Mercedes AMG Petronas

For the second Formula One race in succession, Nico Rosberg has ruined our fun.

You may, over the last two weeks, have heard about that business in the Belgian Grand Prix, in which the German tried a little too hard to pass Lewis Hamilton on the second lap and ended up puncturing his Mercedes teammate's tyre. 

The result? 

Hamilton's race was finished before it had even begun—although he did continue to circulate the Spa-Francorchamps circuit for another 36 laps before calling it a day—and Rosberg's, too, was compromised for a time, although he recovered to finish a close second to Daniel Ricciardo.

DRAMA! @nico_rosberg brakes too late into turn 1 and is forced to take the exit road. @LewisHamilton takes full advantage and goes P1! #F1

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) September 7, 2014

This weekend's Italian Grand Prix, then, was set to mark the resumption of battle between the Mercedes drivers.

With both Hamilton and Rosberg starting from the front row of the grid at Monza, the romantics and optimists among us were hoping for an even, hard and fair scrap between the title protagonists, similar to that wonderful contest between the pair in the Bahrain Grand Prix back in April.

Let's face it—the only reason why the 2014 campaign continues to carry such intrigue is the lasting inter-team fight between the Silver Arrows' duo.

When the sport's onlookers sit in front of their televisions on a Sunday afternoon, they want twists. They want turns.

They want drama.

And it seemed as if drama was on its way at the beginning of the second stint as Hamilton, recovering from a poor start, found himself gaining on Rosberg, the race leader.

Rosberg, however, out-braked himself for the second time in the race at the first chicane on Lap 29 and was forced to take a detour down the escape road, effectively giving Hamilton a free pass.

Yet it wasn't just the limp fashion in which he relinquished the lead to his teammate which marked the Italian Grand Prix down as a bad day at the office for the German.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjvSsxw3ADU

Even in the early stages of the race—when he was pulling away from Kevin Magnussen, Felipe Massa and Hamilton—and even though he led over half of the grand prix, Rosberg never looked comfortable at the front of the field.

The Nico Rosberg who controlled races with great assurance and expertise to win in Australia, Monaco, Austria and Germany was, for Monza, replaced with the Nico Rosberg who struggled, huffed and puffed his way to second-place finishes in Malaysia, China and Spain.

On his mistake, the 29-year-old told Jonathan Noble and Matt Beer of Autosport:

Lewis was just quick coming from behind so I needed to up my pace as a result and I just went into a mistake—it was very bad.

And that lost me the lead in the end, so it's definitely very disappointing from that point of view.

Monza is one of the most difficult tracks for braking because of the low downforce and the highest speed of the year.

It isn't an excuse, it is what it is.

It is one of the challenges here and unfortunately I got it wrong two times in the race.

Although Hamilton enjoyed one of those rare weekends which see him completely focused, allowing him to blow the opposition away—he finished top of all but one of the five timed sessions at Monza and set the fastest lap of the race, according to the official Formula One website—Rosberg's failure to contain his teammate will surely be concerning ahead of the six-race run to the end of the season. 

The German's admission that he made an error in the knowledge that Hamilton was rapidly gaining is at odds with Rosberg's image as a shrewd, calm and collected operator, suggesting that the tension of the title battle—despite his relatively comfortable 29-point lead going into the Italian Grand Prix—is beginning to take its toll.

Both of his off-track excursions, on Lap 9 and the decisive moment of the race on Lap 29, carried the air of a man who was just waiting to be overtaken. 

The dominance of the Mercedes cars over the rest of the field this season means that whenever either driver finds himself held up traffic, it is generally a matter of time until he returns to a promising position and begins to exert pressure on his teammate.

We saw it when Hamilton, despite starting from ninth, found himself challenging Rosberg for victory in the Austrian Grand Prix. And we saw it in the following race at Silverstone, where the British driver triumphed after qualifying sixth.

Rosberg, if anything, was guilty of paying too much attention to the progress of Hamilton at Monza.

It is a common trap that title protagonists—first-time title protagonists, in particular—fall into.

They can develop an obsession with the numbers game, become torn between defence and attack and start to drive unnaturally.

