Nico Rosberg Must Fight Back at 2 Races That Play to His Strengths
Nico Rosberg is facing a crossroads in his Formula One career. One path leads to race wins, title challenges and champagne; the other to the end of his days as an equal No. 1 at Mercedes.
Team-mate Lewis Hamilton's flying start to the 2015 season has seen him win three of the first four races and finish second in the other. On each occasion, he has qualified ahead of Rosberg and comfortably beaten him in the race.
The gulf between the pair has been so great that many bookmakers on Oddschecker now list Rosberg as a huge 10-1 shot for the drivers' title.
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Meanwhile, a Ferrari resurgence has seen Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen emerge as genuine threats to the previously all-conquering Mercedes team.
The points gap between Rosberg and Hamilton stands at 27 points after four races, with Vettel just one point further back in third. If Ferrari can find even a couple of tenths—as seems entirely likely, given their incredible rate of development over the winter—Mercedes may have to look at prioritising one driver over the other to ensure races, and maybe even titles, are won.
If Hamilton steamrolls Rosberg at the next few races, there'll be no prizes for guessing who that will be.
But call it fate, luck, geography, anything you like—the next two races present the German with some of the best opportunities he'll get all year to beat Hamilton and force the team to—for now at least—maintain their policy of letting their drivers compete.
The 2014 season proved beyond reasonable doubt that Hamilton is a better race driver than Rosberg. The Brit achieved 11 race wins to his team-mate's five, passed Rosberg on numerous occasions and was, at the majority of races, the quicker of the two over a grand prix distance.
But over a single qualifying lap, the duo were more evenly matched. Where both were able to do a Q3 lap, Rosberg out-qualified Hamilton 9-7. Whether it would have been eight-all had the infamous Monaco incident not occurred is open for debate—at worst, they were level pegging.
Qualifying results from 2015 suggests Hamilton, currently leading 4-0, has pulled clear. For once the statistics do paint an accurate picture—but what they don't tell us is that Hamilton has continued doing what cost him a lot of poles in 2014.
He still frequently fails to extract the maximum from his final qualifying lap.
In Malaysia, he set the pole time with a "banker lap" early in the session and failed to improve on his final run. He did the same thing in China; on both occasions, the defending champion came within less than one-tenth of a second of losing pole.
The gap in Malaysia was 0.074 seconds to Vettel, while in China it was 0.046 seconds over Rosberg.
If there's a weakness in Hamilton's driving at the moment, this is it—and a qualifying weakness is one that Rosberg, so good over one lap in his career to date, is ideally placed to exploit.
And especially so at circuits where pole is so important and Hamilton's race-craft advantage is partially neutered.
With the season-opening flyaways behind us, the European season is upon us. It kicks off with two circuits that share a common feature—overtaking has traditionally been difficult at both.
The first is the Circuit de Catalunya, host of the Spanish Grand Prix. Following another car closely around the track has never been easy; the loss of front-end grip from running in dirty air hurts more here than at perhaps any other circuit on the calendar.
We saw ample evidence of this last season. Rosberg, on one of the rare occasions he was clearly quicker in the race than Hamilton, could not find a way by. This was nothing to do with a lack of cutting edge or poor race craft—simply, he could not follow closely enough, even on the quicker tyre compound, to take advantage of the DRS zone.
That the circuit is front-limited for the tyres (wear to one or both front tyres determines when a driver's rubber is dead and he needs to stop) compounds this problem. It's not only difficult to follow a rival closely but also strategically unwise, because the loss of grip from being in dirty air causes the front tyres to slide more across the tarmac, rapidly increasing wear.
As it's these tyres that most dictate pace and strategy, that's a major problem.
Following too close and suffering this excessive wear may leave a driver open to attack from behind. With Ferrari looking strong, a chasing Mercedes that takes this approach is at risk of falling out of the podium places entirely.
What Rosberg did in China this year—hanging back and playing it safe—is, sadly, a valid approach for the second-placed driver.
This is no use at all to Rosberg if he can't qualify on pole and lead out of the first corner, but history is on his side. He has tended to have the measure of Hamilton around the Catalunya circuit, with better race pace on the two occasions they have competed as team-mates and a pole position in 2013.
Hamilton has been quickest in just one competitive session—qualifying in 2014, when he beat his rival to pole by a tenth-and-a-half.
If Rosberg had to pick a circuit at which to start a fight back, Catalunya would be very high on his list—and to follow it, he might go for the only race he has won on more than one occasion.
Monaco is as much a home race to Rosberg as the sadly departed German Grand Prix. He was raised in the principality and lives there today, and his recent record at the circuit is second to none.
He has never qualified lower than eighth, and in the last three seasons, he has finished second, first and first.
His victory last season is tainted to a degree by the controversial qualifying incident that robbed Hamilton of his final flying lap. But there are no guarantees Hamilton could have beaten his neighbour's pole time, and Rosberg's race driving was faultless.
He didn't need to push especially hard and was never seriously threatened. A third pole in as many years in 2015's race would almost certainly result in a third consecutive victory—because while passing is difficult in Spain, it's nigh-on impossible in Monaco.
If there are two equal cars running together, with no one holding them up and no one making mistakes, the chaser will not pass the leader. The straights are not long enough and the DRS is not powerful enough.
Like Spain, Monaco is a race at which a long-run pace advantage counts for far less than it does at an average circuit. Qualifying is key—and that is where Rosberg has the best chance of getting the better of Hamilton.
Rosberg is dangerously close to slipping into a role played by Mark Webber after 2010 and David Coulthard during Mika Hakkinen's championship years.
It's not Mercedes' style to have an official No. 2 driver, and the position as we knew it a couple of decades ago has now disappeared from the sport. But the role of de facto No. 2 is alive and kicking—and if Rosberg can't close the gap to his team-mate over the next few races, it's what he's going to end up becoming.
Form is against him, and the psychological battle may already be lost. As much as the two upcoming races play to his strengths, even his most ardent supporters would admit the more likely scenario is two more Hamilton poles and two more Hamilton wins.
That would be game over for Rosberg.
But if he can rediscover the qualifying ability we all know he has—and which he more than anyone knows he possesses—there's a chance, however small, that he can put himself back into contention.
Timing and qualifying data sourced from the official F1 website.
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