Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2016: 5 Bold Predictions for Yas Marina Race
The final round of the 2016 Formula One season will take place at this weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit, where Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton will fight for the world championship.
Having held a 33-point lead over his team-mate following October's Japanese GP, Rosberg's advantage has been cut to just 12 points after Hamilton's three consecutive victories in the United States, Mexico and Brazil.
Hamilton—who beat Rosberg to the title in 2014 and 2015—clearly has the momentum as he enters the title-deciding race at a track where he has claimed four podium finishes, including two wins, in seven previous appearances.
But Rosberg has the advantage of knowing he can finish third and still take the title even if his closest rival secures a 10th victory of the season.
So who will win the race and who will become the champion of the world? Here are our predictions for the Abu Dhabi GP.
Nico Rosberg Will Take Out Lewis Hamilton to Win the World Championship
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Let's imagine you're Nico Rosberg, sitting on the front row of the Yas Marina grid and just 55 laps away from winning your first world championship. What's running through your mind?
The usual details about tyre strategy and race-start procedure, to be sure, but on this day—your day of destiny—two other thoughts have worked their way into your head.
First and foremost, the old sporting adage that luck tends to even itself out over the course of a season.
While Hamilton, sitting a matter of metres ahead, has been crippled with technical problems throughout this year, you—with the exception of manageable brake and MGU-K issues in Australia and Russia respectively—have been blessed with perfect reliability.
As well as you have performed in 2016, that luck is certain to run out someday...could today, of all days, be that day?
With that, all the memories of two years ago will come flooding back.
After all, you came to this race in 2014 hoping to win the title, only for a faulty engine to leave you defeated in the darkness as your team-mate headed for the bright lights. Remember how you felt that night? What if it happens again?
Protecting a less-comfortable-than-it-seems lead of 12 points in what could prove to be your last chance to join the immortals, can you really risk a repeat? Can you really wait for something to happen?
It will be around that point, as the tyre blankets are removed and the Silver Arrows lead the field on the formation lap for the final time, when Rosberg will commit to doing the deed.
When the five red lights disappear around two minutes later, he will draw alongside his rival and make sure the No. 44 car doesn't make it through the first corner, taking his team-mate with him into the barriers.
As the two men walk away from the wreckage, Rosberg will be dismissed as a dirty, undeserving champion, a poor man's Alain Prost, a slimy Michael Schumacher.
When all's said and done, though, the 2016 title will be his—and nobody will take that away from him.
Daniel Ricciardo Will Win to Signal the Start of F1's Latest Red Bull Era
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His opinion may change significantly over the next 12 months, but Daniel Ricciardo believes he has only benefited from Max Verstappen's promotion to Red Bull earlier this season.
Having previously performed to an unidentifiable limit alongside Daniil Kvyat, a driver too wild to produce a consistent challenge, the Australian has discovered he has "a little bit more in the tank" since the teenager's arrival, per Autosport (h/t Eurosport).
In other words, Ricciardo never knew how good he really was until he was partnered with a driver as talented as the 19-year-old, which has been obvious almost every time the latter has claimed a strong result.
The best example came a fortnight after Verstappen's maiden victory in Spain, when Ricciardo took his anger out on the streets of Monaco, producing a near-perfect pole-position lap before hounding Hamilton all the way around the principality in mixed conditions.
It will be fascinating, then, to observe how the Australian responds to Verstappen's virtuoso performance in Brazil, where the best driver of 2016 was made to look positively average.
Three places ahead of the No. 33 car on identical tyres when the final safety car disappeared, the 27-year-old finished five places behind as the boy wonder walked on water, surging from 16th to third in the space of 15 laps.
Being completely outclassed by his team-mate in such circumstances would have hurt Ricciardo, who will be determined to bounce back at a circuit where he recovered from a pit-lane start to fourth in 2014, and where Verstappen produced the worst performance of his rookie season last year.
Starting third will give Ricciardo a good view of the title-deciding collision, and the Australian will again take advantage of the Silver Arrows' misfortune to ease to his fifth career victory.
His win will be hugely symbolic against the backdrop of the major regulation changes in 2017, when Ricciardo and Verstappen—with Adrian Newey's latest creation at their disposal—are widely expected to be the ones to beat.
On a day Mercedes' three years of dominance will end in tears of both celebration and sadness, with plenty of anger in between, a one-two finish will signal the start of the latest Red Bull era.
Jenson Button Will Fail to Start His Final Race After One Last Honda Problem
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So after more than two years of constant questions about his future, the day is almost here.
If we are to assume he won't be back in 2018, Jenson Button will make his final F1 appearance at the Abu Dhabi GP, where he will be the subject of many tributes and congratulated on a long and successful career.
