Is Rosberg about to take control of the title race?

The first Austrian Grand Prix since 2003 promised much and delivered plenty. Not quite the spectacular race we hoped for but still a lot to get excited about and plenty of drama for the championship battle.

Nico Rosberg lead a Mercedes 1-2 and now finds himself with a five race buffer, it’s an opportunity for him to control the championship a bit more. If we assume there are no reliability problems then Lewis needs to win five races with Nico finishing second before Lewis Hamilton can retake the championship lead.

Despite the fact Lewis won four races on the trot earlier this year, the likelihood of him repeating it and adding a fifth isn’t great as Rosberg seems to have found a bit more fight to challenge Lewis, while it now seems other teams might be able to get involved at the front a little bit more, which could work out in favour of either driver to be honest. For Lewis at least, he might prefer a bit more competition if he can get a car or two in between himself and Nico.

Mercedes do retain a sizeable advantage though; if qualifying hadn’t have 

gone awry then I’m not sure Williams would have been quite as close as they were.  He no longer needs to take as many risks as Lewis Hamilton does, he can afford to let Lewis win a couple if he is having an off day or his car is developing problems he can nurse it home rather than keeping up the fight.

Of course he is a racing driver and he won’t want to do that at all but there are options available to him. On the other hand, we saw when Rosberg had a 25 point lead after the Australian Grand Prix that Lewis went out to dominate, and he did so for a while. 

It could happen again, and I feel sure if Lewis’ pit stops had been a bit quicker (he lost nearly two seconds compared to Rosberg) and he’d come out that much closer to his team mate and not had Valtteri Bottas’ Williams in the way during the second stint he might have mounted a more consistent challenge, a ninth to second is good, but I think the win was definitely on.

Lewis has had a few reliability retirements while Rosberg has had none. In fairness to the title battle I hope Rosberg has a couple of his own to even it up and then we can see if Lewis will take as full advantage as Rosberg has. On the other hand as Lewis said himself in his BBC sport column if he has another failure then Rosberg's lead could be too big.

It’s perfectly possible that reliability problems could strike the silver arrows again too. For the second consecutive race they struggled with cooling which affected the energy recovery and the brakes again. It wasn’t so bad this time as they eventually stretched their lead, but it raises concerns especially as it was the same sort of problem. Hot weather does not appear to be their friend at the moment.

It all looked a lot friendlier after the race between the two, but it’s obvious that it could all explode again as it did in Monaco. Hamilton has to strike back quickly, and ideally for him he needs to take a large chunk of points off Rosberg in one race, not just have a Mercedes 1-2.

It’s the small things that make up the whole and at the moment Rosberg is grabbing every little thing he can, and he’s making it work. There’s been speculation that he’s quite adept at grabbing things to make things better such as copying Lewis’ setup or searching the telemetry for where Lewis is quicker and then copying it, something that apparently annoys Hamilton. In the end why should his main competitor steal his advantage, surely he should find it for himself?

Whatever the situation though, Hamilton is so far keeping a cool head even if the championship fight momentum is not with him right now. Both could crack under the pressure, even in this race on the last lap Rosberg ran wide which could have given Hamilton a dramatic last lap victory if he hadn’t then done the exact same thing.

It is of course still too early to determine the outcome of the title race but the next race is Silverstone and Hamilton needs to impress in front of his home crowd. The momentum swing has to start there otherwise Rosberg will begin to be in control of this championship and Lewis can’t let that happen.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Rosberg holds off Hamilton but could Williams have won in Austria?

Nico Rosberg took his third victory of the year, heading a Mercedes 1-2 for the sixth time this season. This means he now heads the championship by 29 points, that’s over a race wins worth of points if you don’t count the final race double point gimmick but which could prove crucial.

It was all excitement at the start, for the first time this season there wasn’t a Mercedes in sight on the front row of the grid. The Williams cars, with Felipe Massa taking pole position ahead of Valtteri Bottas locked out the front row with their beautiful Martini Colours.

Hamilton looked the man for pole position, consistently quick throughout practice and the first two quali sessions, but whether it was pressure or just a simple mistake he blew it. His first lap time was deleted for exceeding track limits while his second run came to an end when he locked the rear into turn five and spun. Rosberg wasn’t far behind him, the yellow flags came out for the #44 Mercedes so Nico’s lap was compromised leaving him third and Hamilton a lowly ninth.

By then Bottas hadn’t improved on his provisional pole lap, leaving Felipe Massa to take the top spot with a fine lap, but one where it was evident he could have gone quicker still. The Williams cars were very effective around the Red Bull Ring, it’s full of long straights with little in the way of meaningful corners which suits them fine just like Canada did.

