Mercedes AMG Petronas

The way some people are talking about Mercedes' current domination of the Formula One World Championship, you would be forgiven for thinking that no other team has a chance of ever winning another race.

Yes, the Silver Arrows have won the past two constructors' championships, sweeping away all the competition, but the same thing has happened previously in F1. And—spoiler alert—when Mercedes' reign does end, someone else will do the same thing in the future.

Would it be nice to have more competition at the front of the grid? Of course—but let's not forget all the amazing racing and drama we have experienced over the last two years, not to mention the highly advanced hybrid technology powering the current generation of F1 cars.

But none of that will stop the naysayers, a group that ironically includes F1 chief executive officer Bernie Ecclestone. In August, he told Dutch TV station Sport 1 (h/t jamesallenonf1.com), "What we've got at the moment, which is wrong, is one very, very, very dominant team—with a particularly dominant engine."

Recall that Mercedes' two winning seasons were preceded by four straight Red Bull championships and, before that, Ferrari won eight constructors' titles in a 10-year period.

For an illustration of where Mercedes' current run of form fits in with some of the all-time great performances, the table below displays the best two-year period achieved by any team in each decade of F1 history.

Years	Team	Grands Prix	Wins	Winning %
2014 and 2015	Mercedes	38	32	84.2
2001 and 2002	Ferrari	34	24	70.6
1992 and 1993	Williams	32	20	62.5
1988 and 1989	McLaren	32	25	78.1
1972 and 1973	Lotus	27	12	44.4
1966 and 1967	Brabham	20	8	40.0
1952 and 1953	Ferrari	17	14	82.4

Some of these choices are relatively subjective. Maybe Lotus' 1962 and 1963 seasons, for example, were better than Brabham's 1967 and 1968. But Lotus didn't win the constructors' championship in the former year, so I went with Brabham.

As you can see, Mercedes-style F1 dominance goes all the way back to the first years of the championship. In 1952, Ferrari team-mates Alberto Ascari and Piero Taruffi won seven of eight races. In fact, they won all seven F1 races, but the Indianapolis 500 was also part of the championship that year and, although Ascari entered, he did not finish.

The next year, Ascari and Nino Farina took seven of eight races they entered for the Scuderia, dropping only the last race of the season, at Monza, once Ascari had already clinched the drivers' title (there was no constructors' championship in those days).

The 1960s were perhaps the golden era of F1 competition, with six different constructors' champions that decade and Brabham the only back-to-back winners.

In the 1970s, Ferrari won four titles in five seasons from 1975 to 1979, although the most dominant consecutive seasons belonged to Lotus earlier in the decade. Led by Emerson Fittipaldi (joined by Ronnie Peterson for 1973), Colin Chapman's outfit won half of the races over the 1972 and '73 seasons, but they could have had even more.

In '72, Fittipaldi retired from three races with mechanical problems in 12 races—the equivalent of five such retirements today—and still managed to win five times. Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg combined for just three mechanical retirements in 2015.

And that is another major reason why races are more predictable today: There are fewer retirements. We can't blame Mercedes for that. No manufacturer is going to intentionally build a car that breaks down.

From 1988 to 1991, McLaren took four straight constructors' championships. In the first two years of that streak, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna combined to win 25 of 32 races. Again, they could have won even more, but for the lower reliability of the period (and, you know, those times they took each other out).

F1 is cyclical. Ferrari wins for a while, then someone else, then Ferrari again. Some years there are two or more realistic contenders for the championship, some years there is a clear favourite.

So maybe, instead of complaining about how F1 was so much better in the 1990s or 1960s or 1950s, we should just sit back and enjoy what we are seeing: a team reaching the pinnacle of the pinnacle of motorsport. It has happened many times in the past, and it will happen again.

Oh, and F1 was way better in the nineties, when I started watching.

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At the halfway stage of the 2015 Formula One season, when it became obvious that Lewis Hamilton was waltzing his way toward his third title, we proposed an alternative strategy for Nico Rosberg.

Rather than trying to beat Hamilton in a head-to-head fight, failing miserably and then allowing himself to be tormented by finishing second every weekend, Rosberg—according to our logic—should have exploited his long-held status as the most intelligent, numerically driven performer on the grid and taken a more pragmatic approach.

