With Rosberg in third place overall — 73 points behind Formula One leader and teammate Hamilton — with four races remaining, Mercedes still have a battle on their hands to end the season with their drivers one-two in the championship. PHOTO: AFP
The champions have suffered three retirements in four races and the throttle failure that sidelined Nico Rosberg in Russia on Sunday took the gloss off another triumphant afternoon for the team.
With Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel leapfrogging Rosberg into second place overall with four races remaining, 66 points behind Hamilton, Mercedes still have a battle on their hands to end the season with their drivers one-two in the championship.
Read: Russian Grand Prix Hamilton commands Sochi track as Rosberg retires
Hamilton can wrap up his second successive crown in Austin, Texas, in two weeks’ time — perfect timing in a major market for the car company — but reliability could still throw a spanner in the works.
“There is generally speaking no good luck and bad luck from my point of view,” the team’s non-executive chairman Niki Lauda told Reuters after race winner Hamilton had been congratulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin at Sochi’s Olympic Park circuit.
“Nevertheless, our reliability performance in the second half of the season went down. So we have to try to fix that and analyse why and what. This throttle issue is a brand new one...it worked perfectly for a long time so this is a surprise to everybody. But it will be fixed and will not happen again,” added the Austrian.
Read: Rosberg to lead the pack in Russian Grand Prix
Rosberg, now 73 points behind Hamilton, also retired in Italy with an engine failure while his teammate failed to score in Singapore due to a loss of boost pressure.
While Mercedes team bosses and drivers were due to thank the assembled staff at the factory at Brackley in England, and the engine side at nearby Brixworth, they will want to waste no time in addressing the other issues.
“It is a strange one. We were looking so good on reliability then to have quite a few issues; it is surprising and it has gotten worse and worse as the season progressed, especially in the last few months,” said Rosberg.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 13th, 2015.
Like Sports on Facebook, follow @ETribuneSports on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.
COMMENTS (1)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