about time too https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/hamilton-mercedes-rosberg-departure-vegan-diet-969851/
So basically, Lewis admits there's no more competition for him in the team. Not sure that I saw anything about thanking Nico, though....but Nico retiring sure let Lewis off the hook.
Nico leaving made it easy for everyone...they did not have to review the past as they could simply blame Nico for everything. And Toto did not have to think how to react on Lewis ignoring direct orders in the last race.It looks like Mercedes learned their lesson by bringing in a No.2 driver as the free racing only works as long as the car is completely dominant...just ask uncle Ron about 2007....
From reading interviews with Nico, it seems like even he was well aware that he was causing tension in the team and leaned into that tension to exploit putting Lewis off his game to win the 2016 WDC (and even then it was pretty close). Although admirable that he quit at the top of his game as time passes it seems to be the real story is that he knew he wasn't going to get away with those antics again in 2017 and didn't want to be beaten again like the 2013 - 2015 seasons.
Nico was only a couple hundredths slower per lap than Hamilton (on average, long term). Bottas is close to 0.7 seconds per lap slower.
Or maybe Nico was simply sick of playing these games with Lewis who treated him with disrespect all the time. It was Lewis who came out of the meeting after Spa publicly and discredited him with intern talks from the meeting...Or the countless interviews talking down Nico after that highlighting in the "hat throwing thing" that was started by Lewis. Just look at the amount of verbal sidekicks of Lewis against Seb in the last weeks in interviews, it was not better in previous years against Nico and he was the team mate... I doubt that it was Nico who was responsible for all this tension, the reason it is better now is not because Lewis has changed but because Bottas is at the moment no competition....
In other words, as long as Lewis doesn't have any competition from the second driver in his team then everything works fine for him. Harmony doesn't like competition. What a joke!
That's certainly how I read it. I don't know why any of us expected anything from Bottas. He didn't exactly school Massa the pensioner.
But he still looked much better at the beginning of the season....What happened, he barely can keep the Ferrari and Red Bull behind him nowadays...Did he loose tension after resigning?
Bottas looked stronger at the beginning of the year... Maybe Bottas is better than Lewis with a misbehaving car. The Mercedes had issues that Lewis didn't cope with very well until after the break. Maybe Lewis is one of those guys who's only good in a perfect car, and Bottas was used to a crappy Williams and coped better with driving around problems.
Lewis should thank Nico for leaving the team so Mercedes could find someone to sit in the sister car who won't challenge him on or off the track.
This is what I suspected in the beginning as well as Bottas was better when the Ferrari actually was closer or better than the Mercedes...as soon as the Mercedes dominated Lewis dominated. With the "coming from a crappy Williams" was the same as Ricciardo coming from a crappy Toro Rosso against Seb who was used to a perfect running car....
Then the same may be said about Michael's stint at Ferrari? Would he have stood for Ayrton joining the team? :hmmm...: Something to ponder.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formulaone/article-4611948/Nico-Rosberg-vicious-one-clashes-Hamilton.html It was Toto who christened Nicole 'the vicious one' ..he should know I think Bottas really thought he had a crack at the WDC this year,and got off to a pretty good start. However Lewis rose to the challenge,especially in qualy when he put in some blistering laps,that is not easy to deal with. Now that Lewis has such a big lead,Bottas has settled into a kind of rear gunner role,although not too sucessfully.maybe he is saving his powder for 2018 ,and trying to figure out how he will do it?
As said: it is very comfortable to blame the one who is gone and Toto had not to deal with Lewis´ last race antics. Adding that Toto always prefered Lewis I would hardly say this is an unselfish unbiased source Sure it was Lewis who rose the game..my bad, how could I ever question that it is Lewis´ achievement rather than Bottas underdelivering....I guess it is Lewis´ body that needed time to adapt to the new vegan lifestyle but now that the last piece of cow is digested...
Toto should not have sided with Elton. Toto is a D b a g. Poor Bottas looked completely and utterly lost at COTA. I hope this was a single occurrence. The more time goes by we truly see how good Nico really was.
We should do a poll to see how many people still doubt that....and make it so the votes are public! lol
Nico is a WDC. He knew LH well enough to rattle his cage and expose weakness. Nico was a fast and polished F1 driver who spoke well publicly. Some drivers like Max would do well to learn a bit from him about their public interactions and language.
No, and why should he have done, Michael knew full well there's no point having two drivers fighting each other, and ayrton would never have yielded even if his car was on fire, and ferrari needed a championship after twenty years without..... his job was get the title, pure and simple
Nico had three issues, he wasn't the best in a fight at the front because he was too intelligent, and so he worried too much about consequences instead of just driving, Toto, and The Rat. Toto and the Rat undermined the guy at every turn and made every effort to let nico know elton was the chosen one. Nico had his measure and showed it, and very publicly was undermined by those two 'people managers'. Luckily, in 2016, he decided WTF and got on with the job, managing to keep it going the whole year and winning a well deserved championship. It shows how biased Mercedes are in the minutes after the last race, where Nico crossed the line, toto and the Rat were barely able to crack a smirk, let alone a smile, no doubt already having to work out their excuses to tell golden boy when he came in as to why they had to keep telling him to speed up in the race, when before the race they'd probably told him to make sure that when he takes Nico out, make sure his car isn't damaged
I saw it differently. Nico won the WDC because Hamilton felt that he could beat Nico whenever he felt like it. He *knew* he had the mental edge, so he didn't feel any pressure when Nico rocketed off to a fast start in the championship. By the time LH started to mount a serious challenge, NR didn't comply with his expectations and continued to rack up points and did not fall apart (except in Austria). If it came down to the championship being lost in Malaysia, it's because that's all the space LH's hubris had left him. Some will debate that the WDC wasn't "earned" or "deserved". I think Rosberg punched hard and often at the beginning of last year while Hamilton was a bit too casual and complacent. It's those races that really decided the championship, not the fried Merc in Malaysia. Nico was hungrier, more determined, and generally held up well when the pressure mounted. What more is required to be considered "deserving"?
+1 and let´s not forget that over a series of races mid-season Lewis did not manage to get a good start but saw no need to test the starting procedure... And there was Monaco where Nico let him pass to get a shot at the GP win, something Lewis would most likely have not done the other way round.... And actually the loosing the championship began the year before when Lewis allowed Nico to win three in a row because he was already on holiday mode instead of "destroying" him for once and forever. So Nico already came with a big self-confidence into the season. Lewis have not to blame anyone but himself for loosing against Nico...