After a draining couple of weekends in Belgium and Italy, Rosberg would be well advised to spend the buildup to the Singapore Grand Prix rediscovering both his groove behind the wheel and some perspective in the title race.

The ability to think was always regarded as the main thing that could see Rosberg deny Hamilton the crown—but it could also lead to him damaging his own chances between now and the season finale.

It took seven grand prix weekends and almost four months, but Lewis Hamilton has finally secured pole position for a Formula One event.

The British driver will start Sunday's Italian Grand Prix from the No. 1 grid slot, alongside his Mercedes teammate and championship rival, Nico Rosberg, who qualified over two tenths of a second adrift of Hamilton, according to the official Formula One website.

For the first time since qualifying for May's Spanish Grand Prix, Hamilton enjoyed a trouble-free Saturday.

There were no poorly-timed yellow flags. There were no frustrating lock-ups or spins under braking. 

There were no instinctual judgement calls to be made on track conditions.

No failed, or glazed, brakes. And there were no flames bellowing from the rear of his Mercedes.

At the Autodromo di Monza, it was Hamilton, rather than his car, on fire.

He required only one truly gung-ho effort, in contrast to Rosberg's two flying laps in Q3, to take pole—which almost makes you wonder what all the fuss was about between Spain, the fifth round of the 2014 season, and Belgium, the 12th event of the campaign.

Good job by Hamilton for first pole in nearly four months. Rosberg, without any morning running, did well to get within three tenths.

— Daniel Johnson (@danielt_johnson) September 6, 2014

Hamilton has stopped the flow of pole positions, preventing Rosberg from taking his fifth successive pole, and will now look to start the erosion of the German's 29-point lead in the drivers' standings as he seeks his second world title.

Despite the dominance enjoyed by Mercedes this year, it may come as a surprise that the Italian Grand Prix will be only the seventh occasion in 13 races that both Hamilton and Rosberg will start from the front row of the grid.

And after last month's Belgian Grand Prix, which saw Rosberg controversially puncture Hamilton's rear-left tyre at Les Combes on the second lap in a half-hearted overtaking manoeuvre, the start of the Italian Grand Prix promises to be the most compelling for some time.

A statement released by Mercedes in the aftermath of the grand prix at Spa-Francorchamps confirmed that "another such incident will not be tolerated," meaning all eyes will, of course, be on the Silver Arrows drivers as the five red lights go out on Monza's home straight. 

Hamilton and Rosberg will be faced with a fascinating psychological dilemma as they pull away from their respective grid slots and accelerate towards the first chicane.

And with the run from the start line to the first braking zone at Monza among the longest on the calendar, there will be plenty of time for both title protagonists to think, to think again and to think some more before acting either offensively or cautiously.

For Hamilton, the choice is simple.

Aggression is the only way he has ever known and, as the pole-sitter—and as long as he gets a satisfactory start—he arguably has the right to be as attacking as he pleases in the opening stages of the race.

The 29-year-old's main focus, you suspect, will be on building an early gap between his car and Rosberg's to evade the threat of DRS and therefore work himself in a comfortable position to control the grand prix.

However, the prospect of backing his teammate into the pack containing Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa—the hungry, chasing Williams drivers who will start from third and fourth respectively—might be too good to turn down, particularly on the first sector of the opening lap.

The challenge facing Rosberg, meanwhile, is much more complicated and will be a true test of his status as Formula One's "thinking driver."

The natural urge of a racing driver is to attack, to prove that you're the best on every single occasion that you step into a car.

But Rosberg has rarely been the type of man to act on impulse, despite Hamilton being quoted by Crash.net as claiming that his teammate hit him "to prove a point" at Spa.

That, as well as Mercedes' official website confirming that "suitable disciplinary measures" were taken against Rosberg after the Belgian Grand Prix, would suggest that the German will take a conservative approach at Monza.

Although, with a large points advantage in his favour, Rosberg can afford to sit behind Hamilton, but even a tentative start carries an element of risk.