Massa got a great start and took an easy lead. It was a bit more difficult for Bottas as Rosberg leapt ahead, but after turn one Bottas got a great exit and swept around the Mercedes to be second. Behind Hamilton launched brilliantly between Daniil Kvyat and Kevin Magnussen. Canada winner Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull started fifth but got hung out wide in turn one to lose a lot of places, Hamilton was up to fifth. Behind Alonso, he made a great pass into turn 8 and so a Williams 1-2 headed a Mercedes 3-4 at the end of the first lap.

It looked like the Mercedes cars were ready to pounce immediately, with Lewis looking particularly fast today. But it just didn’t happen for the first stint. Williams were too fast down the straights for the Mercedes to attack, so mostly covered by around two seconds, they all circulated for the opening short stint on their super-soft tyres.

It was immediately obvious they were graining quite badly, but still it wasn’t until lap 11 that Rosberg dived into the pit lane for his first stop. If Williams truly believed they had an opportunity for the win I think they would have pitted Massa or Bottas next time around to try and maintain position but they didn’t.

It was two laps later before it was Hamilton who pitted, suffering a pit stop nine tenths of a second longer than his team mate. Massa came in next time round, losing out to Rosberg, but exiting ahead of Hamilton who simply dived down the inside of the Williams into turn two. Bottas looked like he might have been able to go quicker than his team mate and had a great in-lap coming out between the two Mercedes after a superb 2.1 second pit stop by the Williams crew. Massa’s stop had been over a second slower which lost him a podium opportunity.

So the four of them ran Rosberg, Bottas, Hamilton, Massa behind the long first stinting Sergio Perez in the Force India. He didn’t appear to be holding them up too much either as he made his tyres last until lap 30, Rosberg and Bottas only getting ahead a few laps earlier, with Hamilton not long after.

Massa didn’t have to make the pass before Perez pitted, probably much to his relief after the controversial last lap clash in Canada which had resulted in Perez collecting a five place grid penalty which meant he started only 16^th, so to lead the race was quite impressive.

Once Perez was out the way, the expected Mercedes pace wasn’t unleashed. Rosberg couldn’t get away from Bottas. In fact he ran wide and struggled to get his pace back for a few laps, Bottas even had a vague attempt to pass but wasn’t quite close enough and he also had to be mindful of the fact that Hamilton was extremely close behind too and wanting to attack his team mate. Mercedes were suffering similar cooling issues as in Canada and were not able to attack as much as they would have liked, something that again held both drivers back, this time the situation didn't get critical though.

Lap 39 and Lewis pitted, with Rosberg following a lap later. By now Rosberg had eked out a two second lead, so Mercedes felt it safe to bring in Lewis first to enable him to jump ahead of Bottas. It worked well, although he did suffer another slow stop which meant Rosberg got away from him a bit more. Now the chase was on, he immediately set fastest lap and charged after his team mate.

This wasn’t just about a race win, this was about stopping the momentum Rosberg has been building for the past two races. He needed to charge him down. Hamilton had looked the quicker driver all weekend but he didn’t close Rosberg down as quickly as he might have done. It wasn’t until the final lap when he was within DRS range.

Then there was a moment, turn two Rosberg ran wide. If Hamilton could take the corner right he might be lined up ready to attack into the second DRS zone on the run to turn three. But as if to exemplify just how hard both were pushing, he too ran wide. It was game over. He backed off and crossed the line 1.9 seconds back.

It was a valiant charge from ninth to second, but I think it could have been the win. More significantly, it gave Rosberg a win he possibly shouldn’t have had. Hamilton was quicker, but like in Bahrain and Spain when Rosberg himself had been the quicker driver but lost out, it was his turn to demonstrate he could win like that too.

As the season develops Rosberg is becoming more and more a formidable opponent for Lewis. I think a lot of people assumed that there would be a fight for the title but that in the end Lewis’ sheer speed would tell and he’d come out on top. That might still happen but Rosberg today laid down a marker that he will not be a push over and he is just as hungry for the fight as Hamilton is.

Could Williams have won?

The Williams boys finished in third and fourth. At the second round of stops they again pitted a few laps later rather than covering the Mercedes stops or even setting the agenda themselves. After the race they acknowledged they didn’t think they could fight the Mercedes so just ran to what they thought was their optimum strategy. Given how they’re hard on their tyres and they didn’t want to waste this opportunity to get their first 2014 podium, one they should have had races ago, perhaps it was a wise choice.

