Lewis Hamilton climbed to the top of the driver’s championship standings courtesy of a fine win at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain. The 2007 world champion who started on pole for the fourth time this season, held his nerve in the closing stages with his teammate Nico Rosberg breathing down his neck and romped home with a well-deserved victory. Rosberg must now be getting sick at the sight of the rear end of Hamilton’s car after having finished second to him in the last 4 grands prix. Rosberg held the lead for this long after a victory at the season opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
The 2014 is gradually but surely turning into a two horse fight for the driver’s championship with the Mercedes drivers showing mighty pace close to a one-second advantage per lap than their counterparts. Heck, Ferrari’s lead driver Fernando Alonso who finished in 6th was just seconds away from being lapped by them.
Unlike the past, this season promises to be interesting and the battle for the title might as well go down the wire simply because of the fact that Rosberg will not get bogged down by Hamilton’s performance and will take the fight to him like he has shown in the last 4 races.
In the last few seasons when Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull or Brawn have dominated the sport, only one of the two drivers have actually excelled. Be it Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel or Jenson Button, during their title winning reigns, their teammates like Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa and Mark Webber where no match to them. They were either mediocre or finished a distant 2nd. But now, Mercedes are so dominant that both their drivers have the license to go for the win in every single race. Don’t be surprised if Mercedes win every single race of the season and still the title goes on to be decided at Abu Dhabi through the controversial double points system.
The constructor’s title is a no brainer especially because of the fact that Mercedes have a huge 100 points cushion over their nearest challengers Red Bull. So there no point in bother about it except to see if Force India can pull something out of the bag by finishing 4th or Caterham can finish above Marussia in the coveted 10th spot. Mercedes are so confident of their superiority that they’ve started to work on the cosmic changes in the sport like increasing the noise from the turbo powered engines to please the naysayers of the V6-Turbo era of F1.
No comments:
Post a Comment