Was that before the points change? I wonder if Massa would have won it now

Three poor starts cost Lewis the Drivers Championship this year, Australia, Bahrain and Japan

I think the DNF in Malaysia did that. Yes the poor starts didn't help but ultimately it was the DNF.

You never luck into winning an F1 Title. His form at the start of the season, and after the summer break, essentially showed his class

Stirling Moss (1958)
Jim Clark (1964, 1967)
Mario Andretti (1977)
Alan Jones (1979)
Didier Pironi, John Watson, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda, Rene Arnoux (1982)
Alain Prost (1983, 1984)
Nigel Mansell (1986, 1987)
Ayrton Senna (1989)
Felipe Massa (2008)

Just one of those poor starts probably cost him 7 points he only lost by 5.

But the DNF cost him 25. I think he said he was 27 or 28 in front at the time.

Malaysia cost him 25 points which would have seen him leading the points. Whilst poor starts and reliability did play a part, without the DNF he would have been in the lead and would have had 2 more wins than Nico ran than 1.

Both of them have had poor races, and overall have been pretty even in regards to results through the season.

Yeah I didn't like it much either Lewis had all year to beat Rosberg. He needed to gain the extra points at some of the other GPs not somehow sabotage Rosbergs final GP.

It never looked like it was going to work for Hamilton. Even if Max or Vettel had passed Rosberg they would have then been after Hamilton which means he has to re-engage, actually start racing which then gives Rosberg the space on track to escape the other cars behind.


It's made Hamilton look bad to many people. I think Totto Wolf amongst them. He said after the race that if hamilton had gone off and won the race by as much as possible then this would have shown him to be the best driver but instead he choose another path.

The other thing is that if hamilton had driven to his actual pace and left everything behind him to be genuine racing then things might of been different. For one Rosbergs engine had an additional 400km on it so why not make the pace as hot as possible.

Well the other thing to remember would be the confidence Rosberg gaines from winning so many races at the end of last year. Where was Hamilton's head the? Instead of grinding Nicco down he let him get back on his feet and the next year lost a WDC to him.

We will, I'm sure LH has helped his position no end in Mercedes for next season, by basically telling the team and the bosses to do one in public.

If he is still there that is.

No doubt about it, he will be at Mercedes next season.

Even Toto agreed, from a management point of view, LH as being a pain in the arse, from a racing point of view he intimated that it was LH only option to slow the pace right down.

Which he did. Out of the races where they both scored, Lewis outscored Nico 10 to 9.
Without Lewis' engine failure in Malaysia he would have had 405 points to Nico's 382.
Because of that he was on the back foot and has won 4 out of the last 5 races.


It probably never would have worked, but it is all he could do with the hand he had. Trying to back Nico into them in the hope he dropped back was his only hope, running off into the distance would not have made him champion.


It's clear from Merc's reaction that they wanted Nico to win so told Lewis to concede it to Nico. Merc have been favouring Nico all season even if they have done their best to hide it, overall they did but the mask slipped today.
Mercedes had 7 1-2 finishes already this season, one more would not make a difference, it was a disgraceful team order to hand Nico. There was no need to focus on the team result, the team championship was won in style. This was all about bias towards one driver.


Of course he would. He wanted Nico to win, his face during the podium ceremony said it all, he was not happy. He should have been because the result was exactly what they wanted, a 1-2 finish apparently.


Might have been different? Have you been watching this season at all? There was no way that anyone was going to get anywhere near the Mercs had they driving to their actual pace.

I'm glad Lewis did what he did. We saw a good end to the racing season. The battle wasn't fully decided until the end of the race. Had he done what Merc wanted he would have conceded the championship and the title would have been decided in the middle of the race.

How ironic asking Jorge about Lewis' tactics given how he won the MotoGP title two years ago with the dodgy help of TLS!

Lewis may be a pain in the rear, but he brings success and wins championships without needing assistance from the team to achieve it. Lewis is without doubt the better driver out of the 2 of them.