Having said that Mercedes although on lap time were quicker, didn’t seem to have an answer for their straight line speed, I think if they could have tried to maintain track position they might have had a fighting chance of getting second or even the win, particularly as it seemed the Mercedes were suffering a milder form of their Canada troubles. 

As the track temperature had got hotter it became more apparent that most teams were rejecting the one stop option, something Williams wouldn’t have been able to do anyway, so there was an opportunity to perhaps get something more simply by reacting to Mercedes pit stops or just by taking the initiative. Just as Canada should have been theirs, perhaps Austria should have been the double. However, they have lost a lot of points this year, so to finally get whole heap of points that’s lifted them to fifth in the constructors maybe was the best option.

Red Bull Ring hurts Red Bull

The Red Bull Ring was a disaster for Red Bull. Poor qualifying, although Ricciardo scraped a fifth, Vettel only managed 12^th. Vettel struck reliability issues again as his car lost drive and stopped on the first lap before regaining drive. He retired at half distance when a lap down and losing his front wing after a clash with Esteban Gutierrez’s Sauber, enough was enough. Ricciardo battled on after a poor start left him 10^th at the end of the first lap. He ended up eighth after a fantastic last lap move around the outside of Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India into turn five.

Other than that it was a pretty dismal weekend for the team. Christian Horner chose this time to launch an attack on their power unit suppliers Renault. He said the situation was completely unacceptable and that changes needed to be made fast. Red Bull are committed to Renault for 2015 but after that their options are open with rumours increasing about the team making their own engines. Renault do need to continue to improve a lot to match Mercedes, but there has been progress.

Mostly this season it has been Red Bull who have been the second best team. I do expect that be the case again when they come to Silverstone which is less about straight line speed and more about the chassis and aerodynamics. This track was about power and with their current straight line speed issues it wasn’t going to be easy. But what is worse is that another problem with the power unit destroyed Vettel’s race, while Ricciardo was also restricted on how much power he could use from the Renault.

The scraps for points

Fernando Alonso battled hard as he always does. It looked like he might have a sniff of a podium but despite catching Massa a little towards the end he eventually dropped back to come home fifth in another race where Ferrari just didn’t look to have much improvement at all. Still Alonso shows how good he is by always exceeding expectations. In contrast Kimi Raikkonen could only bring the car home tenth in what is continuing to be an awful campaign for the Finn. He did have a nice moment with his engineer when he was asked to find a couple of more tenths per lap, he responded with ‘give me more power’.

Sergio Perez used his long first stint on the softs to end up on the super-softs for a short final stint which elevated him to sixth after a pass on Kevin Magnussen. He was 16 seconds ahead of his team mate Hulkenberg in ninth who seemed very disappointed to be beaten by Perez who had started six places behind him. Perez should have been ahead in Canada too, so Hulkenberg’s high regard in the paddock could be shaken a little bit if this continues to happen after Perez was rejected by McLaren.

Magnussen kept McLaren in the points with seventh while Button was disappointed to only get 11^th. Toro Rosso had a poor race after Kvyat had qualified a brilliant seventh, but retired with suspension failure while team mate Jean-Eric Vergne retired too with brake problems. Lotus, Sauber, Marussia and Caterham all brought their cars home. On the Red Bull Ring the only retirements were Red Bull cars, I guess that’s ironic.

So on to Silverstone where Lewis finds himself with a battle on his hands. He was leading strongly last year before a puncture ruined his race. Rosberg was there to pick up the pieces that time, he can’t afford for that to happen again.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Austrian Forecast

Apparently there’s some Football tournament going on at the moment that has the distinct possibility of grabbing a lot of attention. That’s all well and good, but don’t let it get in the way of the next instalment of the fight to be Formula 1 world champion. It’s been an intense season so far in terms of the title battle which Nico Rosberg currently leads by 22 points from his Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton.

The all powerful Mercedes team struck problems though last time out in Canada allowing Red Bull to get in on the winning action and claim their first victory of the season. Don’t let that result lull you into thinking Mercedes are under threat; they were well clear of the field before both cars suffered a loss of power from their energy recovery systems with Hamilton retiring and Rosberg managing to keep the car on the podium with second. There’s still a long way to go before any team will be able to truly race them wheel to wheel but Red Bull look to be the team pushing the hardest to get back on terms.

So round eight sees the Formula 1 circus return to Austria and the now renamed Red Bull Ring for the first time since 2003. I always remember it producing a pretty decent race, with lots of straights into slow corners encouraging overtaking. In a way it doesn’t need any DRS zones for the easier push to pass scenario’s that we have now but still it’s got a couple of zones anyway. Hopefully it won’t be made too easy.

