategy between Hamilton and pole-sitter Rosberg, who was jumped at the start by Hamilton and narrowly beaten by him despite his tyre advantage. Some of that fierce wheel-to-wheel action that came from Hamilton, among the trading of places and ultra defending, was found not to be not pleasing Rosberg’s point of view, proclaming on the team radio to his race engineer that his defensive tactics “was not on”. While the second one-two finish was emphatically recorded and celebrated by the two drivers as they got out of their cars, Hamilton glorified in his defensive drive and spoke of his anticipation of his team-mate making the most of being on the quicker tyres and passing him, while Rosberg let in on the media on his intrinsic thoughts, declaring: “I strongly dislike coming second to Lewis” before going on to praise the racing on the track in “the most exciting race of his career”, perhaps the smallest of the waters being treaded.
Painful Point #2 – Monaco
The most subtle of hints that power in the Mercedes camp may shift towards its drivers came in the build-up to the Monaco Grand Prix as it emerged that engine modes beyond the permits of the drivers were used to fight for wins, with Rosberg doing such in Bahrain and Hamilton doing the same in Spain to take the initiaitve in the championship. Hamilton spoke of the hunger for success being “different” between him and his team-mate, drawing their two contrasting upbringings into comparison and implying his poorer upbringing means he’s hungrier than Rosberg for the championship.
It seemed as though that the need for both drivers to win ugly had showed it’s hand, especially with the inevitability of Hamilton and Rosberg being the two main championship protagonists such as the extent of Mercedes’ performance advantage, and suspicions of the ugliness growing came in qualifying as Rosberg took to the escape road at Mirabeau on his final Q3 run, bringing out the yellow flags and preventing the other drivers, including Hamilton from bettering their lap times when Rosberg was topping them, leaving the latter to take pole in controversial fashion. The German went on to convert the pole into a win, while Hamilton bemoaned to his team on the radio about not pitting and making the most of the high risk of a safety car following Adrian Sutil’s crash and trudged home to 2nd due to problems with his vision towards the back end of the race. The events of qualifying and the race culminated in Hamilton being a subdued figure on the podium and his reluctancy to congratulate Rosberg on his race win (pictured above). Hamilton went on to compare the strategy system at Mercedes with the one he had during his time at McLaren, something that certainly wouldn’t have gone well with those associated with Mercedes, and the nadir of it was probably when Hamilton described his relationship with Rosberg in the post-race interviews as one of “colleagues” rather than “friends”, while Rosberg among the media scrutiny remained calm after the race and said that both him and Hamilton were still friends and will be post-Monaco.
Painful Point #3 Hungary
Following Monaco was Hamilton suggesting he had intel on deliberation from Rosberg’s part in his off-track excursion, but then taking to social media to reverse his claims, posting a picture of the two together when younger and saying that they were “still friends” and humour being shared when the Briton joked about Rosberg’s actual nationality. Civilisation seemed to have been restored. The powers-that-be at Mercedes however had enjoyed allowing their drivers to race freely on track as some kind of a reward to establishing their car in a clear league of its own, although did warn that the circumstances would be different should other teams come into the picture when battling for race wins and therefore team orders would become a necessity. Those change of circumstances came at Hungary when the duo found themselves on the same piece of tarmac when when race leader Rosberg fell back down the field after losing out on the safety car and Hamilton gained from it and moved up through the field having started from the pit-lane. Being on the slower tyre, Mercedes, for the sake of strategy, instructed Hamilton not to hold up Rosberg, who questioned the team as to why his team-mate was not letting him through, the team immediately afterwards requested Hamilton that he allow Rosberg through and Hamilton stamped his authority by saying on team radio: “I’m not slowing down for Nico. If he can get close and overtake, then he can overtake.” Rosberg pitted and decided if he could do such being on the much fresher and quicker tyre, but eventually fell short of his team-mate at race’s end. Hamilton after the race cited giving away any kind of advantage to his championship rival as the main reason for not letting him through, as well as obviously not being under threat from Rosberg with regards to being overtaken. Rosberg however went away from the weekend unhappy with how the events unfolded.
Painful Point #4 Belgium
Emotions from the duo seemed to be still very much raw from the events in Hungary despite a month’s break from the sport as Rosberg in the drivers press conference refused to discuss how the team had dealt with the precarious situation of team orders being imposed, while Hamilton set the target of beating Rosberg when he’s at his best because the lost is “more painful”. The race was to be the point where the whole team endured the most pain as Rosberg, like in Bahrain was leapfrogged by his team-mate off the line, but their battle for the win wouldn’t continue beyond the second lap as Rosberg launched an attack on Hamilton for the lead at Les Combes chicane and the two made contact, proving fatal to Hamilton’s race as the Briton sufffered a rear puncture was forced to do two thirds of a lap around the lengthy Spa circuit on three wheels, virtually ruling him out for the race win. Hamilton’s reaction to the collision on the team radio was one of shock, repeatedly saying that Rosberg hit him. Rosberg meanwhile carried on with front-wing damage for the rest of the first stint and the time loss changing front-wing and a change in strategy was not enough for him to recover to take top honours. Exasperation is a word to best described Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda’s demeanours after the race as they shared the same views of the second-lap incident with their two drivers being “unacceptable”. The post-race unstability in the Mercedes camp was to grow as Hamilton said that Rosberg admitted in a debrief to intentionally making contact with him to “‘prove a point'”, something that Wolff and later on Rosberg rebuffed themselves.
So civilisation has definitely been disrupted once again. The shadows of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost’s dissolved relationship at McLaren begin to creep in again and demonstrating that there is no room for friendship in the competitive nature that F1 promotes, Rosberg and Hamilton this season are depicting the arrogance and selfishness racing drivers house in themselves and can unleash once the visors of their helmets close, the mechanics and other team personnel leave the grid and the lights go out. The strong hostility was a formality in many eyes when the only two drivers who can realistically take the championship share the same data, equipment, garage and pit-box right from the first race. You wonder if their friends-turned-foes relationship is beyond repair or whether the framework former team principal Ross Brawn layed out for Mercedes’ domination would be severely scarred if the bosses don’t get a grip of the situation.
The warning signs are already there when they gifted a race win to Red Bull on one of their weakest tracks on paper and with more downforce-dependent tracks coming up like Singapore and Japan, which would suit their closest rivals more. Dropping 25 points on one of a team’s strongest tracks can be very unforgivable in any season even accounting Mercedes major performance advantage, something we actually haven’t seen to its fullest in recent races and unreliability or insecurity in drivers is the last thing they need especially when one has beared the brunt of the unreliability that have proven to be existent in the W05 Hybrid chassis.
Mercedes warned that they’ll be “consequences” for Rosberg after Spa but how do they go about making those consequences come to life without favouring Hamilton in that situation and one of the two for the rest of the season. The performance advantage not being converted into results and their rivals winning of their favoured tracks creates the possibility of team orders coming into play, and one driver will likely be deprived of opportunities. While the constructors championship will likely be all but sewn up soon, there could be “consequences” for both drivers and their own championship aspirations come the end of the season if insufficient points come on the board from Monza onwards.
