Will he be the least deserving champion of all time?
I can't think of another time where a driver has been so clearly inferior and won the championship due to reliability / other factors.
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Will he be the least deserving champion of all time?
I can't think of another time where a driver has been so clearly inferior and won the championship due to reliability / other factors.
Silly question in my opinion. A world champion deserves to be a world champion.
I can think of a lot of them. How many championships would Fangio have won if he'd been driving for BRM (0)? He tried Indy and couldn't even qualify against 33 American drivers who mostly raced on dirt horse tracks.
In my book Rosberg would be no worse than Button or Räikkönen, let alone several other champions before these two.
Also it is worth keeping in mind a very important differentiator in this argument. To win the WDC, Rosberg has to beat Hamilton in equivalent cars. It is a damn hard thing to do, even if you have the advantage of reliability. Because most WDC's have weaker team-mates to beat (the Barrichellos, Webbers, Coulthards, Bergers and Patreses of this world) and/or their closest rivals are driving inferior cars.
No. This year he fixed the pressure mistakes and has driven brilliantly.
Besides, how many starts has Lewis bonked this season?
Yes, he would deserve it. It's not fair on Nico to just blame reliability. Lewis couldn't beat him in a straight fight in Singapore. In all likelihood Rosberg wouldn't have beaten Lewis in a straight fight over the course of a season, we all know that but you need to take your chances when they come along and Nico hasn't put a foot wrong all season. I've always said he is good for one or two championships. I think he's a fantastic driver, just he is unlucky he's up against one of the best of his generation.
As for Lewis, reliability aside, he has made some balls up this season. He has scoffed the start on numerous occasions whereas Rosberg hasn't. Whether that is as out of his control as reliability or not I don't know but he certainly hasn't been nearly as impressive overall this season as he was last year. He has only himself to blame in the end because he spends most of his time jet setting around the world instead of working hard with his engineers. I've always felt his lifestyle would catch up with him at some point. You can't just show up at each race spending no time in between working with your engineers and then expect to win championships. The funny thing is there have been no snapchats from him in over two weeks because he is finally working as a driver should work. A bit too late though, he should have been doing it all year. If he had worked hard all year, he may not have had some of those atrocious starts and could be leading the championship right now, or at least it'd still be in his own hands.
Raikkonen has shown since just how slow he really is. He's nowhere near being a top tier driver.
In my view the Ferrari was actually slightly faster. And Alonso-Hamilton a superior line-up to Räikkönen and Massa.:)
Anyway. I didn't mean the championship season in isolation, but how I generally rate these drivers. It is not a dent on Kimi or Jenson, because they are good drivers. But same applies to Nico - he is also good. He has been running Hamilton reasonably close. And if you are looking at qualifying statistics, ever since they have become Mercedes team-mates, they have scored roughly a similar amount of pole positions. Pretty impressive in my book, even if we consider Hamilton has had to sit out several Q sessions during the years due to car problems.
I wish people could support their favorite drivers without diminishing others.
He might be driving the fastest car, but he will have beaten Lewis (who many rate as the fastest guy out there at the moment) so no he will not be the least deserving - quite the opposite actually.
You have no basis to say this. Rosberg has 9 wins against Hamilton's 7 wins so far this year. Yes, Rosberg may have been helped sometimes by Hamilton's bad luck. But there is no way we can deny how many perfect and flawless weekends Nico had this year. Rosberg may not have Hamilton's natural talent, but Nico is a very dedicated and "technical" driver who works his ass off every weekend to deliver the best result he can.
If you want to talk about the least deserving WDC win in the recent times, I think we need to recall 2013. Red Bull had the fastest car by a long shot and continued developing it through the season, while the rest of its competition gave up pretty much mid-summer. Vettel didn't have much competition from within or from outside of the team. Webber often struggled to even win his second place. On the other hand, there is a legitimate competition going on between Hamilton and Rosberg, and I hope it will go on to the final race of the season.
His father Keke was sometimes considered the least deserving champion of all time.
Because many others were considered for the title: Reutemann, Villeneuve, Pironi, Prost, Watson...
Despite Keke conquered more victories after he was F1 Champion in 1982.
It may have a Merc logo on it, but l don't think we could call those cars equivalent. If one car is running smoothly and the other is dogged with all manner of problems, it is like a boxer having one hand tied to his back and taking on a Heavy weight fight. There is nothing equivalent about that.
That said, Rosberg would be a very deserving Champion considering that he lost a 43 points lead and was 19 points behind at one point but managed to turn it around to a 33 points lead with the help of a DNF and other problem for Hamilton of course. But one still has to cross the line first to win which he did with some quite superb drives actually.
Well at least Rosberg has stopped crowding his team mate off the track,or trying to puncture his tyre .Or blocking the track in quali
He has been a better RACER this year ,but a lot of the public have issues with him
ANYWAY the fat lady has not sung YET !
There are 2 more races !
