Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton raced for the Mercedes Formula 1 team for a span of four seasons between 2013-2016. In that period, the relations between the two soured after they found themselves competing for the world championship with the newly dominant Silver Arrows. On 2 different occasions, the title winner was decided at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, the season finale of the Formula 1 season.
The 2014 F1 season was the start of the long Mercedes domination era. That year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was also the first and only instance of double points being awarded at the last round of the championship, a rule brought by Bernie Ecclestone to keep the focus on the championship fight till the end of the season. This meant that coming into Yas Marina, Nico Rosberg had a realistic shot in the battle against Hamilton despite having a deficit of 17 points.
Rosberg started on pole, with Hamilton in P2. The Brit had a flying start, and headed into turn 1 with a significant lead to his teammate. This put the German on the back foot as he struggled to get past Lewis. Things would only go worse for Nico from here as on Lap 25, he was informed by the team regarding the failure of the Energy Recovery System (ERS) in the car, resulting in a loss of 160 horsepower, a deficit of over 2 seconds per lap.
2014 – Lewis Hamilton clinches the championship while Nico Rosberg races to an unfruitful end
In a bid to get back the lost power, the German asked the team, “Anything I can do to keep it going” but alas the team could not find a solution. Thus throughout the latter half of the race, Car-number 6 kept tumbling down the order, from P2 to P14, at the ending stages of the race, Nico was advised by the team to retire the car as the German was outside the points-scoring position. Rosberg refused to do so and expressed his intention to race till the end, accepting his defeat with grace.
Hamilton, on the other hand, reduced his pace after his teammate’s ERS failure, this put him at the risk of losing out on the race win to Felipe Massa. However, despite Massa chasing in at the end of the race on fresher tires, Lewis Hamilton came home with a gap of 2.5 seconds, winning the race and being crowned the Formula 1 world champion for the second time in his career.
This intensified the rivalry between the pair, making the tension felt by the team members themselves as both sides of the garage indulged in a battle amongst each other. The Mercedes’s dominance would continue in 2015 and 2016, with Lewis winning the 2015 championship with ease at the United States Grand Prix. In 2016 however, things again went down to the wire.
2016 – Nico Rosberg finally wins the championship while Lewis Hamilton’s on-track plan fails
Coming into the final round of the 2016 F1 season, it was Lewis Hamilton who was trailing behind his teammate by 12 points. This meant all Rosberg had to do was to be on the podium and the championship was his. But his British teammate would not go down without a fight and this race provided us with a much more dramatic end to the season and it was only 5 years later in 2021, that we witnessed a title decider at the final round of the season.
Hamilton started on pole with Rosberg in second. At the start, the Brit gained a lead and kept ahead of his teammate. During the race, Rosberg was overcut by Max Verstappen but managed to gain back the lead. Hamilton was unsafe to Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari but responded to this by putting in faster lap times. Eventually, with 18 laps remaining, it was Hamilton P1 and Rosberg P2, the Brit urgently needed to do something to win and that’s what he did.
On Lap 41 of the race, the 7-time world champion enquired about the pace of his rivals, then proceeded to slow down his pace in order to get Verstappen and Vettel close to his teammate and thus put Rosberg at risk of being overtaken. For Hamilton to win the title, he needed his teammate to drop down 2 places. Rosberg complained on the team radio regarding the pace of Hamilton and the team responded by ordering Hamilton to pick up the pace.
This was refused by the race leader who made his intentions of winning the title clear, thus he kept his pace slow but thanks to the track layout, Rosberg could not overtake Lewis. Hamilton’s aim of bringing the 2 cars behind Rosberg to a gap of one second seemed to be working as by the last lap of the race, Sebastian was attacking the German driver. Max also took advantage to close in on both Vettel and Rosberg.
However, at the finish line, it was Nico Rosberg in P2, and he became the new F1 champion of the world. The German driver had finally avenged his loss at the same track 2 years ago, and achieved his lifelong dream. Days later he would announce his retirement from the sport. Hamilton’s behavior was understood by team principal Toto Wolff and in the next 4 seasons, the Brit would go on to win back-to-back championships with the Silver Arrows.
This rivalry went down in history as one of the fiercest teammate battles of the modern era. It mentally exhausted Nico who took to retirement while it also changed the dynamic at Mercedes which went on to avoid such a lethal driver pairing. Lewis too stepped up on his game and became unstoppable. Personally, we missed such an intense fight in the sport before 2021’s title battle between Hamilton and Verstappen.
