Mercedes AMG Petronas

Nico Rosberg won the Australian Grand Prix at a canter; Lewis Hamilton retired after only two laps.

Had the Brit's car not developed a misfire, we would almost certainly have seen a Mercedes one-two. The German squad currently hold a substantial advantage over the other teams, and though it's likely others will catch up, it's possible they won't.

At the moment, the smart money is on a Mercedes driver taking the title.

But which one?

If the championship was decided on raw ability, you'd have to back Hamilton. He's unquestionably one of the best drivers on the current grid and probably has more pure pace than anyone.

He's arguably the best qualifier, he is good in the wet or dry and it's difficult to place anyone ahead of him in the overtaking stakes.

Rosberg is also one of the best drivers around, but he isn't quite on his team-mate's level. Though the gap isn't massive and on his day the German can beat anyone, if both men drive to their absolute maximum, Hamilton will come out on top.

But maximums are largely irrelevant in a championship with 19 races. No driver hits his maximum all the time. What really matters is the average—how a driver performs over the course of a season.

Fernando Alonso doesn't have as much raw pace as Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel. What he does have is the ability to drive closer to his own personal maximum more frequently than anyone else.

Alain Prost was similar. More often than not he couldn't touch Ayrton Senna over a single lap, but his calculating approach to races meant he frequently came out on top.

Rosberg is from the same mould. Maybe he lacks those few 10ths at crucial moments, but over the course of a season he'll consistently drive closer to his own personal optimum than many of his rivals.

He does a good job of managing the tyres, utilises his fuel load well, rarely overdrives the car and tends to keep his nose very, very clean.

Hamilton hasn't always done that, and his performances have been less consistent.

Long known as a single-lap expert, he was out-qualified eight times by Rosberg in 2013. As good as Rosberg is, a driver with as much pace as Hamilton should have come out on top far more frequently.

The picture continued into the races. In the 16 grands prix which saw both Mercedes men classified, each finished ahead of the other eight times.

Again, as good as Rosberg is, and as much as Hamilton didn't particularly like the W04, the Gods of Natural Talent say the fight should not be that close.

But it was, because Rosberg did a better job of managing his tyres, fuel and overall race pace. He operated closer to his maximum than Hamilton did.

If last year's theme continues, the title battle will be very close. The balance would have to be tipped in favour of Rosberg simply because he has the recent track record of better race management. In 2014, that's going to be key.

The extra 25 points he already has in his pocket won't hurt, either.

On the other side of the coin, if Hamilton can find the form he has shown in the past—2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012 spring to mind—he'll leapfrog ahead.

It's by no means certain either will be champion when the season ends in November. Red Bull have a lot of pace, McLaren have a lot of reliability and we can't write off Williams either.

But if you had to pick one man as the favourite right now, Hamilton just edges it.

Lewis Hamilton has denied claims he proposed to girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, ending rumours with a simple tweet.

The British Formula One driver was the subject of fierce speculation over the weekend, reported by John Drayton of the Daily Mail, but he called an end to reports by revealing he is yet to pop the question:

Hamilton's start to the 2014 season began with a disappointing third-lap retirement during the Australian Grand Prix, forced to watch on as team-mate Nico Rosberg took the opening victory of the campaign.

Supposedly upping the heat away from the track, Hamilton is said to have responded with a blunt, "No, I'm not," when asked if he was getting married, per Ann Lee of the Metro. Lee also alleges that Scherzinger has turned Hamilton's proposal down on three occasions.

Dominik Lemanski of the Daily Star reported quotes attributed to "a pal of the F1 star," who suggests Hamilton's denial goes against the truth:

Lewis is doing his best to keep the news ­under wraps but he is ­absolutely delighted. He got down on one knee and Nicole finally accepted. The plan is they are going to live together in Switzerland and travel together when Lewis is racing.

[...] It is the ideal plan for both of them and will hopefully lead to a big summer ­wedding in August when Lewis has a three-week break from his F1 ­schedule.

Hamilton's tweet should end the focus on his relationship for now, allowing the 29-year-old to concentrate on the season ahead. His retirement at Melbourne's Albert Park is a frustrating start to the year, especially when Rosberg's performance proved Mercedes have the credentials to snatch Sebastian Vettel's crown.

The current champion's fifth-lap retirement and testing problems will have given the entire grid hope of major change at the top, none more so than Hamilton, who will be itching to repeat his championship win from 2008.