Sebastian Vettel, who will relinquish his crown to one of the Mercedes drivers in the coming months, discovered that the hard way in the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix, where—with the world championship on the line—he dropped from fourth to seventh in the very first corner alone before being hit at Turn Four. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhb6RbGapmw

And with Bottas and Massa likely to identify the first lap as the prime, if not the only, opportunity to pass at least one of the Mercedes cars, Rosberg—who has had trouble getting off the line in various races this season—could find himself swarmed by his team's closest rivals.

Furthermore, Massa and Kevin Magnussen, who will start from fifth on the grid, have made a habit of colliding with their peers in the early stages of grands prix in 2014.

Massa retired on the first laps of the Australian, British and German grands prix, and was fortunate to emerge unscathed from a clash with Fernando Alonso in China, while Magnussen played a role in the Brazilian's spectacular barrel roll at Hockenheim, with the Dane also hitting Kimi Raikkonen in Malaysia and Bahrain. 

Rosberg, in a sense, could be damned if he does attack Hamilton and damned if he doesn't.

And Hamilton? Well, he has nothing to lose.

The first corner of the Italian Grand Prix will reveal more about the post-Spa states of both Mercedes drivers than any PR waffle ever could.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg's collision during the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix provoked a huge reaction from fans and the media.

Mercedes reacted by fining Rosberg, and the German apologised to both the team and Hamilton. But both were relatively empty gestures and won't have placated Hamilton one little bit.

Their relationship now looks beyond repair.

The two men will spend the rest of the season locked in battle, not only for the title but for the hearts and minds of those within their Mercedes team.

Luck and physical ability will play a key part, but the mental state of a driver is perhaps more important than both.

Rosberg will most likely take heart from the aftermath of the Spa incident. Whether deliberate or not, it was clearly an avoidable accident and clearly the German's fault.

The secondary steering movement—seen here in a still image and here on Sky Sports' website (UK users only)—he made that brought him into contact with Hamilton's wheel was unusual to say the least and was always likely to cause a collision.

But he got away with it entirely. The FIA did not look into it, and Mercedes doled out nothing more than what the Daily Mail reported as a six-figure fine.

Whether at the high- or low-end of six figures, it won't have bothered multi-millionaire Rosberg at all. He may feel that he could do it again and suffer no consequences.

He also got away with the qualifying incident in Monaco—an action which, per The Guardian's Paul Weaver, the majority of people inside the F1 paddock believe was deliberate.

Having twice come out badly from what he saw as dirty tricks, Hamilton's mental state may be negatively affected. He feels that he has on two occasions been cheated by Rosberg, and received no justice on either occasion.

In the past he has displayed something of a "victim complex"—most notably at Monaco in 2011. If he feels the world, and perhaps even his own team is against him, it's unlikely to have a positive impact on his driving.

An alternative is that having these two incidents on his record may work against Rosberg. He could feel that he is skating on thin ice, and that any future transgression will be pounced on and harshly punished.

Hamilton may feel the same way, and therefore the "freer" of the two.

But it's more likely this factor will swing things in Rosberg's favour.

Rosberg's 29-point championship lead will also play a major role.

On the surface, there's no way to look at this other than as an advantage for Nico.

With 25 points available for a win, he knows he can fail to score in Italy—for any reason—and retain the championship lead regardless of what Hamilton does.

But such a large points lead brings with it the pressure of knowing the title is now his to lose. Rosberg has never been in this situation so late in the season before with a world title at stake—but did have a similarly large lead after the opening race of the season.

Hamilton closed that gap with four straight wins. That streak—and the knowledge it could easily happen again—surely plays on Rosberg's mind.

As will the fact that the lead only exists because Hamilton has lost so many points due to problems beyond his control.

Hamilton knows this, too. He has, over the course of the season, performed at a slightly higher level in the races (if not in qualifying). Were it not for multiple mechanical failures and the Spa puncture, he would not be 29 points in arrears.

In addition, per ESPN, he has said in the past that he would rather be the chaser than the chased, so being in his current position may prove advantageous.

Especially with double points at the final race.

On the other side of the coin, he also knows that he can't really afford any more errors, failures or inconvenient punctures. This will almost certainly remain in the back of his mind every time he goes out on the track.

There are positives and negatives for each driver here and each may feel he has the edge.

But perhaps the most important factor in the psychological battle will be how each driver feels toward those closest to him—the Mercedes team.