Like a football manager guiding their squad through a long, hard season, he should have accepted that there would be days when he would not come close to Hamilton, one of the most naturally gifted drivers of his generation, and adjusted his expectations accordingly, picking and choosing his battles with care.

He should have identified a number of grands prix, particularly at circuits where his Mercedes team-mate has been traditionally weak, he could win, and pinpointed those when the runner-up spot would resemble damage limitation, when second place would not be a sign of inferiority but part of a much wider plan.

Admittedly, such a philosophy would have left Rosberg competing more in hope than expectation, praying Hamilton would suffer a retirement or two along the way and clinging to the idea that, come the end of a 19-race season, it would be him at the summit of the drivers' standings.

But at that point, on the day he qualified more than half a second behind Hamilton at July's Hungarian Grand Prix, it felt like the only way Rosberg, short on confidence and seemingly out of ideas, would ever stand a chance of winning a world championship.

ROSBERG: "I just didn't find the pace, it's been a bit up & down all weekend. Definitely not happy" #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/IJqeEsRMox

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 25, 2015

Just four months on, however, his recovery—his transformation—is rapidly nearing completion.

After his morale-boosting yet rather predictable victories in Mexico and Brazil—the first at a brand-new track, the second at a venue where Hamilton has failed to win in nine visits—this weekend's season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was bound to offer a clearer indication of the extent of Rosberg's resurgence.

Like the Hungaroring, the Yas Marina circuit is among the tracks where Hamilton has always performed strongly, setting two pole positions and winning on two occasions (he missed out on two further victories in the 2009 and 2012 races due to reliability issues) in six appearances.

As such, it appeared this weekend would be the ideal time for the supposedly natural order of 2015 to be restored, for the season to end the way it started and for Hamilton to cap what he told BBC Sport has been "without any doubt the best year of my career in terms of my driving and overall performance" with one more victory.

Indeed, Rosberg himself seemed ready to be put back in his place in Abu Dhabi, telling Motorsport.com's Pablo Elizalde that the "extremely old engine" fitted to his W06 car was "costing (him) straight-line speed" and had left him braced for "a difficult weekend."

Although he had beaten Hamilton in the second free-practice session, Rosberg added that his team-mate was yet to "show his pace on one lap," claiming it was "clear that he still has some reserve."

But the widely expected onslaught never arrived.

Despite his fresher power unit and his impressive record at Yas Marina, where only world champions have triumphed in the race's history, Hamilton was unable to establish an advantage in excess of 0.2 seconds in the opening segments of qualifying, per the official F1 website. 

And Rosberg responded in a Lewis-esque manner, saving his best lap for when it mattered most and hurling his car around the tight, twisty final sector to claim his sixth-consecutive pole position.

ROSBERG: "I'd like to win tomorrow to give my crew a great end to the season and a reason to party" #AbuDhabiGP pic.twitter.com/kvHyPAl22W

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 28, 2015

His pole lap—a resounding 0.377 seconds faster than Hamilton's final effort, per the same source—was almost an act of defiance, confirmation that Rosberg will no longer timidly fade away or hide behind a list of excuses whenever the odds are against him.

With the title already settled in Hamilton's favour, the absence of championship-related pressure has almost certainly played a key role in Rosberg's return to form in recent races.

But the importance of entering the winter break "on a high rather than a low," as he told Sky Sports' William Esler, is huge ahead of next season.

"Normally I’m not too excited when I’m on pole. You don’t get points on Saturday. But this time was a cool feeling" pic.twitter.com/8mlSzx7Z6r

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) November 28, 2015

Should Rosberg claim a third successive victory for the first time in his career at Yas Marina, the ghosts of 2014, when his title chances evaporated with a mid-race technical problem, will—as noted prior to the race weekend—be laid to rest, freeing him to start afresh in 2016.

And without that burden—something Rosberg seems to have carried with him for much of 2015—the German can enter next year with his confidence at its maximum, knowing he can take on his team-mate and succeed, with no need to resort to desperate tactics and return trips to the drawing board.

If he can beat Hamilton in Abu Dhabi, he can beat him anywhere.

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In the court of public opinion, Lewis Hamilton can't seem to win—which is kind of ironic because, for the last two years, he has done nothing but win on the Formula One circuit.