Jenson Button was the last British winner in 2009, and unlike Hamilton, he did get engaged recently. The 34-year-old is preparing his commitment to girlfriend Jessica Michibata, reported by Phil Duncan of the Daily Mail, as he bids to overcome a frustrating 2013 season with McLaren.

Button was promoted to third during the post-match review in Australia after Daniel Ricciardo's disqualification, per Byron Young of the Mirror. Although denied a podium finish, he will be pleased with a useful start to the campaign.

Both British drivers have the opportunity to push for this season's plaudits. For Hamilton, intense speculation toward his personal life threatens to frustrate, so it's a smart move for the driver to clarify the situation as it currently stands.

He can look forward to an exciting future that has the prospect to be laden with success, both on and off the track.

When he signed for Mercedes in September 2012, Lewis Hamilton—for the first time in his Formula One career—was playing the long game.

He was, after all, departing a McLaren team that had provided him with the fastest car on the grid for an outfit that had won only a single grand prix in three years.

For a man as single-minded as Hamilton, someone so used to instant success, it was quite the statement to betray his personal philosophy and place his belief in a project with potential, especially when he had flirted with a transfer to Red Bull, the sport’s dominant team, little over 12 months earlier.

Since the ink dried on Hamilton’s three-year contract, the message coming out of Mercedes has always surrounded the regulation changes of 2014. 2014 will be the year for the Silver Arrows to shine. 2014 will be the year that Hamilton, the epitome of the team’s rise to the top, finally claims his second world title.

2013? That was just the meet-and-greet stage of the relationship—an integration period that still saw Hamilton claim a win, five podiums and five pole positions.

Such was Mercedes’ faith in 2014 that the team ended development on the W04 last summer, despite Hamilton’s emphatic first win for the team in Hungary making him widely considered the biggest threat to Sebastian Vettel for the 2013 crown at the mid-season break stage.

And that faith has been justified after the 12 days of pre-season testing exposed Mercedes as having the fastest and most reliable of the 2014 cars, with Hamilton installed as the favourite for the drivers’ championship.

But in typical Hamilton fashion, any success he enjoys this season will not be achieved via the easy route.

It is unfortunate for Hamilton that his career has coincided with an era of F1 that places a heavy emphasis on car conservation.

If this were a period of flat-out sprints, he and Vettel—the only other driver able to match Hamilton’s outright pace—would disappear into the distance every week. The current state of the sport, however, means the 2008 world champion has been reeled in somewhat by lesser drivers.

But are they lesser? Or just more rounded and mature?

Contrast Hamilton’s team radio messages to those of Nico Rosberg, his Mercedes team-mate, and Vettel over the course of the tyre-based era of 2011 and 2013, and you hear a frustrated, flustered, angry young man.

While Rosberg and Vettel, for instance, appear calm and comfortable with the extra radio communication that the sport’s conservative period demands, Hamilton—who has been known to hum and sing to himself in the cockpit in the past—seems to view it as an annoyance, a disturbance of his equilibrium. His sense of injustice that the sport has taken a direction that disguises his talents is clear.

While Rosberg and Vettel are more than capable of driving the race as well as the car, Hamilton often seems only capable of doing the latter, such is his need for speed.

It is true that Hamilton’s naturally aggressive style means that he will be comfortable with the rear instability that the extra torque of the 1.6 litre turbocharged engines provide, particularly under acceleration and towards the end of a tyre stint.

In addition, Pirelli’s decision to strengthen its tyre compounds should mean a repeat of last year’s Spanish Grand Prix, when Hamilton hopelessly tumbled down the order from second on the grid, will not occur.

And with fuel efficiency replacing tyre wear as the aim of the game in 2014, Hamilton should again benefit. After all, the question of whether 100kg of fuel can make the chequered flag is one for the number crunchers on the pit wall to answer, while judging tyre degradation was very much dependent on the driver’s senses.

While Pirelli’s tyres were often ticking timebombs, with the cliff—the moment where the rubber suddenly lost the will to live—never more than a lap away, fuel loss will be a gradual process and therefore easier to predict, perhaps giving Hamilton less to think about than in previous years.

The question hanging over Hamilton when he climbs into his Mercedes cockpit on the Albert Park grid will be whether he possesses the intelligence, the versatility and the discipline to make the 2014 regulations work for him.