Before he joined Mercedes, Nico's best Championship position was 7th. He basically got the Merc seat because they wanted an all German line-up for their return to F1 and since then has done just enough but has had an overall mediocre run.

He didn't cost the team anything, all he did was ignore a team order designed to rob him of any chance of becoming champion.

An order that went against Merc's stated intention to allow their drivers to race. Who here would not tell their boss to do one if they asked you to do something that went against company policy?

Going slow on purpose isn't racing. Not in my book.

Sebastian Vettel has said that Hamilton being in way actually stopped him from trying to pass Rosberg.

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-au...bastian-Vettel

Also called lewis's driving dirty tactics.

Really seams to me the best way to go racing is with your foot to the floor and flat out in the corners. That's what true champions do.

I love this notion by some quarters that all racing drivers must have 'class' and race according to some fantasy code of honour. Bollocks. They'd all do whatever it took to give themselves a better shot at getting the title.

I wish Lewis had backed up Nico sooner, while Verstappen was still interfering with things mid-race. He left it too late in my opinion.

But this sudden outpouring of 'lack of class' is hilarious. I mean, who watches F1 for pure sportsmanship? Senna was the greatest driver of all time but was an absolute sod to other drivers - on and off the track - way more than the likes of Hamilton. You never see his legacy getting tainted.

I'd have been disappointed in Lewis if he hadn't tried pushing Nico back into the pack. He would have gone down in my estimation.

Absolutely spot on. Schumacher was exactly the same.

Brief mention in Ted's Race Notebook about the aftermath of the Spain race where the Mercedes collided on the first lap. Seemingly Hamilton quit the team?

Thing is the sport has evolved from then. There was things happened in ever generation of F1 which wouldn't be acceptable today. Wither it's driving standards, engineering trickery, team orders what happens in one era doesn't carry over to the next.

What hamilton did today was no professional foul but it was cynical and devicive to the team. Some people will think less of hamilton for it that is one discussion.

It's reported again that social media is exploding in britain again. People stating mercedes tried to stop hamilton winning the WDC by asking hamilton to speed up. Reading the tone it doesn't sound very rational.

Putting those sort of things aside was it the best thing to do for Hamilton's WDC. Perhapes not, Seb Vettel has basically said he came up behind Rosberg saw the tactics Hamilton was deploying and decided to stay out of the whole mess. Had Hamilton been 15s down the road as he no doubt could of been Seb would have been having more of a run at Rosberg. Assuming seb gets past it is then between Nicco and Max. I would have said thats how it should have been.

Hamilton didn't only choose his tactics due to the WDC position. His nature came in to it too. Annoyance at loosing and a desire to be disruptive to Nicco directly.

Hamilton has lost the high ground he would have had running at straight race. It looks like Nicco has beaten hamilton more now. There is the occasions he's been faster, out raced him, now also he's stood up to the mind games, gamesmanship and rolling road block also.

Mercedes will worry that Hamilton might start this sort of disruption earlier in the year in 2017.

You'd have to have a major chip on your shoulder towards Hamilton to come to that conclusion.

It's pretty obvious he was simply trying to strategically manage the race to increase his championship chances. Nothing more.

Oh really you don't see anything adversarial with the relationship between Nicco and hamilton. Or any of his other team mates. Even Jenson who used to do this pals act with him at Mclaren straight away said he was glad as soon as lewis left.

The one person lewis can never get on with is his team mate. It seams worse with Nicco than anybody else. They are pretty much opposite people and they spark against each other.

I see that they don't get on. Like almost all F1 team mates. Quelle Surprise!

No, I'm questioning your comment about Lewis backing Nico up because he wanted to annoy Nico, as if it's some kind of personal vendetta. It wasn't personal: He simply did it to improve his chances of retaining the championship. It's the harsh business of F1 racing.

It's irrelevant that it was Nico. Made no difference who it was behind him.

That's what I've heard as well, but from a different source. Hamilton, from what I've been told, wasn't impressed too impressed at being held 100% accountable for the coming together and told that he shouldn't have been trying to pass Rosberg anyhow. Not exactly a working environment anybody would want to be in.