Rosberg recently signed a multi-year contract extension to remain with the German squad. Sky Sports reported the deal is thought to run until the end of 2017.

The team know he's going to be around a while, and Rosberg can feel secure in the knowledge that he has a top-level drive for at least three more seasons.

The same can't be said for Hamilton.

His current deal expires at the end of next year, but discussions over an extension have been meandering around for a while and gone precisely nowhere.

In July, The Express reported a deal was close—but last week, team boss Toto Wolff told Autosport talks were on hold until the end of the year.

Officially the reason is that neither side wants discussions to take their attention away from the title fight, but could it be that one or both is getting cold feet?

Do Mercedes really want to commit to three more years of bitter rivalry between Hamilton and Rosberg—and does Hamilton really want it to carry on with a team-mate he can no longer trust?

It is, of course, possible that Rosberg could be shown the door despite having a contract, but that would be both expensive for Mercedes and terrible for public relations in Germany.

That isn't going to happen—advantage Nico here, too.

The only safe conclusion is that Rosberg will head into the Italian Grand Prix in a more relaxed, confident frame of mind. The championship lead and security that his contract provides will see to that.

And he certainly won't be losing any sleep over the wrist-slap fine from Mercedes.

Hamilton, considered the more emotional and erratic of the pair, is at a disadvantage. He feels wronged and cheated, and his frustration over the way the season is going is unlikely to work in his favour.

If he can come out on top at Monza, the pendulum will swing his way.

But for now, the edge lies with Rosberg.

It may seem like the Nico Rosberg-Lewis Hamilton incident from last weekend's Belgian Grand Prix has already been dragging on forever, but the fallout will not fully be felt until the end of the season, and possibly beyond.

Rosberg issued an apology on Friday after meeting with Hamilton and Mercedes executive directors Paddy Lowe and Toto Wolff. But an apology does not give Hamilton or the team back the 25 points they potentially lost due to Rosberg's mistake, especially when the apology seems forced.

If Rosberg actually wanted to apologize for puncturing Hamilton's tyre, he did not need to wait nearly a week to do so. Whether it is true or not, it looks like he only apologized because the team told him to.

Of course, there is a difference between making a mistake and deliberately crashing into someone and, despite Hamilton's comments to the contrary, I believe Rosberg is guilty only of the former.

He saw a small opening and went for it, perhaps thinking Hamilton would give him more space than he did (remember, both drivers made their decisions in a few tenths of a second at 200 kilometres per hour, not after watching a slow-motion, HD replay of the incident 20 times from a variety of angles).

Hamilton also released a statement following the Friday meeting, saying that, "Nico and I accept that we have both made mistakes," hinting that perhaps he is not entirely blameless. 

BBC commentator David Coulthard—who has raced in about 247 more grands prix than me and most of the people reading this, combined—wrote in his column for The Telegraph: "Even if the contact was clumsy more than anything else, there was an element of stubbornness to what Nico did. ... Of course, this collision will make some review what happened in Monaco qualifying, but for now I do not think Nico showed any malice in what he did."

After the race in Spa, Hamilton told reporters that Rosberg "basically said he did it on purpose. ... He said he could have avoided it, but he didn't want to," per the BBC's Andrew Benson.

Rosberg denied Hamilton's paraphrasing the next day in his video blog, saying, "My view of the events are [sic] very different."

However, in Friday's apology, posted on his Facebook page, Rosberg wrote: "It was an error of judgement on my part."

But Hamilton is still at a significant disadvantage thanks to the outcome of the contact in Belgium, as Rosberg now leads the championship by 29 points. When Rosberg grabbed a 25-point advantage after the first race of the season, it took Hamilton four races—winning all of them—to reclaim the lead.

If Rosberg continues his near-bulletproof reliability (he has only one DNF this season), a 29-point gap looks more like a canyon.

After Spa, Wolff indicated that Rosberg would be punished, telling the media, "If Lewis has said that it's going to be a slap on the wrist, and that there's going to be no consequence, then he's not aware of what consequences we can implement," per Autosport's Jonathan Noble.