Hungary 2013, a race that he won convincingly despite telling BBC Sport that he needed a "miracle" 24 hours earlier, proved that he can apply those aspects to his performance on occasion. But can he pace himself over the course of a season—19 races and eight months—to claim the ultimate prize?

Doubts of his ability to do that remain, especially when you consider how vulnerable Hamilton is to external influences. His on-off relationship with Nicole Scherzinger (of pop group the Saturdays or something, apparently) has the potential to undermine his career.

So it was with apprehension that you read a recent report by Katie Hind of the Mirror which claimed Scherzinger quit her role as an X Factor judge to, in the words of the source, have a "year of romance on the Formula One circuit" with Hamilton, whose balancing of his professional and personal lives has often been askew.

Balance, though, is the key for Hamilton in 2014. Can he or will he be willing enough to drive carefully enough to manage his fuel—not to mention his life—while retaining the racing instinct that makes Lewis Hamilton a global phenomenon?

As one of the finest drivers on the grid in what is the finest car on the grid, Hamilton holds the key to the season, and the onus may well be on him to establish a comfortable early-season points lead before his rivals can retaliate.

Shortly after he signed for Mercedes in September 2012, Lewis Hamilton told Malcolm Folley of the Daily Mail that among his reasons for leaving McLaren was to "grow as a driver and as a human being."

How he fares in 2014, the biggest challenge of his career, will decide whether he will be remembered as a multiple world champion or the boy wonder who never grew up.

The Mercedes team must have had cause of concern when an alarming front wing failure caused Lewis Hamilton to clatter into the barriers at Turn 1.

Rewind almost a year to the day and Hamilton suffered a similar fate at Jerez as a rear brake failure saw him plough headfirst into the barriers at the Dry Sack hairpin.

But three days after Hamilton’s latest crash, the Mercedes team had racked up more miles and suffered fewer technical issues than any other team on the grid in this, a season where reliability is of paramount importance.

Nico Rosberg joined the fray on day two of testing and although not the fastest man on the circuit, he was the only driver to complete long runs, the last of which covered 24 laps.

Afterwards, Rosberg hailed his sequence of long runs as a massive boost for the team so early on in proceedings, as quoted on Autosport.

For sure I'm smiling, the team did a great job. Yesterday went a bit wrong with Lewis having a shunt but they fixed the bits during the night and flew them out, so thanks to all of you in England for fixing that.

We had such a great day - we just drove and drove, loads of laps and that's what we need at the moment. That's how you can really progress and get rid of the reliability problems and understand everything better, so it's been a very positive day.

Mercedes was again the team to complete the most laps on the third day of testing with Hamilton once again behind the wheel in completing 62 laps of the Jerez circuit. The car’s pace was also good with the Brit—just .676s off Kevin Magnussen’s quickest lap time for the day.

And the best was yet to come on the final day: Mercedes bringing down the curtain on a highly encouraging opening test with Hamilton and Rosberg managing a substantial 132 laps trouble-free between them.

In total, Mercedes racked up an impressive 309 laps over the four days of testing with Hamilton third quickest overall.

Coupled with the woes of chief title rival Red Bull, which managed a paltry 21 laps in total, Hamilton hailed the effort on Autosport as a “fantastic” one for the team.

It has been fantastic. Really fantastic. [Mileage] is that biggest positive we can take from here. The car is reliable. We are not focused on anyone else at the moment, we are just trying to focus on ourselves and trying to improve and get as much data as we can, as many miles as we can and really try to take it one step at a time.

Even at this early stage and purely on the back of Jerez, Mercedes has been installed as title favorites for 2014.

But with two more tests still to come before the opening race of the season five weeks from now, Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff has urged the need for caution.

I think these people should look at the past. Very often the so-called favourites after the first couple of days of testing were not the favourites when the season actually started or panned out. It is too early right now. I would say we are cautiously satisfied. We thought that we could be running into more problems than we actually did with the whole new concept.

It looked difficult on the first day of testing, but in the end the car seems to be running reliably. We cannot judge performance yet - we are far away from performance, far away from what we think what our potential is. There are still little bits and pieces missing, and not functioning in the way we want them to function. But we are cautiously optimistic and it looks like the guys have done a good job.

 

Lewis Hamilton looked to be having a pretty good opening day of the Formula One season at testing in Jerez, Spain—until he managed to put his brand-new 2014 Mercedes into the barriers.

The Brit was one of the only drivers to get anything approaching meaningful running done in the first session of the year and had just improved his personal best time when he ran off.