"It's strange how people want everyone to do the same thing as the people back in the day," Hamilton told the Mirror's Byron Young last summer. "This is how a F1 driver behaves, this is how a F1 driver looks. This is how a driver should be, and should talk. It’s just funny for me."

For some people, he is cocky or too much of a show-off, as he tweets photos of himself flying around in his private jet and hanging with a different crowd of celebrities seemingly every night. And for some, he is not dedicated enough to racing (although it should also be acknowledged that he does have a legion of dedicated fans).

Wheels up w/ the team!! pic.twitter.com/2OMKQfow78

— Lewis Hamilton (@LewisHamilton) November 20, 2015

When Hamilton moved from McLaren to Mercedes for the 2013 season, former world champion Sir Jackie Stewart offered some advice, per Sportinglife.com:

You just have to be damn careful you don't get carried away with your own importance, your own celebrity, or your own schedule outside of being in the cockpit. It can be quite intoxicating.

What Lewis needs to do is have more consistently good drives, never mind the mechanical issues, and he shouldn't be distracted, something he should keep in the back of his mind.

It's about who you hang out with, what you do in your off time, how you are committing your off time towards your real time—and your real time is being a racing driver.

Of course, Hamilton seems perfectly capable of balancing his personal and on-track lives—at least for the last couple seasons. I might have argued differently in the past.

But it is still not enough for some people. You've all seen it, at the bottom of any article you read about Hamilton: the venom and anger, sometimes even hatred.

As much as some superfans (you know, the ones who can rattle off the model number of Slim Borgudd's 1982 Tyrrell-Ford faster than they can their wives' birthdays) would like to think so, Formula One is not life. Neither Hamilton, nor any other drivers, need to live monastically, thinking of nothing but the next race and memorising corners in their bathtubs like the Jamaican bobsledders in Cool Runnings.

Since leaving McLaren, Hamilton's approach to F1 seems to have changed and matured. After all, he has won the last two world championships. And yes, he has had the best car, but he has also had Nico Rosberg breathing down the neck of his race suit.

Does the 30-year-old Brit say or do some regrettable things sometimes? Sure. Who hasn't?

But he seems like a genuinely nice person, willing to go out of his way to help people and connect with his fans. Last week, he hosted an impromptu contest on Twitter and ended up calling a few fans, just to chat. And when he is talking to someone, even in an awkward setting like a press conference or media session, he looks them in the eye and tries to answer the question sincerely.

Had fun meeting this little guy yesterday! #GodBless #USGP #StillWeRise @MercedesAMGF1 pic.twitter.com/59jAUUEPFI

— Lewis Hamilton (@LewisHamilton) October 25, 2015

NBC Sports reporter Will Buxton recalled Hamilton's first GP2 race on his personal blog, writing, "All weekend he'd been impossible to find in the paddock. As I later discovered, he'd been standing at the fence at the back of the GP2 enclosure signing autographs for everyone who passed. He hadn't been asked to. He'd just wanted to."

Last year, according to Buxton, "When he turned up in New York for a two-minute appearance on the Today Show, he arrived two hours early and spent every spare moment engaged with his fans."

F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone has criticised Sebastian Vettel for not being open about his life and working harder to promote the sport. 

According to the Guardian's Paul Weaver, Ecclestone said, "I told Sebastian: 'You should be doing what [Hamilton's] doing.' Doing the job of world champion. He was the champion and got paid money for that, and these guys think their only job is racing a racing car. It goes a bit further than that."

Hamilton does go a bit further, giving us a glimpse at his life away from the paddock through Twitter and Instagram, but then people complain about that, too.

Which way do we want it?

A few weeks ago, I was speaking about Carlos Pace with Andrea de Adamich, who raced for Ferrari, McLaren and a few other teams in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He made the point a few times about how well-rounded Pace was, always interested in life outside the artificial world of F1. De Adamich said the only current driver who struck him that way was Nico Rosberg, Hamilton's team-mate.

But Hamilton seems like that, too—genuinely interested in the world around him.