In a statement following the meeting on Friday, the Mercedes team said: "Suitable disciplinary measures have been taken for the incident," without offering any further details. It is likely that Rosberg was fined, but the money will be irrelevant to Rosberg if he wins the title.

In the end, it is a catch-22 for the team. They want to win both the Constructors' and Drivers' Championships, and any punishment that would hamper Rosberg on the track could also hamper both of those goals.

At least, as the Mercedes statement indicated, the drivers "remain free to race" for the title, although they were warned at the same time that "another such incident will not be tolerated."

But what happens if, next time, it is Hamilton who knocks Rosberg out of the race? Would Hamilton be punished more harshly than Rosberg has been, or would there be a tit-for-tat understanding?

Rosberg's apology rings hollow, but Hamilton still has seven races to provide a response on the track. 

Going into the next race in Italy, Hamilton must still feel that he has been wronged—and those feelings are completely valid. But the team has done the best they can in very difficult circumstances. Mercedes, contrary to expectations, have publicly committed to not issuing team orders, which would deprive the fans of the only real drama left in this year's championship.

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For the second season in succession, the podium ceremony of a Belgian Grand Prix was greeted with boos.

But this year it was Nico Rosberg, not Sebastian Vettel (for once), on the receiving end after the Mercedes driver collided with his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, on the second lap of the race.

And unlike in 2013, there was no Greenpeace protest to lighten the mood.

It is a pity that a venue as iconic, scenic and glorious as the legendary Spa Francorchamps circuit should be overcome with so much hostility.

When Formula One visits a track such as Spa, Monza and Silverstone—to name just three which have stood the test of time in the era of so-called "Tilke-dromes"—you feel as if the grand prix weekends should be celebrations of all that is good about the sport.

The drone of V6 turbo engines powering around the Ardennes Forest should have been the defining sound of the Belgian Grand Prix—not the wearying murmur of contempt.

The boo-boys, however, were not to be hushed despite the best efforts of Eddie Jordan, the podium interviewer, whose admirable pleas to the more disgruntled members of the crowd to hush actually seemed to augment rather than calm, the situation.

F1, since Vettel was noticeably denounced for the first time at the Canadian Grand Prix of 2013, has had a real problem with its handling of booing.

There are those who believe it has no place in Formula One when the drivers are supposedly risking their lives—always a popular argument of those in denial of F1's flaws—for the sake of our entertainment.

And there are those who argue that booing is now commonplace in modern sport and that fans, who pay a vast sum of money to gain access to an event, are within their rights to express their feelings.

In football, for example, a match never passes by without someone—be it a player, a manager or a referee—being booed.

Booing has even worked its way into cricket, the self-appointed "gentleman's game", with India batsman Ravindra Jadeja taking stick at Lord's, the spiritual home of the sport, during the Test series against England earlier this summer.

The link with cricket is particularly significant, with F1 holding a similarly elitist stance to the game of leather and willow.

The joy of Formula One, like cricket, is not necessarily found in the result but the spectacle, the quality on show and the nature of the competition.

And this lack of tribalism in contrast to other sports means that F1 drivers, unlike their footballing equivalents, are not conditioned to deal with being booed and are as such treated with sympathy when it does occur.

Sympathy, however, is likely to be in short supply for Rosberg after Hamilton claimed on Sunday evening that Rosberg—who had earlier told BBC Sport's Andrew Benson that the collision was merely a "racing incident"—had informed him that the crash was intentional.

The 2008 world champion told reporters, as per Crash.net:

It looked quite clear to me but we just had a meeting about it and he basically said he did it on purpose. He said he did it on purpose, he said he could have avoided it. He said, "I did it to prove a point", he basically said, "I did it to prove a point." And you don't have to just rely on me, go and ask Toto [Wolff, Mercedes' business executive director], Paddy [Lowe, the team's technical executive director] and all those guys who are not happy with him as well.

With those comments, which according to the BBC's Jennie Gow were verified by the Mercedes team, Hamilton has done a tremendous job of using the boo-boys to his full advantage.

This wasn't just the revealing of details from a post-race debrief—it was issuing propaganda, inviting fans to take sides, plant their flags and set up camp for the remaining seven races and beyond.