Accidente de Hamilton que se baja del coche dolorido. Esperemos que esté bien... pic.twitter.com/cKJSWNPyXD

— Nira Juanco (@njuancof1) January 28, 2014

Hamilton was uninjured, and reports soon after indicated that driver error was not to blame, citing a front wing failure:

We can confirm a front wing failure on car 44. The reason is now being investigated. Lewis is fine, thank you all for asking!

— MERCEDES AMG F1 (@MercedesAMGF1) January 28, 2014

Looks like Hamilton lost his frontwing before the shunt. No front downforce -> locking wheels -> crash! Suspension damaged in the wall.

— Tobias Grüner F1 (@tgruener) January 28, 2014

Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013 after beginning his career at McLaren. Coincidentally, the Brit also crashed out on his first day of testing last season.

The season will surely pick up from here.

Lewis Hamilton burst onto the Formula One scene with McLaren in 2007. He finished on the podium in his first nine races—including victories in Montreal and Indianapolis—and lost the championship by one point to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

Perhaps more impressively, Hamilton's story resonated with people outside of F1. He was featured in Sports Illustrated, a rare thing for an F1 driver, and Time compared him to Tiger Woods (back when Woods was still known as a great golfer, rather than a serial adulterer). The fact that he was the first black driver to race in F1 only made the story more compelling.

He was anointed as the sport's next big star.

In 2008, the prophecy was fulfilled: The championship was again decided by just one point, this time with Hamilton prevailing over Felipe Massa, another Ferrari driver.

Since clinching that championship in the most dramatic fashion possible, though, Hamilton has not come close to returning to those lofty heights.

January 7, 2014 is Hamilton's 29th birthday. He is no longer an up-and-coming star but rather a veteran of 129 F1 grands prix. Despite his world championship and 22 race victories, Hamilton has not performed up to his potential.

He has been a good driver, but has he been great? Is he even at the same level as his contemporary rivals, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso?

Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso are the most recognizable faces of F1's current drivers, the superstars of the sport. But while the Brit has regressed since 2008, Vettel has won four straight championships with Alonso pushing him to the wire twice.

Hamilton has won at least one race in every year of his F1 career, but his results—if not his performance—have been on a downward trend. In 2010, he finished the season with 240 points; that number has decreased each year since then, and he scored 189 points in 2013.

To get a better idea of where Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso stand relative to each another, here are their statistics since the 2007 season (both Hamilton and Vettel's rookie year):

Of course, this table omits two of Alonso's best years, his Drivers' Championships in 2005 and 2006. Still, from 2007 he has scored more points and more podium finishes than Hamilton. Vettel, at least statistically, is on another plane.

How much of that is due to the car and how much is due to the driver is a matter for debate. But dominant car or not, nobody wins four world championships in a row unless they are a very good driver.

It is safe to say, at least for now, that Vettel is racing at a higher level than Hamilton. While the German has hunted down his four titles with a single-minded focus, Hamilton has, at times, allowed off-track issues to detrimentally affect his performance.

No, Hamilton is not on the same level as Vettel. But what about his one-time (in both senses of the term) teammate, Alonso?

Although Alonso has fewer victories than Hamilton, he has been more successful overall in the championship, especially since 2008. Hamilton has not finished higher than fourth since his title year, while Alonso has three second-place finishes in that time, nearly winning in 2010 and 2012—the latter year in an inferior car to both Hamilton's McLaren and Vettel's Red Bull.

The best comparative data we have, though, is from 2007, Hamilton's first year in F1. In the same car, the two drivers finished in a dead heat in the final standings, both with 109 points and four wins. Hamilton was classified ahead of Alonso on the basis of one more second-place finish. They probably took the championship from each other, though, and their ill-fated partnership at McLaren ended after one season.

On that basis alone, we could conclude that Hamilton is Alonso's equal. In the prime of the Spaniard's career, Hamilton matched him win-for-win, point-for-point in the same car.

However, in 2013 (and 2012, as previously mentioned) Alonso beat Hamilton in a slower car. And in both years, it was not close. The gap between them in 2012 was 88 points; in 2013, 53.

So, taking into account their bodies of work, we must also conclude that Hamilton is not at the same level as Alonso. He was at one time, but not currently.

Looking ahead, then, what does the future hold for Hamilton? Will he recapture the form of his early career and win another championship? Or will his descent continue, giving him a legacy of a driver who peaked too soon and never fully lived up to his potential?

