Is Mercedes fixing the 2016 driver chamionship

[jens]

Occasionally these kind of things have happened that one driver in a team gets a lion's share of technical problems. Also if you flip a coin, there is a mathematical chance that you only get either heads or tails for a while.

Rosberg hasn't had a car-related DNF so far this year yet. Maybe it is bound to happen? Or maybe not. I remember back in 2010 I was expecting all season long for Webber to have technical problems (while Vettel had several of these), but this never happened... lol.

[The Black Knight]

Yes, Hamilton has had the easiest lift to the top of any driver in F1 history so he's the last guy who has any excuse to be cry baby. He's 31 now so maybe it's time he moved over to Indy, Nascar or endurance racing.

There's not such thing as an easy lift to the top of F1. Every driver, no matter who it is, has endured years in the other Formula honing their craft, learning and busting their balls to get to F1, even pay drivers. Hamilton and his family started out broke and, unless Ron Dennis had spotted his talent, it may be that we would not have witnessed his skill and fantastic drive throughout the years.

An easy lift to the top is definitely not the case because there is no such thing.

[The Black Knight]

Boss is in a heap 'o trouble!

I think the Championship is Rosberg's now. I can't see Hamilton gaining back the points he needs unless Rosberg DNF's. And who could begrudge Nico the Championship with 9 race wins? I certainly couldn't. He has driven fantastically well this year and Hamilton can't just blame reliability either. It is also down to his bad starts. I think of his 7 pole positions, he has only been in the lead after the first lap in 2 of them. The amount of points he has lost through to his inability to get off the grid well has cost him nearly as much points as reliability. Both him and Rosberg have the same clutch, but Rosberg's starts have been far better than Hamilton's throughout the year so there is a way to get on top of it, it's just that Hamilton hasn't been able to. These subtle differences can be the difference between a WDC and not. Maybe if Hamilton spent a little more time with his engineers working on these issues he would be on top of it by now rather than flying all over the world and into Rihanna's pants between races.

[Nitrodaze]

Rosberg has the best chance ever since his 43 points lead at the start of the season. But you know what? There are still four races to go, anything is possible. The next two races would determine if the championship is irretrievably Rosberg's.

Hamilton has made too many mistakes in the midst of some very unusual bad lucks. He needed his A game at every races when his car was working well to keep his chances alive. So far, he has failed to maximize his rare opportunities. He may lose this title mainly due to car problems, but he has also not helped himself enough to get out of the rot.

That said, it is not over till the fat lady sings.

[Mifune]

I think if you want to be politically correct you would say it is pure bad luck. You may also say it is unthinkable that Mercedes would give a win that is in the bag to rival Redbull with the aim of favoring Rosberg over Hamilton. But if you look at the statistics coldly, you have to say the statistics do not align with the politically correct view.

The cold facts are that Mercedes have the first pick of the engines before allocating engines to customer teams. And the engine in the Hamilton car was a new engine that has done only three races. Based on these facts, you would expect reliability issues to be with customer team as opposed to the Mercedes reigning world champion who you would expect to have the very best choice of the parts.

Also, this pattern seem to be similar to what happened in 2014. Would you believe that the Mercedes engine is crap enough to fail so frequently? That is very hard to believe. It then comes down to whether the engine is being fitted properly unto the car? Now that is very possible and conceivable. Then there is the question of whether it is due to driving style? Based on the pace of Hamilton when the failure occurred, it is looking very unlikely.

This situation begins to make one think, how would a team bring about a championship outcome of their choice against a stronger driver? If they have that aim, this would be just the way they would go about it. But there are questions like how really would they make an engine fail during the race without leaving a trace in any computer logs? You have to remember that a gearbox failure cheated Hamilton of his first championship title in his first season in 2007.

What do you think guys and gals, is Mercedes fixing the driver championship?

Jesus.... no wonder this forums dead...
Congrats to Ioan, Garry, dj_bytedisaster et al for turning this place into a toilet and not even having the common decency to hang around and wallow in the offal.

[Bagwan]

Jesus.... no wonder this forums dead...
Congrats to Ioan, Garry, dj_bytedisaster et al for turning this place into a toilet and not even having the common decency to hang around and wallow in the offal.

Aren't you just the happy little fellow today ?

Perhaps you could contribute to the conversation rather than burn the whole idea .

[Bagwan]

Maybe the question should be : Is Mercedes fixing the clutch ?

What exactly is the deal with a clutch that is too difficult for the drivers to both master ?

[Mia 01]

True Bagwan, but the question should be how easy it should be. A tricky one.

[Bagwan]

True Bagwan, but the question should be how easy it should be. A tricky one.

Well , I guess it has spiced up the championship to a degree , having been a little harder for Lewis to master , it seems .

It has cost the team , and both drivers a lot of points .
And , it doesn't seem that any of the other teams are having such a tricky time of it , so it begs wonder just why they are so fragile on that account .

The only benefit I can see for the team is that it does , on occasion , separate the two of them for the race , but I can't imagine that being enough to drop the fixing of it down the priority list .

It's strange to see this still an issue so late in the year , especially .

[N4D13]

Even so, how many terrible starts have the Mercedes drivers had so far? I can only think of Italy and Japan, and the former was caused by overheating whereas the last one was a driver error. It doesn't really look like they have massive issues either.

I'd also challenge the point that Mercedes isn't having the same issues, as I can recall Ricciardo and Verstappen also losing quite a few places on starts, most notably when Max's poor start in Singapore caused Hülkenberg's accident. So it doesn't look like it's a Merc issue alone.