A vote for Hamilton is a vote for clean, spirited racing; a vote for Rosberg is a vote for unashamed deviance.

Rosberg and Hamilton were always known to have alternative styles of racing—but this development almost made it, regardless of what the former said, become a case of differing principles.

Formula One, like most sports, is at its best when its competitors are evenly-matched, fighting head-to-head for victory at the very top.

The sheer dominance of the Mercedes team over the rest of the field means the inter-team battle between Rosberg and Hamilton, the two title protagonists, has been the only thing for fans to cling on to in 2014 in terms of true, intense competition.

And at the very moment that Rosberg's clumsily-placed front wing deflated Hamilton's rear-left tyre at Les Combes, that sense of competition—and the prospect of a repeat of the mouthwatering battles which defined April's Bahrain Grand Prix—was lost. 

From that perspective, Rosberg deserved to be booed on Sunday afternoon—and after Hamilton's unhelpful claims, it's something he'll have to very quickly get used to.

This had been coming.

Since the third race of the 2014 Formula One season, the Bahrain Grand Prix, it has been a question of when, not if, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg would come to blows.

Only millimetres separated the two Mercedes cars in the Sakhir desert, with Rosberg and Hamilton racing in close proximity in Spain, Monaco, Austria and Hungary.

It was clear that, one day, their Silver Arrows would get far too close for comfort.

That day arrived on race day at the Belgian Grand Prix.

It took only two laps into the second half of the campaign for the Mercedes drivers to tangle as Rosberg sniffed around the outside of Hamilton's car at Spa's Les Combes corner.

The German, attempting an overtaking manouevre bereft of conviction, paid for his clumsiness with the partial loss of his front wing, while Hamilton was left with a puncture.

With a broken front wing much easier to manage than a flat tyre, Rosberg recovered to finish second—in a race he perhaps should have won despite the funny business—while Hamilton continued to circulate before retiring on the 38th of 44 laps, according to the official Formula One website.

If the choice had been his, however, the 2008 world champion would have parked the car and got out of there as early as Lap 20 when he was recorded by the official FIA television broadcast as encouraging his colleagues, via team radio, to retire in order to conserve his car ahead of the remaining seven grands prix.

It was completely out of character for Hamilton, whose boyish enthusiasm to go racing has in the past—most notably in the Korean Grand Prix of 2010 (heard at the 10:30-mark here)—seen him urge F1 officials to call in the safety car in dangerously wet conditions.

Hamilton, perhaps more than any other driver on the grid, is smitten with the idea of driving a racing car.

He has an exclusive relationship with the sense of speed, flattered by a yearning for competition.

Yet here he was effectively volunteering—not just willing—to withdraw from the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, the most thrilling venue of them all from a drivers' perspective, before the halfway stage.

At first glance, it appeared that Hamilton was giving up.

It was strangely understandable, with the sinking feeling of almost instantly dropping from the lead of the race to the rear of the field too much to bear for a man who has spent his entire career fighting, often with success, for major honours.

But the idea of exiting the race without a fight, especially against the backdrop of the world championship tug of war, would have been pitiful for a driver who in the previous two races, the German and Hungarian Grands Prix, had recorded excellent comeback drives.

As Hamilton's team radio requests to retire became ever more frequent and as laps ticked by with the No. 44 car making no progress, it became evident that this was no loss of heart, but a sense of frustration.

The 29-year-old would go on to tell ESPN F1:

It's not a giving up thing. I lost at least 40-50 points of downforce, which is a lot. I couldn't even take Eau Rouge flat, for example. I could do nothing. I was driving the a--e off the car and the thing was all over the place.

I couldn't even catch Romain Grosjean. It didn't even matter if the safety car came out, I wouldn't have been able to pass. [Adrian] Sutil was pulling away from me. I burnt up an engine in the last race. I already have one less engine than Nico.

Reliability has played a large role in Hamilton's season and is arguably the main reason why he trails Rosberg in the drivers' standings despite having one extra win to his name.

While Rosberg has only suffered one major technical problem—a race-ending gearbox issue at Silverstone last month—Hamilton has retired from races in Australia and Canada with car-related troubles, which have also hindered his progress in the last three qualifying sessions.