Hamilton seems comfortable with his new team, writing in his BBC column that, "I look back on joining Mercedes as absolutely the right decision to make." That will certainly help his mindset going forward.

Mercedes also significantly improved their car from 2012 to 2013. If that upward trajectory continues—and I have already written why I think it will—Hamilton should have everything he needs for a return to the top.

He will face a stiff challenge from his teammate, Nico Rosberg, who did not shrink from Hamilton's challenge in 2012. As we have seen, though, Hamilton has already been teamed with, and beaten, world champions. Rosberg should not get the better of him.

In fact, other than perhaps Alonso, Hamilton seems the most likely candidate to dethrone Vettel, if and when that finally happens.

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Nico Rosberg has released just about the only information from the ongoing Bahrain tyre test by Pirelli, joking that he needed toilet paper after a scary 320km/h blowout.

The test is being conducted by Pirelli in conjunction with the teams to test 2014 tyres on 2013-specification cars.

It is a private test—no lap times are being released and no journalists are present.

In fact, while all the teams were invited, only four—Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Toro Rosso—have opted to attend.

However, Rosberg did let slip an interesting detail via social media, swiftly deleting the tweet soon after.

As quoted by the Daily Mail's Jonathan McEvoy, the German said: "Just spun at full speed 320km/h on Bahrain straight [be]cause my tyre blew up without warning. Thanks to that need to get some toilet paper now…"

Despite the humorous nature of the tweet, there are serious undertones. Tyre blowouts were a major issue during the 2013 F1 season, and this test is being carried out in order to avoid a repeat next year. 

A tyre failure at that speed is disconcerting to say the least—Rosberg can consider himself fortunate that there were so few drivers on track at the time.

Whether Pirelli opt to make a comment on the incident or not remains to be seen, but it will be a talking point during the offseason, especially given the guarded nature of the test.

The decision by Mercedes to part company with one of the finest tacticians and team principals the sport of F1 has ever seen must have been a hard one to come to.

Per Sky Sports, Mercedes announced on Friday that Ross Brawn would step down as team principal due to a restructuring to the management structure that leaves executive directors Toto Wolff and Paddy Lowe in joint charge.

Mercedes could live to regret this decision. Brawn has enjoyed an unprecedented level of success in Formula One, helping Benetton and Michael Schumacher to successive world drivers’ titles and a constructors’ title in 1994 and 1995 before guiding Ferrari to six successive titles from 2000-2005.

Having completed a takeover of the Honda F1 team at the end of 2008, Brawn went on to win both the constructors’ and drivers’ titles with the team bearing his own name in 2009 before being bought out by Mercedes.

So what exactly is Mercedes going to miss about Brawn, and is he as important to a team as, say, Adrian Newey? First, it must be highlighted that the roles of Brawn and Newey to an F1 team are very different.

The Brawn Supremacy

Brawn has always been the tactical brain of every team he has worked with. He makes the calls on tyre strategy, when to bring his drivers in and when to react to what another team is doing.

He has all the data available to him on the pit wall of how the car is behaving and what the tyre wear situation is, and he communicates all of this back to the driver via the team radio. Brawn’s authority is such that the drivers invariably listen to him.

Nico Rosberg demonstrated this in Malaysia by agreeing to hold station behind teammate Lewis Hamilton for the good of the team, whilst Sebastian Vettel chose to ignore Christian Horner’s similar orders.

Talking to Sky SportsF1, Ted Kravitz is in no doubt that Mercedes made the wrong decision and will miss Brawn’s tactical brilliance.

I see it as one step forward and two steps back, unfortunately. I think you'd have to say that what you are gaining in Toto and Paddy and their clear talents is one step forward, but what you're losing with Ross is two steps back. I don't think there is any other way to see it.

You're going to need a strategic brain on the pitwall next year and if something goes wrong, you're also going to need the meticulous, calm approach and experience of a man who knows how to get you out of the hole that you're in.

In his column for The Telegraph, Tom Cary shares a similar view. He goes as far as to say that Mercedes “bungled it” as they had already decided to bring in Lowe and Wolff.

Paddock opinion varies but one can only think that Mercedes bungled it. Having brought in Toto Wolff to run the team, they prised Lowe from McLaren, then 2013 went better than expected and they realised that maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea to let Brawn go.

