Why Rosberg should leave Mercedes

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Why Rosberg should leave Mercedes

After another clash with his team-mate, it's time for Nico Rosberg to leave Mercedes and assist Ferrari in addressing its own weaknesses 

So another grand prix, another 'moment' between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

What happened showed exactly why Rosberg, who is out-of-contract at the end of the year, should head for pastures new. That might sound like strange advice, but it makes a lot of sense.

When they collided at Spa in 2014, it was Rosberg that seemed to get the blame. After that, if there was any risk of contact between the two, he was the driver that more often than not took the evasive action.

The same thing seems to be happening again. Since the first-lap incident in the recent Spanish Grand Prix, Rosberg has simply not been the same driver who had won seven grands prix on the bounce.

We all saw in Montreal that he had got around the outside of Hamilton, was front-wheel to front-wheel with him and should have had the inside line for the Turn 2 right-hander. But Hamilton didn't leave him any room. So what happened to leaving a car's width if a car is there?

Had Rosberg held his ground, both of them would have been off. But he backed out of it, went over the runoff area and ruined his race.

In Spain, Hamilton's front tyre was never ahead of Rosberg's rear tyre. But in Canada, Rosberg had his front tyre level with Hamilton's front and had every right to be there.

Hamilton said he had lots of understeer and that is what made him run wide into Rosberg. It's the same excuse as Austin last year and if it had been someone else he wasn't so sure of on the outside of him I am pretty sure he would have allowed more space.

But he knows Rosberg is easy meat and the Mercedes management will favour his side of the argument. So it's not a surprise this has happened again.

So if I was advising Rosberg, it would be simple. It's time to move on. Yes, he is driving the best car in the pitlane but does he really want to continue as number two to Lewis Hamilton? I don't think so. And the Mercedes won't be the best car forever.

A Sebastian Vettel and Rosberg combination at Ferrari could be just what he and Ferrari need. With the best will in the world, Raikkonen's days at Ferrari should be over given his performances over the past two-and-a-half seasons. If Ferrari keeps him on, it sends out a very strange signal to everybody involved that second-best is good enough. He's had his day and Ferrari needs to realise that or it will keep underachieving.

Vettel brought a lot to Ferrari from his experience of four world championships with Red Bull. Rosberg can bring the same from Mercedes. After all, he has been there since 2010 and that counts for something.

If he signed up soon, he could then become a free man to drive as he wished for the rest of this season. In doing that, he might just be be able to become world champion.

Maybe he is too nice a guy for this and lacks the ruthless streak of the greats. But life as a racing driver is fairly short and I have never worked with a driver that didn't see a Ferrari drive as the creme de la creme of F1.

And as the Canadian GP showed, Ferrari could do with importing a little bit of Mercedes know-how.

It at last got its act together in the final part of qualifying with a fine third place on the grid for Vettel, only 0.178s off Hamilton's pole position.

Following its recent qualifying dramas, this must have come as a relief and represented a major step forward. After all, with Ferrari's long-run pace it was going to be game on.

To make things even better, Vettel made a storming start, jinking around the left-hand side of a slow-starting Hamilton and held the inside line. So by the first corner, he was up, up and away.

And the extra bonus for Ferrari was that Rosberg, who had made the best start of the two Mercedes drivers, came around the outside of Hamilton, they touched and the German ended up down in ninth and effectively out of contention for victory. So Ferrari and Vettel had only one Mercedes to worry about and track position.

The lead ebbed and flowed around the one second mark, but with Vettel up front it didn't look as though the Mercedes could do much about passing it, even with the DRS.

That's consistent with what we have seen in recent races, with the Mercedes losing performance while following another car of similar pace. That makes overtaking very difficult. So far, so good for Ferrari.

Then Jenson Button's Honda engine cried enough on lap 10 of 70 and the virtual safety car was deployed. At the end of the lap, Vettel surprised everyone (including Hamilton) by diving into he pits and, strangely, fitting the super-soft tyre.

Given the soft tyre had to be run and Vettel started on the ultra-soft, that meant a two-stop strategy. Just to confirm it, Raikkonen also pitted, although the abrupt end of the VSC led to the team attempting to tell him to stay out - but at the point when he was already committed.

Form that moment on, it was easy for Mercedes. All it had to do was watch Vettel's laptimes and as long as it could show a similar pace on a one-stop strategy it would be a walk in the park.

In the end, that's exactly what happened. What looked like being a real cliffhanger of a race at the end of lap one ended up as a damp squib.

So why did Ferrari not just let the race unfold instead of trying to be clever and let the laptime and performance dictate strategy? Well, the team was worried about tyre degradation.

Normally, come race day any degradation predicted based on the practice session information will get better. A gain of 20-30% is not unknown. Ferrari, with all its experience, should have had a ballpark figure to apply to the progression from Friday to Sunday and use that to work out the strategy. What's more, Ferrari looked pretty good on the softs on Friday as it was.

If Ferrari had done this, and also factored in the past races in which it was at least as good as Mercedes on tyre degradation, Vettel would have gone at least another five or six laps. Had that happened, Vettel could have switched to softs and one-stopped - perhaps to victory.

Ferrari would have complied with the regulations for race tyre usage while not telegraphing to Mercedes the fact that a two-stop was planned. And if Ferrari was so determined to stop then why not put on the softs and see what happened? If a two-stop was still needed, then Vettel could have switched onto ultra-softs or super-softs for a sprint to the flag to hunt down Hamilton.

So Ferrari made two blazing errors. Firstly, it brought its cars in too early for a first stop. Secondly, having made that mistake, it should have fitted the soft Pirellis to both Vettel and Raikkonen.

These are worrying signs and I suspect all might not be well within Ferrari. As is often the case with the team, there have been rumours in Italy about management changes, and it's known that Renault is after technical director James Allison. The sharp knives will be out sooner rather than later.

When you have a golden opportunity like this, it's down to the team to play the race right. Had Vettel been outpaced and passed by Hamilton, fair enough. But the strategic choices Ferrari cast Vettel as the chaser rather than keeping control of the race.

So Ferrari needs to find ways to sharpen up and Rosberg needs to find somewhere where he knows he won't always come off second-best.

Sounds like there's a way to help tackle Ferrari's problem and solve Rosberg's.




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oOGillianOo

· 广东

前方大波流量预警,这篇我接了

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梦凌枫潇楼主

· 上海

恢复招工~~~Gillian转战勒芒文了XD

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