With reliability becoming an issue for Mercedes as the season progresses, in contrast to Renault and Ferrari-powered teams who got their failures out of the way early on, it is plausible that the title race could come down to who finishes the most races rather than who wins the most.

According to the FIA's component information, Hamilton has used three of each of the six power unit elements, with penalties set to be handed out to drivers who use more than five of any single component, according to the official F1 website.

With the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the next round of the calendar, historically stressful on engines, and with the modern power trains playing a larger role in slowing the car than ever before—which will be particularly useful on tracks such as the Singapore street circuit—it is imperative that teams and drivers take advantage of every opportunity to soothe their cars. 

And with Hamilton understandably paranoid over the reliability of his W05 after recent races, it was common sense for Mercedes to retire the car—and put their driver out of his misery.

With just 11 points separating Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton at the top of the drivers' standings going into the Belgian Grand Prix, this weekend was about more than the resumption of the Formula One season.

Eleven points, after all—in an era when 25 are handed out for a race victory—counts for nothing when there are eight grands prix remaining and 200 more points to play for.

The four winners' trophies collected by Rosberg, the championship leader, and the five claimed by Hamilton prior to the month-long summer break were all pleasant additions to their respective trophy cabinets but little more than money in the bank in the grand scheme of things.

The title, with so little between the Mercedes drivers, was always bound to be won and lost in the second half of the campaign, with the final eight races representing a reset—a season within a season, if you will—rather than a conventional resumption of battle.

Among the benefits of such a finely poised championship battle, for both Hamilton and Rosberg, who have been just as evenly matched in their struggles as they have been in their brilliance, is that any mistakes made in the opening 11 races were rendered irrelevant.

And with a four-week gap between the Hungarian and Belgian grands prix, they have had plenty of time to identify and work on eradicating any weaknesses in their performances which have prevented them from operating at their best and have therefore stopped them from having a tighter grip on the crown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF8TyzdM6J8

For Hamilton, the Achilles' heel—particularly in recent months—has undoubtedly been in qualifying.

Since the 29-year-old's last pole position in the Spanish Grand Prix almost four months ago, every qualifying session for the No. 44 Mercedes has been marred by a problem of some sort.

And although his eliminations from Saturday sessions in Germany and Hungary, where he suffered technical issues, were out of his control, he did himself few favours in qualifying in Canada, Austria and Britain.

The latest disappointment in a worrying trend for the 2008 world champion, of course, came at a damp Spa, where he—after looking comfortable in both Q1 and Q2—ran wide at the La Source hairpin on his first run in Q3 before repeating the trick on his second attempt and dipping a wheel on the grassy exit of the Stavelot corner for good measure.

The former McLaren driver claimed that a braking niggle was at the root of his failure to beat Rosberg, telling Jonathan Noble and Pablo Elizalde of Autosport:

This is a circuit where you have to have confidence in the brakes. You could see in Q3 when I was going straight on as the left brake wasn't working for some reason, I don't know why.

It went into glazing. When it glazes it is very hard to recover, you have to put the brake balance forward. It's not that easy to clear it.

I am not disappointed today. If you look previous years P2 is best place to start here. I started from pole here last year and got overtaken by [Sebastian] Vettel.

I think it gives you the most opportunity at the start—I am happy to be up there.

Despite securing his first front row start since the Canadian Grand Prix and finishing second to Rosberg, the pole-sitter, by a margin of just three tenths of a second, according to the official F1 website, Hamilton, out-qualified by the German for the seventh consecutive event, has once again failed to extract the most from what is comfortably the best car on the grid.

He is arguably the fastest driver on the grid in terms of one-lap pace. He is a qualified specialist in wet weather conditions. And at Spa, a true drivers' circuit, his position as an elite racer should be clearer than most other venues on the Formula One calendar.

Yet he cannot seem to string that one, perfect lap together.

The regularity of his failures in qualifying means it is no longer surprising when he overcooks a corner or takes an off-track detour. And if it has become predictable for the sport's onlookers, just imagine how it must feel within the cockpit.

The experience of driving a Formula One car requires a driver to live on his instincts in normal circumstances, but that translates to hypersensitivity when there are doubts present in his mind.