Any team would miss someone of the calibre of Brawn, a man who has a winning habit so long he should be called Mother Superior. A team principal who, unlike many today, has a strong engineering background. Who understands not only where to find the loopholes but has the rare ability to then put forward the case as to why a double diffuser, say, should be declared legal. A brilliant strategist with an uncanny ability to read a race and react to what is happening on track.

For all his tactical brilliance, Brawn’s Mercedes team was still left chasing the tails of the Red Bulls and often Ferrari and Lotus for the past couple of seasons. He failed to extract the best from his old pal Schumacher during his disappointing comeback.

Newey the Design Genius

Whilst Christian Horner is a fine team boss and tactician in his own right, nobody can argue that the Red Bull success story owes almost everything to the design brilliance of Adrian Newey.

No matter how good the brains on the pit wall are, no driver wins a race without decent machinery at his disposal. Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have enjoyed sporadic moments, but can anyone name the chief designer at Mercedes? Thought not.

Newey-designed machines had already won five constructors’ titles at Williams and one at McLaren before he joined Red Bull late in 2005. Eight years later, Newey added another four to his CV.

Whilst Brawn is credited with exploiting a clever loophole in the regulations with the controversial double diffuser in 2009, Newey’s work on Red Bull’s exhaust-blown diffuser in 2010 gave the team an advantage over the field.

Both Newey and Brawn have enjoyed the luxury of working with some of the greatest drivers the sport has ever produced, but those certain Germans benefited from the team around them.

Whilst the roles of Brawn and Newey are different, they do share similarities. Brawn has a strong engineering background and understands the minute technical details and inner workings of an F1 car, whilst Newey has a say in strategy as he sits next to Horner on the pit wall.

Any team would be blessed to have just one of these geniuses in their ranks, but for me, the car is king, and one man shines brighter than almost anyone in the sport.

That being said, I think Mercedes may already be regretting the decision, and I am sure Brawn will be back, possibly in 2015 with the return of Honda or perhaps back to Ferrari.

Whom would you pick if you could only choose one?

Rewind back three months to the day exactly and Lewis Hamilton was in a good place.

The Mercedes driver had just produced one of the performances of his career in Hungary to win his first Grand Prix for Mercedes.

The ease of his victory, a comfortable 11 seconds from second-placed Kimi Raikkonen, suggested that Mercedes had indeed turned the corner and found a solution to the tyre problems that dogged the early part of the year.

But Hamilton could muster only one more podium at the following Belgian Grand Prix and would score only 50 more points in the final eight races.

So where did it all go wrong for Lewis in the second half of the season? Firstly we have to factor in the element of bad luck, which Hamilton has had his fair share of. A slow puncture hampered his chances in Italy and forced him into a two-stop strategy and an unscheduled Nico Rosberg stop for a new front wing assembly destroyed his tyre strategy.

His Japanese Grand Prix was effectively ended on the opening lap when his right-rear tyre made contact with Sebastian Vettel’s front wing and he suffered a puncture that led to his retirement with a damaged floor.

In India and Abu Dhabi, Mercedes proved that its car was still a force to be reckoned with as Rosberg grabbed a second and third. Hamilton complained in India during his post-race quotes on Autosport that he destroyed his tyres in trying to get past Felipe Massa and he again complained at a lack of grip in Abu Dhabi but was otherwise at a loss to explain his lack of performance en route to a seventh place finish.

Hamilton’s pent-up frustrations boiled over in Austin, Texas when he first told his team to leave him alone to concentrate on racing when provided with tyre feedback early in the race only to bark later, "you need to give me some feedback, man, tyres, temperatures." As reported on Sky Sports.

Hamilton was still delivering consistently strong qualifying performances so one possible explanation about his lack of race pace may be that Hamilton’s aggressive driving style and heavier braking on certain circuits takes more out of his front tyres than does Nico Rosberg’s.

Sky Sports’ Mark Hughes identified this particular problem earlier in the season after Rosberg had taken victory in Monaco and this may have played a part throughout the season at circuits with a high demand on braking with rapid deceleration zones. Horses for courses?

There is no question that Rosberg was the stronger driver in the second half of the season, taking 75 points to Hamilton’s 50 over the final eight races.

If Hamilton himself finds it hard to isolate what exactly has gone wrong, we can only speculate as to the reasons why although a combination of Mercedes' tyre wear problems, contrasting driving styles on certain circuits and the old lady luck factor must surely have played a part.