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Rosberg wraps up the season in style

NEWS STORY
29/11/2015

As early as last weekend our editor was tipping Sebastian Vettel to end the season in style, giving Ferrari its fourth win of the year. However, not for the first time, a strategic error by the Italian team appears to have put paid to that.

The theory was that Vettel would make one of his superb starts, taking advantage of the duelling Mercedes, taking teammate Kimi Raikkonen along for the ride, the Finn spending the next 55 laps riding shotgun.

Starting from sixteenth the German should still bag a decent points haul, however, for the most part the Scuderia looks likely to have to rely on Raikkonen this afternoon.

That's no bad thing, for the Finn has looked good for much of the weekend, and we can't help feel that he would dearly love to deny countryman Valtteri Bottas fourth place in the standings... as long as it doesn't involve attending the FIA's end of season ball.

Talking of Mercedes, the Rosberg resurgence continues, whilst teammate Lewis Hamilton has not looked entirely convincing this weekend. Then again, he does have his third title in the bag.

Rather than Rosberg rediscovering his form, Hamilton insists that much of the cause of the turnaround in recent races is due to the car, the Briton insisting that the balance has been "wrong for a few races".

Whatever the reason, and we like to think Rosberg has dug deep, it's good to see Hamilton being challenged, and whilst it would have been great if the German had found this sort of form earlier in the year let's hope he can carry it into 2016.

Indeed, what better way to head into the off-season than an out-and-out duel between the Silvers Arrows pair, after all, both titles are won so the team can afford to take a few risks.

The dark horses today have to be the Force India pair, Sergio Perez, in particular, having looked very good all weekend. Then there's Daniel Ricciardo, whose Q3 lap is widely seen as one of the best of his career.

The Williams pair are also in the top ten, and whilst Felipe Massa has had a difficult weekend thus far, clearly unhappy with his car, teammate Bottas looks a lot more settled. A scrap with Raikkonen for fourth in the standings would be great, as long as they keep it clean.

At Toro Rosso, one can only hope that Carlos Sainz' car goes the distance, the Spaniard having suffered some appalling bad luck this season. Teammate Max Verstappen, has received almost all the plaudits this year, much of the praise well deserved, but Sainz too has been a true revelation.

Lotus will no doubt have mixed feelings about this being the season finale, the name - if not the entire team - likely to be missing from the grid in 2016.

Romain Grosjean would dearly love to sign off with a few points but the car hasn't looked good this weekend, added to which a late gearbox change, and resultant grid penalty, means the Enstone outfit will need to rely on Pastor Maldonado.

At the back it's the usual suspects, Sauber, McLaren and Manor, though in all fairness the Swiss outfit is (relatively) in a different league to the two British teams.

Manor will return with a new engine, new technical partner, management and (probably) driver line-up in 2016, McLaren will merely be hoping for a resurgence of Rosberg-style proportions.

Over the years we have seen that for the most part street circuits do little, if anything, to promote thrilling racing. Whilst the run-offs here are far more forgiving than the barriers at Monaco, Charlie Whiting and his colleagues will be keeping a close watch to see that drivers keep to the limits.

Talking of barriers, this morning's GP2 race was cancelled following an accident which left the barriers "substantially damaged" after an accident on the first lap. Unable to repair the extensive damage within the allotted timeframe it was decided to abandon the final race of the season.

A few years back we saw Alonso lose the title after falling behind Vitaly Petrov and being unable to pass the Russian. If one of the best drivers the sport has seen, can't overtake here, with the world championship title up for grabs, what hope lesser mortals?

Indeed, with no hope of divine intervention from the weather gods, we must rely on the grim determination of certain drivers to provide the thrills this afternoon.

Then again, this being a street track, the whole thing could be decided on the first lap, the first corner, should over enthusiasm get the better of some of the participants on what is effectively the last day of term... they've even assembled for the end of term picture for the family album.

Tyres are soft (prime) and supersoft (option). Most drivers are expected to stop twice, the mostly likely strategy being to start on supersofts, then change to soft on laps 10 and 32.

A three-stopper is theoretically the quickest option (start on supersoft, then change to softs on laps seven, 23 and 39) but this depends on having a car that is quick enough to overtake and gain track position, in case of traffic.

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by JackTheCat, 29/11/2015 18:21

"Clearly Peter Rickitt has a chip on his shoulder and doesn't like Hamilton given his previous daft comments about him being a bad role model whereas Senna was a paragon of virtue in comparison ... lol at the crass stupidity of that thought pattern!

Anyway I digress, to clarify... my post was referring to the leaving Hamilton out so long ... that was clearly not his decision as was stated by Toto Wolff, it was his decision, however, as to which tyres he took at the end and he chose the softs as he was informed, and agreed, the super softs would not last on the Merc the way they would on the Ferrari. As Lewis stated had he realised the intention to keep him out he could have managed the tyres better, not closed the gap as much and gone even longer thereby giving him a chance on the one set of tyres or to do a splash and dash approximately 8 laps from the end! That is what I heard/saw broadcast on Sky F1!

At the end of the day it's irrelevant as Nico was just the faster driver this weekend, but it would have been good to see Lewis on the super softs anyway (whoever had to make the decision) and allowed to make a better fist of it.... so what if he had come third or fourth... it doesn't matter and we were denied the chance of a spectacle when the result didn't really matter!"

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2. Posted by Peter Rickitt, 29/11/2015 17:33

"Clearly, 'JackTheCat' does not listen to what is broadcast: Hamilton had the call on the strategy; he dithered; he made the wrong ( actually no decisive) call; ergo, he messed up; ergo, he lost - end of story."

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3. Posted by Yeyox02, 29/11/2015 16:58

"Well done Nico!!! Now you have seen that if you want, you can. Your teammate is like a virus that has infected your life in and off the track so you need to get a good vaccine to deal with. Enjoy your holidays because next year if Ferrari, Honda and Renault rise their game will be tough."

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4. Posted by JackTheCat, 29/11/2015 15:57

"Strange race, I was convinced that finally they were going to put the Mercs on different strategies and they did, but not in the way I imagined. The strategy employed seemed to be to cripple any chance Lewis had of winning by pitting him just too early for super softs and way too late for softs after he cut the cap down to less than a second in the middle of the race.

Now it doesn't matter as maybe Merc feel the need to place a few weighted dice in Rosberg's direction so they have two motivated drivers for next season when Ferrari may be their equal, but up until this race I had been ignoring Lewis' comments about the team making Nico feel extra 'warm' whereas now I do wonder!

One thing is for sure we would have seen a better race had they stuffed the super softs on Lewis' car anyway and as fans we need to see better racing, the last 3 GPs have been very dull!

A sad end to the season really!"

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