An expectancy that something, somehow, will go wrong is no way to approach a situation as highly pressurised as a qualifying session—where one lap is all that counts—and it means a driver is likely to perform with increased levels of tension and will therefore be unable to compete at his best regardless.

At times, you suspect that Hamilton is almost waiting for the front end to suddenly lose its bite, the rear end to catch him out or to look in the mirrors and see plumes of smoke.

It is a vicious circle and must have a huge effect on the confidence of Hamilton, among the more emotional and self-critical drivers on the grid.

Hamilton, clearly, still stands a tremendous chance of adding to his tally of wins, but any victory at Spa, like his win from sixth on the grid at Silverstone last month, will only conceal more pressing concerns.

The Belgian Grand Prix weekend has marked something of a fresh start in the 2014 Formula One season, but some things, it seems, have stayed the same.

Mercedes and Force India are at opposite ends of the Formula One grid in terms of the size of their budgets. This season, however, both teams are getting an excellent return on their investments.

The other thing those two teams have in common, of course, is Mercedes power.

In fact, four of the top five teams in our efficiency ranking—which calculates the amount of money each team spends per Constructors' point scored—are using Mercedes power units.

For the smaller teams—Force India and Williams—topping this list may not be due to efficiency so much as luck, then. They just happened to have the right engine supply partner this year. In Williams' case, the team's switch from Renault at the end of last season seems particularly prescient.

At the other end of the spectrum, Caterham and Sauber have yet to score this season. Marussia, despite getting their first-ever points in Monaco, are also near the bottom of the rankings. And Lotus, who finished last year's ranking in second place, just behind Red Bull, round out the bottom four.

Here is this year's mid-season ranking:

Team	Budget (millions of £)	Points	£ (millions) per point
Mercedes	240	393	0.61
Force India	60	98	0.61
Williams	120	135	0.89
Red Bull	340	219	1.55
McLaren	184	97	1.90
Ferrari	328	142	2.31
Toro Rosso	64	17	3.76
Lotus	128	8	16.00
Marussia	48	2	24.00
Caterham	56	0	–
Sauber	68	0	–

Although they are second in the championship by a large margin, Red Bull trail the three Merc-powered teams here. With a budget more than five times that of Force India, the Bulls have managed just over twice as many points.

Meanwhile, the second-largest budget in the sport is not doing Ferrari any good, either. Yes, they would probably have more points if Kimi Raikkonen had not struggled so much through the first half of the season, but the fact is that the Scuderia has once again failed to produce a front-of-the-grid challenger.

Team principal Stefano Domenicali fell on his sword in April, once it was clear this would be Ferrari's sixth straight season without a title. His replacement, Marco Mattiacci, has been making changes and Fernando Alonso nearly grabbed the team's first victory of the season in Hungary, but a complete turnaround will take time.

The other Italian team, Toro Rosso, has a budget half the size of that of Lotus, but they have outscored the Enstone outfit 17-8. Both teams are using Renault power units, so Lotus cannot use that as an excuse. Some of the difference is probably down to driver quality.

Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne has been a steady, if unspectacular, performer for three years, and Daniil Kvyat has the potential to be a future star. Lotus has Romain Grosjean, who had a strong finish to the 2013 season, and Pastor Maldonado, who is having trouble going more than a single race without crashing into someone or something.

Marussia are last in the ranking among the teams that have scored points, but that will not bother the boys and girls from Banbury. Their two points are potentially worth millions of pounds if they stay ahead of Caterham and Sauber.

Back closer to the top of the rankings, despite McLaren's ongoing struggles, they compare well with Red Bull and Ferrari in terms of how much they are spending per point.

However, they are well behind the other three Mercedes-powered teams. In particular, McLaren must be disappointed to be stuck behind Williams and Force India—in these rankings and in the Constructors' Championship—even with a much larger budget.

With eight races remaining, the battle for the Constructors' title may be over, but there is still time for some movement in the efficiency rankings. Red Bull, for example, have come on strongly recently, winning two of the last five grands prix.

Not that this will be any consolation for the teams chasing Mercedes, though. No one wants to spend £200 million to come second (or worse), no matter how efficiently they spend that money.

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