Official 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix thread ***SPOILERS with rosewater refreshments***

My beef wasn't with what Hamilton did - that's racing. But there were some petulant comments afterwards.

He was more graceful here: [www.youtube.com]

To be fair, what he says in that clip is true, that it isn't Rosbergs fault, that he had near perfect reliability throughout the season. That is factually correct:

[www.skysports.com]

Hamilton has been stupidly unlucky with his gear this season. And it is hard to image that it did NOT cost him the championship. The statement is worded in such a way, that he doesn't hold that personally against Rosberg, and he did have quite a few positive things to say about him. What exactly is your problem with that?

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Quote
Mortal
Hamilton has been stupidly unlucky with his gear this season.

That is of course true, but he's also been lucky in one sense with how little it's affected him. Only 1 failure resulted in a finish off the podium (and that was a result of first corner damage, though of course he was much less likely to have had it had he been at the front), the other two qualifying issues came in Q3 (Russia, where he came 2nd, and Monaco where he still started 3rd and won after Rosberg let him through) and his collection of engine parts taken in Spa resulted in the flukiest moment all season when he was bumped directly to 5th place early on due to the safety car and subsequent red flag for Magnussen's crash.

Of course it hindered the start to his season, but he certainly could have been less lucky than he has been. Equally his poor starts were to blame, though the nail in the coffin was the engine failure in Sepang.

I would have loved to have seen how the season would have panned out if Hamilton's engine hadn't blown at Sepang and Rosberg hadn't been spun to the back by Vettel, as it was shaping up nicely - Hamilton had clawed his way back and looked stronger that weekend, but Rosberg had won 3 on the bounce and outperformed him in the previous race - obviously Rosberg's been in cruise mode since, somewhat riskily.

gav Wrote:
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> Of course it hindered the start to his season, but
> he certainly could have been less lucky than he
> has been.

This is pretty much an empty statement. This goes for every single driver on the grid. Even if Hamilton had 19 engines blow up on him on the grid, he could have been less lucky, because it could have been 20. What is worthy of note, is the reliability compared to the other side of the garage, and with the engines, to the other cars running them.

> Equally his poor starts were to blame,

That is true. But no one gets through a season without something being there, that could have been better. If Rosberg had lost the championship this weekend, similar arguments could be made against his campaign. And the poor starts were not just Hamilton. Mercedes put quite a bit of work into improving their clutch this season.

> though the nail in the coffin was the engine
> failure in Sepang.

It was. We all knew just how much of a crushing blow that was when it happened. From that point on, I doubted Hamilton could do it.

All in all, I am not saying Hamilton SHOULD have been WC. I am not making any claims that Rosberg shouldn't be WC.

My argument is on the people that are giving him sh!t for no good reason.

EDIT: btw, I am not Mortal.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2016 11:07AM by Morbid.

Why did I type "Mortal" in the quote box. Sorry Morbid!

It's hardly an empty statement and you know fine well what I mean.

I personally am giving him grief for being an arse afterwards, once more saying his team were favouring Rosberg publicly, not for his actions during the race. This is the team that told Rosberg to let him through in Monaco but I guess he quickly forgot about that. The team that gave him the car to challenge for 3 titles and and win 2. The team of which he is an employee.

gav Wrote:
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> Why did I type "Mortal" in the quote box. Sorry
> Morbid!

No problem.

> It's hardly an empty statement and you know fine
> well what I mean.

It is an empty statement. As to me knowing what you mean, then yes I do. However, I did qualify it, by putting up the standards that I think that are measurable and relevant.

> I personally am giving him grief for being an arse
> afterwards, once more saying his team were
> favouring Rosberg publicly, not for his actions
> during the race. This is the team that told
> Rosberg to let him through in Monaco but I guess
> he quickly forgot about that. The team that gave
> him the car to challenge for 3 titles and and win
> 2. The team of which he is an employee.

Oh how quickly we forget. I dug up the old thread I made about Alonso in 2006 when he went into full meltdown and two races before the championship was over, accused not only his team Renault of deliberately sabotaging his campaign, because they didn't want him to take the #1 to his new employer, he also attacked his own team mate for doing the same, even though he had helped him during the season.

That was bad. That was actually MUCH worse. And he won that championship.

What is more to the point, (besides the thread bringing back memories of other unpleasantness) I learned some of the things I said in this thread. Many people jumped to Alonso's defence in that thread. On common attempt was to just deny that he had made those statements. Another tactic was to say that it was taken out of context. A third tactic was to start bringing up the ways in which former champions behaved, that was even worse, such as Schumacher and Senna. All in all, there was a considerable force behind making allowances for Alonso in that thread, and a large variety of ways in which this was done. The last tactic that I mentioned even ended up derailing the thread, where I as a mod (with my last action in that capacity), had to lay down the law, and tell posters NOT to derail the thread any more with even more stories of Senna and MS that was irrelevant to the conversation.

Of course, I expected to find a scolding attack on Alonso from your side in that debate. And to my surprise, I didn't find a single word. Maybe I just didn't find it. If so, please quote it.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

I don't even think I was posting in the F1 forum back in 2006.

Well done Nico!!

Great season from him, all in all. He did have a few difficult times(Monaco and Canada, then later in the middle of the season as well) but overall he looked like a different driver altogether this year. I sensed(or, rather, hoped at the time) that his 3 straight wins at the end of last year might be the sign of a turning point for him and might serve as the platform for a successful title challenge in 2016 - but I thought that might also be me clutching at straws as a Rosberg fan... Glad my intuition ended up being right!

In the race itself I thought he drove pretty perfectly for his situation, and kept his head brilliantly. He was still punchy when he had to be, passing Max, and did absolutely everything he had to - but holding his nerve in the ultimate pressure cooker of the final few laps was what showed his true class as a driver, IMO.

I know there are some who think this will be his only title, but I tend to agree with Mark Webber's comments after the race - Nico will have a new self-confidence and self-belief from now on, and will only grow and develop more as a driver. He's already shown an exceptional ability(like Mansell) to keep improving as he gets more experienced, and to dig deep. There's no reason, IMO, why he can't win more titles in future; it'll largely depend on how well Mercedes cope with the regulation changes over the winter, and how competitive they are in 2017 and beyond.

Great win from Lewis, impressive tactical drive to back Nico up while managing to stay out of DRS range at the key points on the lap... Really impressive actually, and impressively cheeky too. I don't blame him for trying that, as a racer, and knowing that winning alone wasn't going to be enough.


The gav Wrote:
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> What a tense finish.
>
> A typically tense championship decider, which
> always seems to throw a curve ball, but it was
> very watchable.

It was pretty awesome. The last few laps were exhilarating! I was spending the weekend in the same Travelodge you stayed in when you went to Knockhill in 2012. I was in the downstairs café area and had it all to myself, and I was watching the race on the main TV. Their CCTV images of me celebrating when the race finished must've been amusing.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2016 04:50AM by EC83.