SEASON
28
PREVIEW
XPB IMAGES
WorldMags.net
Ferrari aims to make
2015 more than just
the Lewis/Nico show
It was after this flashpoint that part one of the
Hamilton/Rosberg rivalry seemed to (sadly) fizzle
out. Mercedes came down hard on Rosberg, fining
him part of his wages after a bizarre social-media
poll asking fans how he should be punished for
breaking the golden rule of
professional motorsport:
‘don’t drive into your
team-mate’ It’s not that
.
Rosberg lost any of his
speed (his qualifying form
remained peerless), but
errors in the races –
that previously weren’t
there – began to creep in.
Meanwhile, Hamilton
seemed galvanised by
the team’s reaction to
Rosberg’s petulance. For a
driver who has seemed so
emotionally driven in the
past – displaying the sort
of ‘you’re-either-with-meor-against-me’ persona
that defined his hero
Senna – the realisation
that Mercedes did not
favour his team-mate in
moments of conflict (something he certainly did
not think after qualifying in Monaco) appeared
to put Hamilton at ease. After Spa, Hamilton
won six of the final seven races of the season,
and could easily have made it a clean sweep
but for a small misjudgement adjusting his
brake balance for fading tyres while hunting
down Rosberg in Brazil.
In the past, Hamilton has been known to go
off the rails when off-track matters unsettle him.
Anyone who watched
his bizarre sequence of
uncharacteristic mistakes
and collisions during his
penultimate season at
McLaren in 2011 will
attest to this. But when
all is right with his
world, Hamilton can
be unstoppable. That’s
the Hamilton we saw
dominating F1 in the
closing stages of last
season, but he has since
split up with his on-off
celebrity girlfriend Nicole
Scherzinger, while his
contractual situation with
Mercedes (his current
deal with F1’s top team
expires at the end of this
year) remains unresolved
heading into the new
campaign. These are small, external details, but
they can be significant with regard to mental and
emotional stability, and are thus potential areas
of weakness that Rosberg (happily re-signed to
Mercedes last summer and expecting a child,
“I WANT TO
BE ABLE TO
ENJOY THE
BATTLE. THAT
IS WHAT I
LIVE FOR”
LEWIS HAMILTON
28 AUTOSPORT.COM MARCH 5 2015
WorldMags.net
having recently married his long-time
partner Vivian) could exploit.
Hamilton has not looked particularly happy
during pre-season testing, but many racing
drivers of high calibre find this task arduous.
He has also been unwell, which won’t have
helped his mood . Regardless of off-track
matters, if Hamilton can retain the supreme
‘zen-like’ balance he found inside the car at
the end of last season, there may be nothing
in the world Rosberg can do to stop him
winning a third world championship.
“It feels exactly like the start of 2014,” says
Hamilton of the impending season. “I’m actually
in a better position in terms of my approach to
the software and set-up. I’m in a better position,
but mentally it feels just like last year; I want to
win, but how am I going to learn, to execute on
race weekends, to improve?
“It starts on Fridays, which was what impacted
qualifying. This year I’ll be working to improve
in FP1, FP2 and FP3; those are the areas that need
to be strengthened. Last year, if I’d done better
in qualifying, it would have made the races easier
– not that I want to have it easy, but I’ll definitely
try to improve those areas.”
Although Mercedes’ rivals are desperately
trying to improve too, in an effort to make F1
more than an all-Mercedes battle for glory, there
is something to be said in favour of the team
retaining its dominant position in 2015. If –
as many suspect it will – Mercedes increases
its advantage over the rest, then Hamilton