Hamilton’s left back tire starts to collapse as the dangerously sharp carbon fiber shards from Rosberg’s shattering front wing sickle through the elastic, everything except completion the Briton’s race as his Mercedes is gobbled up by the pursuing pack. Hamilton said, “We had a meeting about it and he basically said he did it on purpose. He said he could have avoided it, but he didn’t want to. He basically said, ‘I did it to prove a point’.”
Hamilton and Rosberg’s relationship was at that point strained before the second lap of the Belgian Grand Prix in August. Particularly after Rosberg’s qualifying botch in Monaco three weeks prior that enraged Hamilton, as the thump on impact bargained his own lap. He said, “Spa was like, ‘I’m going to turn this up. I’m going to have to turn this up. This means war’, that kind of feeling. I took that energy and turned that negative bomb into a positive.”
At the point when two sides go to war there’s dependably trouble. Be that as it may, war between two adolescence companions? Who raced together as 14-year-olds, stayed together, and longed for an existence in Formula 1 battling for the title together as team-mates… how could it get to this?
Hamilton added: “I have never laughed so much than when we were racing together. Nico was kicking everyone’s butt at that time. We had some great races together and built a great relationship.
“We were just arriving and enjoying go-karts and eating pizzas every weekend, fighting all the time and just having fun, whereas now it’s all business.”
Rosberg added: “It is amusing because there are a lot of similarities [between this year and 2000]. Every other day there are moments or things that pop up and I can smirk and think, ‘that’s exactly the same as it was 15 years ago’.”
Their contention has likewise been compared to that of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. Hamilton goes up against the part of Senna, the instinctively capable racer who went full scale for triumph, while Rosberg offers likenesses with “Educator” Prost – a man whose consistency and estimation of a circumstance brought remunerate.
“Nico is calm and polite,” said karting boss Chiesa. “He is less childlike because he is the single child in the family. Lewis is a bit more strong. He wants to play more, fight more, joke more.”