I'm sure Lewis will be remembering 9 years ago, when he had a proportionally much greater advantage with 2 races to go than Nico has now, and didn't manage to make it stick. Not over by any means!
This is true, however in 2007 you had two teams that were fairly evenly matched(Ferrari won 9 races McLaren won 8). The Boss chucking it away in China, and than Brazil, and Kimi winning the last 2 races really was remarkable, and a feat not repeated since. Having said this I still think Lewis (as you pointed out) has a better chance than Kimi did with 2 races left, but he needs Nico to suffer some misfortune.
Lewis best chance of winning the championship is either:
1) Rain in Brazil
2) Verstappen in Brazil of Abu Dhabi
3) Reliability issues
Otherwise it will simply be a Mercedes 1-2 in the final two races and Nico will take it either way.
Yes, you're right, but
Nico is boring. Lewis is badass. Bernie said!
You're not a World Champion without serious talent. Every champion are respected and rightly so.
Is he better than Hamilton? No. But does he deserve title? If he has the most points of all drivers come sunday evening in Abu Dhabi, yes.
Kimi winning from third was not a feat really. Mclaren handed it to him on a platter with bitter inter team mate rivalry and the distraction of the Ferrari gate scandal.
Under normal circumstances, that title would have been a done deal. Kimi won it by one point from Hamilton who had a DNF due to gearbox failure on the last race of the season; which would have won him his first title in his rookie year.
If you subtract Kimi from the 2007 equation, it's actually a more similar situation to now. Bitter team-mate rivalry and all! In 2007 Hamilton led Alonso by 12 points with 2 races to go - more than 1 win, proportionally 1.5x bigger than Rosberg's lead over Hamilton now. That lead reduced to zero in the last 2 races.
Yeah but unfortunately McLaren weren't as dominant as Mercedes were then.
I think that RBR can be super competitive in Brazil though. It's going to be interesting to see what happens there. Lewis's only realistic chance is interference from RBR, a mistake from Rosberg or a mechanical failure.
It's true, it's a lot easier for a Mercedes driver to have a bad weekend and still finish 2nd or 3rd now. Certainly we won't see a Williams and 2 Saubers getting between them as happened to the two McLarens in the last race of 2007. But their superior car won't save them from a moment of ill luck or judgment like Hamilton's ignominious end in the pit lane gravel trap in China 2007. I don't think this championship is over yet.
I knew there was a gearbox problem in Brasil, l somehow thought it resulted in a DNF for some unknown reason. But l should have googled like everyone else. My point was the gearbox problem was the main reason that Hamilton missed out on winning the driver's title in his rookie year. If he had finish 4th behind Alonso, he would done enough to win the title which Raikonnen won by a sole point ahead for Hamilton who also finished by one single place ahead of Alonso in the championship.
Brasil has not been a great hunting ground for Hamilton for various reasons. But he has a great opportunity to set things straight this year. It has been all too easy for Rosberg, hence l would hope it properly goes to the wire. I read somewhere that Rosberg would be a lucky champion if he pulls it off. With what we have seen this year, most drivers on the grid would have won it with those sort of luck in a Mercedes car. That said, you still have to cross the line to win and Rosberg did alot of that to put himself in poll position for the driver's title of 2016. I cannot begrudge him his speed and calm head that has seen him through. Especially after blowing an earlier 43 points lead.
The fact remains that the drivers title was not seriously contested for this year. It seemed a breeze really?
The darndest thing about that DNF was (if I remember correctly) The Boss was pitting after running inters down to the cord. That was his only DNF of the season. Of course this was in the middle of a three year engine freeze, and I think each engine only had to last 2 races. Fred also had only one DNF in the sister MP4-22 when he crashed out at Fuji in the rain. Very reliable, yet simpler PU back then!
Boss and Fred both finished with 109 points. Boss was given second on the count back!Quote:
Originally Posted by Nitro'
This is it then. A critical day for the Championship and its raining..... edge of the seat stuff.
In my view the least great (I know--oxymoron) WDCs have been:
1. Keke R: Villeneuve's death, Pironi's season-ending injury, and turbo unreliability handed it to him
2. Damon Hill: never won in F3000, lucked into a Williams ride, had a dominant car and a rookie teammate in '96.
3. James Hunt: Lauda missed 2 races and still almost won.
1982?
Keke Rosberg won the championship after only having one 1 race all year and because his nearest rival in Didier Pironi got smashed up so badly in Germany that he never raced again.
1976?
James Hunt won the championship after only Niki Lauda had crashed so badly that he suffered severe burns in the fire. Niki Lauda is so hard core that he came back and drove six weeks later. Then he won the 1977 championship and after a period of retirement, won the 1984 championship as well.
1988?
Ayrton Senna literally won the championship by being worse that Prost.
Even if Nico comes third and Lewis wins the last GP, Nico Rosberg will have still won 9 Grands Prix. I think that this thread follows Betteridge's law of headlines; which says that "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'."
Will he be the least deserving champion of all time? No.