It is today up in the news that Lewis Hamilton has been beaten by Nico Rosberg. Nico Rosberg beat Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to win the season-finishing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The triumph was the German’s third in succession, giving him a help in front of 2016 after Hamilton won the title a month ago with three races still to go. Hamilton attempted an off-set race methodology trying to beat his team-mate however Rosberg had adequate pace close by. Kimi Raikkonen completed third, his Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel taking fourth from fifteenth on the lattice. The outcome effectively secured the Finn fourth place in the championship behind Hamilton, Rosberg and Vettel after Raikkonen began the race a point behind his comrade Valtteri Bottas of Williams. Hamilton had been resolved coming into this last race to attempt to beat Rosberg and stop the German’s keep running of five continuous posts and two wins.
Be that as it may, exploring different avenues regarding the car’s set-up and tweaking a part of the suspension before qualifying reverse discharges and Rosberg beat him to shaft by over 0.3 seconds. Rosberg developed a five-second lead before his first pit stop on lap 10 yet Hamilton returned at him in the second stretch, shutting the hole to a little more than a second prior to Rosberg’s second stop on lap 31 of 55. Hamilton then moved the ivories – he and designer Peter Bonnington chose to postpone his second stop to empower him to run harder for a shorter separation on his last arrangement of tires. The choice depended on Hamilton’s powerlessness to pass Rosberg when taking after firmly behind in the past two races in Mexico and Brazil. The thought was to permit Hamilton to have fresher tires than Rosberg for the end laps and hence have a superior opportunity to overwhelm.
Hamilton asked Bonnington before his last stop whether it was worth doing whatever it takes not to stop again and hold off Rosberg on the off chance that he got him. In any case, he was let it know was a “bet that I promise would not pay off”. Hamilton made his last stop on lap 41, and rejoined 11.5 seconds behind his team-mate with 14 laps to go.
Hamilton said: “In hindsight, once Nico pitted I probably would have backed off and made the tyres go a lot longer. The tyres were fine at the end and I think I could have made them last. Going long was probably not the best thing to do but we gave it a try and I did the best I could.”