But you suspect the 2009 world champion doesn't even want to attend his own leaving party.
Since the announcement of his 2017 sabbatical at September's Italian GP, Button has psychologically departed the sport he once couldn't contemplate living without, telling Motorsport.com's Adam Cooper he has been counting down the days until his final race.
Although he added that Abu Dhabi—where family and friends will be in attendance—will be a "very special" event, the McLaren-Honda driver would be forgiven for wanting a weekend of minimal fuss.
He will likely want to unveil his special "goodbye" helmet design—the one Kevin Magnussen thought he should have worn in 2014—and then get practice, qualifying and the race over and done with, and to ride off into the setting sun.
As with Felipe Massa in Brazil, everyone will be hoping for Button to finish on a high, but such is the nature of his career—which has featured more moments of frustration than elation—that it would be cruelly appropriate if the 36-year-old were to be denied a happy ending.
As influential as Honda has been throughout his career, the Japanese manufacturer has been responsible for Button's most disappointing moments, including those terrible cars in 2007 and 2008, its sudden withdrawal from F1 on the eve of 2009 and those pitiful powertrains in 2015 and 2016.
And it would be typical if Button's farewell were to be overshadowed by one last Honda-related problem.
After yet another poor qualifying result, the No. 22 car will either develop a terminal issue around an hour before the start—preventing Button from even leaving the garage—or slow to a halt on either the reconnaissance or formation laps.
It won't be the way he imagined it, but Button will be finally free—put out of his misery at last.
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Nico Hulkenberg Will Finish His Force India Career with a Podium
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Not for the first time in 2016, Nico Hulkenberg was left to wonder what might have been at the end of the Brazilian GP.
At a circuit where he set pole position in 2010 and challenged for victory in 2012, he was running as high as fourth following Kimi Raikkonen's crash on the pit straight, only to suffer a puncture while running over debris behind the safety car.
His recovery to seventh, along with Sergio Perez's fourth-place finish, was crucial in the context of Force India's fight for fourth in the constructors' championship, effectively taking the team out of sight of Williams.
Like Monaco, Austria and Belgium, however, there was a niggling feeling that this was yet another potential podium that got away.
As deputy team principal Bob Fernley told Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble, it "would have been just the icing on the cake" had Force India's favourite son finally claimed his maiden top-three finish ahead of his transfer to Renault.
Hulkenberg leaving Force India without a podium to his name would almost be as big a tragedy as Fernando Alonso failing to win the world championship with Ferrari. Now the German has one last chance to end on a high.
Force India have performed well at Yas Marina since the V6 turbo regulations were introduced, claiming a six-seven finish in 2014 before Perez qualified fourth and finished fifth in last year's race.
With traction among Ferrari's biggest weaknesses, Force India—who, like Red Bull and McLaren-Honda, run with an extremely high rake angle—could emerge as the third-fastest team this weekend.
Hulkenberg will be the star of qualifying, hauling his VJM09 into the top five, before enjoying a flawless race—no mistakes, no bad luck, no strategy errors, no ill-timed safety cars—to third.
And his dream of signing off in style, as he told the team's official website, will come true.
Romain Grosjean Will Crash at F1's Most Challenging Pit Exit
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Bernie Ecclestone received much criticism after the United States GP for suggesting F1 should build walls around the corners of each circuit in order to tackle the tiresome track-limits problem, per Sky Sports.
But F1's ultimate wind-up merchant had a point, you know.
When drivers know they cannot take liberties at particular tracks and certain corners, they have a wonderful knack of staying out of trouble and keeping their cars on the asphalt.
After all, every race held on the streets of Monaco and Singapore passes by without major incidents, and when the first event at the Baku City Circuit was held in June—bringing with it the most hazardous piece of road in modern F1—each driver managed to avoid clobbering the walls of an ancient castle.
The same can be said for the pit exit at Yas Marina, which may be the most challenging part of the entire circuit.
With the track dipping sharply into an underground, tight left-hander where grip is non-existent, the pit exit invites drivers on new tyres to knock a wheel or two out of shape, to blunt a perfectly crafted nose or to lose an entire front wing.
Yet in the seven Abu Dhabi GPs to date, it is still waiting to claim its first victim.
That simply has to change at some point, and of all the drivers at Yas Marina this weekend, Romain Grosjean is arguably most at risk.
Having struggled to slow the car down almost all season, Haas switched from Brembo to Carbon Industrie brakes ahead of the Brazilian GP, where Grosjean reported that while he could detect a slight improvement, they were "still not perfect in some places," per GPUpdate.net.
We fear Grosjean's gremlins will return with a vengeance at some stage this weekend, when he will lock up heavily and slide comically into the wall.
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