MOTORHUB MAGAZINE
hamilton
is the
three time
world
CHAMP!
F
2015 Seaon Review
or sure Mercedes got some unjustified stick at the end of the season
for their insistence on strategies
that favoured their lead driver (whoever
it was), but the fact that they have always
allowed their men to race has always been
to their credit.
But before we get to possible reasons for
Hamilton’s ‘decline’ - lest we forget he still
finished a very close second in the final
three races, and pushed Rosberg hard let’s look at how their intra-team battle
played out this time.
Right from the start, Hamilton looked
super-comfortable and incredibly quick and to Rosberg’s surprise was more often
the man on pole. And he was stronger
is races to begin with, too. The reigning
champion won easily in Australia, before
being beaten into second in the surprise
20
ISSUE #3 Jan - Mar
of the season as Sebastian Vettel and
place, barely able to contain Red Bull’s
Ferrari demonstrated how much progress Daniel Ricciardo.
they had made by winning in Malaysia.
The only thing that prevented the race
Thereafter things settled down again for from being an utter public relations
Mercedes with Hamilton victorious in
catastrophe for Mercedes was the digniBahrain and China before Rosberg beat
fied manner in which Hamilton dealt with
him fair and square from pole in Spain.
the fiasco.
Hamilton should have won easily from
pole in Monaco, where he had finally
and convincingly turned the tables on
his team mate after two years of defeat.
The Englishman got everything together
and was utterly dominant, but that very
dominance misled Mercedes’ strategists
into an ill-fated late-race pit stop that cost
their man his most deserved success of
the year. Of course, the Silver Arrows still
won, courtesy of Rosberg, who headed
Vettel home after neither had stopped
again, and Hamilton trailed them in third
The reigning champion was back on
form immediately in Canada, where he
led Rosberg home, before the German
beat him again in Austria. Hamilton then
judged the weather brilliantly to win in
Britain as the battle that raged so tantalisingly between the two men in 2014 swung
back and forth once more.
On the British track, however, poor starts
had given both Mercedes drivers work to
do to overhaul the Williams duo of Felipe
Massa and Valtteri Bottas, and further