Pirelli are bringing the super-soft and soft compound of tyres. Expect a super-soft opening stint followed by two soft compound stints. With such a short lap time of only around a minute and ten seconds, minimising pit stop time might be an idea so it might not be a surprise to see a team like Force India repeat what they did in Canada and try a one stop strategy and get in the way of two stoppers.

The weather is currently looking nice and warm for Saturday and Sunday but rain is forecast for Friday practice at the time of writing which might make setting the cars up for dry conditions a bit tricky what with no past experience of the track for 11 years although I’m sure simulators will give them a ball park. It’s a shame rain isn’t around for Sunday, it’s been a long time since we had a good wet race, not at all this year so far or last. Although the British Grand Prix comes after Austria so you never know.

The Austria track is a similar layout to Canada, lots of full throttle and slow corners so you have to wonder if the problems that struck the Mercedes team might be repeated this weekend? As much as other teams might like another opportunity to taste glory this year I think Mercedes will have gone in-depth on that particular problem and have rectified it as best they can, which means very well indeed.

I think this race will be back to the Silver Arrows at the front and another head to head confrontation between Rosberg and Hamilton. Lewis needs to get back to the front after being out done in Monaco by Rosberg and out qualified in Canada on a track he usually owns. Admittedly he had managed to get in front of Rosberg before the power problems and his brake failure left him with his second retirement of the season while Rosberg has none. Rosberg believes he holds the psychological edge by being nearly a race victory up in points and Lewis is prone to sometimes letting his head get the better of him.

But tensions cooled over Canada after the Monaco furore and I think Lewis is in a good place right now. He knows reliability tends to even itself out over the course of the season and he also knows that more often than not he is the quicker of the two drivers. He’s just got to hope that if he goes on a run of victories Rosberg isn’t finishing second all the time again, otherwise it’s going to take four races to be back in the championship lead. I think we’re going to see a demonstration by Lewis of how to dominate a Grand Prix weekend.

Red Bull will continue to be the second best team in my opinion even if it is another power circuit that their Renault engine won’t be able let them keep up with the Mercedes top speeds. However they have such a good car they will still be up there.

Sebastian Vettel is showing signs of returning to form, he could just have easily won the last race but Ricciardo’s debut win is likely to give him a further push in confidence so how easy it will be for Vettel to start beating his Australian team mate is hard to say especially when he makes no secret he has not come to terms with these regulations just yet, or perhaps with not having a regular winning car for the first time since 2008.  Vettel is all smiles and happy for the team at the moment with Ricciardo’s performances but there has to come a time when a four time world champion will unleash his frustration with being out done, if it continues to happen.

Williams missed out again in Canada. Felipe Massa really could have won that race but yet again the opportunity got away from them; with this being a fairly similar track, look to Williams to show strongly again with both drivers, definite podium contenders.

Ferrari and McLaren both looked out of sorts last time out, although both teams had both cars in the points it was only because of a late race accident wiping out two cars that allowed them to have respectable results although Button’s charge to an eventual fourth was pretty impressive. Fernando Alonso isn’t happy but at least he can drive the car while Kimi Raikkonen is still struggling to come to terms with it. I think Alonso wants out of the team unless there’s significant improvement but I think Ferrari will probably be thinking the same about Kimi too.

Force India could be dark horses again, Sergio Perez looked like the winner in Canada at one point while their Mercedes engines will ensure that Nico Hulkenberg continues to pick up decent points. He’ll be wanting to be the one fighting for the podiums this time out though.

Toro Rosso weren’t great in Canada and I don’t think they’ll be much better this weekend although Daniil Kvyat says this is his type of circuit. Lotus and Sauber will continue their struggle this weekend while Marussia aren’t quite there yet to genuinely challenge for a Q2 place. Caterham are lagging behind their main rivals this year.

Also on the agenda is talk of how to make Formula 1 more relevant to younger viewers and how to stop a decline in viewing figures. One way to embrace younger fans is to make the sport more accessible on social media sites, something Bernie Ecclestone seems to think is pretty irrelevant. Another thing regarding viewing figures is perhaps keep it free to air instead of transferring it to pay TV and that statistic might stop and sponsors will get more for their money. Ecclestone has been brilliant for the sport but right now he seems to be losing his way a bit which I’ll write about another time.

For now though it’s the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend and it promises to be another thrilling spectacle which might just take your mind off the World Cup for a couple of hours.

all photo's taken from autosport.com