The Battle of the Silver Arrows BBC

Interesting watch. Points I learned:

It appears Hamilton cheated in Barcelona, according to Toto.

Maybe Rosberg stuck it back to Lewis in Monaco.

Mechanical issues cost Nico the WC.

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed watching.

 

This is what Lewis´ fans seem to forget: it was not only Lewis having mechanical issues during their time, Rosberg had them as well.
The difference is Lewis had them mostly in Qualy in the first season and did not loose too many points because the car was still able to get on podium even from dead last. Rosberg loosing the car while leading in Silverstone and even more in Singapore was destroying Nicos season. Nico was leading the championship when they came to Singapore and this clearly changed everything. And the last race with the double points is another "no points for Nico".
I think this year proves that there was actually not much in between them. And when Lewis claimed in 2016 that "someone does not want him to become champion" Nico could have come up with this idea in 2014 on the same base...And most likely it is untrue in both occasions, 2014 and 2016 simply leveled it out.

What is interesting to see: as you mentioned Lewis obviously started the mess by ignoring orders for the engine modes but in the video he wants to make it sound like it was Nico in Monaco.
It is obvious that Toto and Nikki broke Nico at Spa and the way Toto smiles when Lewis gets past Nico in Monza clearly shows who he sympathises with!
Hungary is a low when Lewis again ignored team orders and then ran Nico wide at the end and Toto did absolutely nothing. In Spa he was furious and in Hungary it was all good???

I am not surprised that Nico quit after his WDC because I do not think he wanted to continue with this muppet show, he did not ran from Lewis, he ran from the way it was dealt within the team...

 

^ nice commentary, I agree

 

11 wins to 4 is crushing any way you try spin it
Nico would have been even further away from Lewis in those years had Ferrari and Red Bull been more in the mix...

 

Not that we are counting but Nico won 5
And is that why he was leading before Singapore, because he was "crushed"???
Winning is not everything apart for those guys who do nothing but looking in Wikipedia for their "analysis". Of the 3 DNF (if you count Abu Dhabi as DNF for Nico) both had Nico had fault in none of them whereas Lewis can blame himself at least partly for two, if you do not believe, watch the movies

 

You're right...it was 5...we wouldn't want to short change Nico.

Anyway, when all was said and done, Lewis won 32 races during their period as teammates, and Nico 22...
If you want to say Nico was ~69% the driver of Lewis, I'm on board for that

He did though... he knew the stars aligned for him in 2016 as was mentally exhausted after eeking out a 5 points WDC despite superior reliability (including a 28 point swing in Malaysia alone) and got out while the going was good (even he knew he was going to get creamed in the faster 2017 spec cars / more durable Pirellis.)

 

With a bit of luck (or less unlucky) he could have won 2014 as well....as said he was leading by Singapore and your 28 points swing would have its equivalent in Silverstone 2014.
And in 2016 he won 9 compared to ten despite playing it safe in the last 4 races so I do not think how "stars aligned"... because Lewis underestimated him in the first races and then screwed a few starts mid season? You guys always blame a single DNF in Malaysia for the WDC of Nico and forget that Lewis had his share. And at the same time you completely deny that 28 point swings in Silverstone and Singapore 2014 had its share in Lewis winning as well...

But go on and belittle Nico, it only makes Lewis´s WDCs less impressive if that is what you want...

 

Pete, I never have to add anything when you are here..... you demonstrate how to analyse and win an argument absolutely perfectly.

If the elton fans just backed off, admitted he is fast but lucky, maybe they would find more people respected elton a bit more. When they love to point out the things that might have caused elton to lose, but completely reject the facts that those same things happen to all drivers, then they lose every ounce of credibility they could ever have had.

Nico is vastly underestimated by Elton’s fans, and they are too blind to realise that if they keep trying to convince us Nico was ****, it makes elton look pretty **** too, as he only ever dominated a crap number two, and got his ass handed to him by that **** driver in 40+% o the races they had together. I can’t remember Irvine, barrichello or Massa beating schumi many times, I imagine the percentages are in single figures, and we KNOW that Mercedes operated team orders throughout Elton’s time with Nico.

 

I never liked Nico as a racer or as personality (and that was long before he was ever teamed with Lewis), but of course he could drive extremely fast.
Incidentally I'm curious your take on Nico vs Michael MK2 and that rather 1 sided matchup...was Nico 'that good' or Michael a simply 'shadow of his former self?' (I tend not to think much or either of those theories myself...)

 

Nico was a very fast prospect, Williams took him in first but just couldn’t produce the equipment. Both Nico and Michael were acquired by Mercedes for development of the car and Mercedes new factory challenge. The car was inconsistent, and also not exactly the best to drive, when Michael and Nico were teamed up. Results were pretty much decided by who had the best of the setup, or the parts that worked, or the reliability. Michael was more relaxed at Mercedes, he knew he wasn’t in the car to win a race, let alone a championship, as the expectation of Mercedes was to spend several seasons in development, with the turbo era their ultimate goal.

Nico and Michael were barely separated on speed in the car, sometimes either driver had the edge, but this was a Michael developing the car, concentrating on set up, future reliability, future goals, not the focussed racing machine he was at ferrari. At Mercedes, you could go and talk to Michael in the garage, in the hospitality, and, if he knew you, he’d stop and chat... at ferrari, Michael was always serious, always aloof from the general riff raff (of which I was one) and spoke to those he had to speak to outside of the engineering teams. His focus wasn’t just the hour before the race, he breathed racing for nine months of the year, start to finish, often sleeping in enzo’s old house at fiorano when he had too.

If you saw the two Michael’s, the results at Mercedes make total sense. Nico learnt a heck of the lot from him, and Mercedes would be nowhere without his efforts (and of course Ross Brawn and co.)

 

Sid, I agree with your analysis but I also believe that if Michael was allowed to do his endless testing he would have developed the car to his liking whereby he would have won another WDC.

 

He definately would have, you are right, but that’s where michael had to accept it was most likely a case of driving it at race weekends on the whole to do the development, and it took ferrari four seasons of manic development before they grabbed the title (1999 I believe should have been michaels, but for his accident) so merc was always a case of being the developer for the future rather than the potential champion in the car

 

One of michaels biggest if not his biggest ability was to work like crazy in car development....so, back in the day when development was done by pounding lap after lap, he was simply the best you could have....but then when this stupid formula when you cannot longer test, a driver of his caliber lost a big part of his advantage..of course, his driving skills alone were more than enough to put him in front of the pack, but that, combined with his work and development skills were what made him a legend...