Quote Originally Posted by Duncan View Post
Interesting thought. IIRC Toto stated that this will not influence contract negotiations with Nico, but how could it not? At some point, the situation with these two drivers becomes untenable, and you have to fix it. Lewis is already under contract, but Nico is not. If I'm Mercedes, that's how you fix the problem.

Possible paths for Mercedes at this point:

1. Re-sign Nico, hope that Lewis and Nico sort themselves out. Best of luck...

2. Don't re-sign Nico, replace him with Pascal. Pros: keeps young blood in the team, Pascal looks like an exciting and competent young driver, counterbalance excitement at Red Bull with Max. Also, he's German. Cons: frying pan, fire. etc. Pascal seems smart and mature, but he's ambitious. Depending on how things work out, you could still have fireworks.

3. Don't re-sign Nico, replace him with Rio Haryanto. Probably won't reduce the number of crashes, but at least they won't be crashing into each other.

4. Release Lewis from his contract, possibly in negotiation with another major team, replace him with...? Pascal, as above, gives you an all-German team. Maybe that has some value, but doesn't necessarily solve your problem, same as above.

I dunno, but option 2 looks the best available to me.
There is the other option of having a clear number one and number two driver line up. Rosberg has messed up right in the middle of contract negotiations, he is now very much on the back foot. He may well end up a number two driver if he wants to stay with the team.