Will Nico Rosberg's Aggression Cost Him the 2016 F1 World Championship?

Everything was falling into place for Nico Rosberg to end Lewis Hamilton's three-race winning streak at Sunday's German Grand Prix and reclaim the lead in the Formula One drivers' championship that he had lost to his Mercedes team-mate the week before in Hungary.

On Saturday, Rosberg qualified on pole (he won the German race from the front of the grid in 2014), but things started to go wrong as soon as the race began.

Hamilton and the two Red Bulls swamped Rosberg on the run to the Hockenheimring's quick first turn and Hamilton immediately began to pull away. It would only get worse for Rosberg.

On Lap 29, he made a clumsy, perhaps desperate, passing manoeuvre on Max Verstappen at the hairpin, forcing the Red Bull driver off the track. Rosberg gained the position, but received a five-second time penalty after the stewards reviewed the incident.

In the post-race press conference, Verstappen said, "He braked really late and at one point I thought he was going to run into me, so I opened up and then he didn't turn in. He was just driving straight so I had to go off the track otherwise we would have crashed."

Rosberg, meanwhile, said the penalty cost him a podium finish, per the official F1 website. "Without the penalty I was in front of the Red Bulls; with the penalty I couldn’t challenge them. [Finishing fourth] was down to the penalty," he explained.

Poor starts have been an ongoing problem for Mercedes since last season. Running rival drivers off the circuit is a more recent problem for Rosberg.

His mistake in Germany was very similar to his last-lap crash with Hamilton at the Austrian Grand Prix at the beginning of July, when he also turned extremely late in a tight corner. Rosberg was penalised by the stewards for that incident, too.

More worryingly for Rosberg than time penalties, though, are the championship points he has lost as a result of his ham-handed cornering.

Had Rosberg finished second (instead of fourth) in both Austria and Germany, his gap to Hamilton would be just seven points instead of 19, as it currently stands.

Rosberg was understandably disappointed with the penalty in Germany.

"It took me by surprise, definitely," he said, according to Autosport's Edd Straw and Ian Parkes. "I didn't expect a penalty for that.

"It was racing. I was really ecstatic at the time because I thought 'wow, that was awesome, I came from miles behind'."

However, Sebastian Vettel received the same penalty for forcing Felipe Massa wide in a very similar incident at the British Grand Prix. Given that precedent, Rosberg's penalty was certainly fair, despite Sky Sports' Anthony Davidson's contention that different driver stewards at each race make for inconsistent rulings.

Over the last two years, Rosberg has been criticised for being too soft in head-to-head battles. He has often lost out to Hamilton, in particular at last year's U.S. Grand Prix, for example, or earlier this year in Canada.

We should not be too harsh, therefore, when he does make an aggressive move. However, if Rosberg wants those moves to propel him to his first drivers' title, as he surely does, he needs to start making them cleanly.

If the season remains as close as it has been, the 12 points Rosberg lost in Austria and Germany could decide the championship.

Hamilton has been the more assertive of the two Mercedes drivers in their battles over the last two-and-a-half seasons, but he has managed to do it without incurring the wrath of the stewards. Perhaps that is because many of his aggressive manoeuvres—such as the aforementioned ones in the U.S. and Canada—occurred on the first lap, when the close bunching of the cars means the stewards are more lenient.

Had Rosberg been more offensive at the first corner in Germany, he may not have had to pass Verstappen at all later in the race. Instead, he looked tentative and then overcompensated for it later.

Mercedes executive director Toto Wolff thought Rosberg losing out on Lap 1 may have affected his mindset and contributed to the incident with Verstappen, telling Sky Sports' Simon Lazenby and Damon Hill that Rosberg was caught in a "downward spiral."

Luckily for Rosberg, he now has a full month to rest and get his mind in the right place before the Belgian Grand Prix on August 28.

There are nine races remaining in the season—more than enough time to make up the 19-point gap to Hamilton. But in the last eight races, he has just one victory, which is also the only time he has finished ahead of Hamilton. In fact, since the end of Rosberg's season-opening four-race winning streak, Hamilton has outscored his team-mate 160 to 98.

Rosberg will need his newfound aggression if he is to slow down Hamilton's momentum, but he must also be clean. He has to be able to overtake when the opportunity is there but patient enough to hold back when it isn't.

Matthew Walthert is an F1 columnist for Bleacher Report UK. He has also written for VICE, FourFourTwo and The Globe and Mail. Follow him on Twitter:

Follow @MatthewWalthert