On the podium recently, in Japan and Brazil, Hamilton greeted the crowd in their own language. This may seem like a gimmick, designed to elicit applause, but it is also a sign of respect from Hamilton to the fans of the sport. Like Buxton wrote, he doesn't have to do that. He wants to.

But of course, Hamilton drew fire for another podium incident earlier this year, at the Chinese Grand Prix, when he sprayed one of the hostesses with some champagne. According to the MailOnline's Gemma Mullin and Steph Cockroft, Hamilton was called an "embarrassment to the UK" and an "ignorant clown."

That's a lot of vitriol for a minor incident. It needs to stop.

Last month, BBC commentator and former F1 driver David Coulthard wrote in the Telegraph, "There are still those who instinctively do not like Lewis. He remains a divisive figure. For whatever reason, sometimes people take a dislike to someone and they hold on to it."

Fair enough.

Ayrton Senna had as many detractors as he had fans. So did Michael Schumacher.

But a little perspective, please. Hamilton should be able to have fun, as long as he isn't hurting anybody, without being criticised for everything he does. As long as he performs at a high level when he arrives at the track, why should we care whether he spends his free time partying in Monaco or flying to Los Angeles?

Perhaps Stirling Moss, winner of 16 grands prix from 1951 to 1961, has part of the answer. Last year, he told the Telegraph's Daniel Johnson that Hamilton, "was one of the racing crowd before and now he's whatever you call those superstars. And that's not really the way we English go. We're more reserved."

Even so, the next time Hamilton does something that gets the Twittersphere all excited and angry, stop for a moment and think: Is this really an affront to the collective dignity of the sport, or is it just a 30-year-old harmlessly enjoying himself in between high-pressure weekends spent under a microscope?

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Lewis Hamilton's indulgent lifestyle is clearly catching up with him as he has revealed that a minor car crash he had in Monaco in the early hours of Tuesday morning was caused by fatigue after consistent partying.

Per the Telegraph's Daniel Johnson, Mercedes driver Hamilton collided with three parked cars when driving his Pagani Zonda supercar in Monte Carlo on Tuesday but was unhurt and found not to have been drinking by police.

However, the newly crowned Formula One world champion has now admitted he was fatigued after days of partying, per BBC Sport: "It was a result of heavy partying and not much rest for 10 days. I am a bit run down. I have been non-stop and trying to fit training in at the same time and not getting a lot of sleep."

Hamilton arrived a day later than planned for this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix, previously explaining on his Instagram account that it was because he had been suffering from a "fever":

The 30-year-old claimed his third world title last month in Austin, Texas, but he looked slightly sluggish at the Mexican Grand Prix earlier in November—he still came second behind team-mate Nico Rosberg.

According to Johnson, Hamilton said he has since enjoyed a number of "alcohol-filled parties," as well as an "amazing" event he put on for his mother's birthday.

But with the Interlagos race looming, it is unclear whether the world champion is in an appropriately fit state to compete as he has been all season. 

Hamilton has been the dominant presence in F1 over the last two seasons as he has won back-to-back world titles.

Despite this season's championship being already wrapped up, he will likely be desperate to triumph in Brazil having never won a race there previously.

Formula One drivers have been using mind games for as long as the sport has existed, attempting to gain an edge over their competitors.

Stirling Moss, who made his debut in 1951—the second year of the championship—once wrote in an ESPN F1 column that, to gain a psychological advantage, he would pretend he enjoyed racing in the rain and, "The other thing I used to do was give each driver that I overtook a wave or thumbs up, to show that I was enjoying myself while they weren't."

In the ongoing battle at Mercedes between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, the psychological warfare is a bit more subtle.

Despite Hamilton's claims in an interview with the German edition of Playboy (h/t grandprix.com) that, "Some people like to play mind games, but I don't need that," the Brit made a serious effort after the Mexican Grand Prix to get under Rosberg's skin.

Arriving in Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Hamilton had won six of the eight races since Rosberg's last victory—four months earlier in Austria. With his first-place finish the previous week in the United States, Hamilton had secured his third world championship title, but, when Rosberg won in Mexico, Hamilton still felt the need to take a few shots at him.

In the post-race press conference, while supposedly congratulating Rosberg on his win, Hamilton said, "Nico drove really well today, no mistakes, no gust of wind," referencing the German's mistake in Austin, which he blamed on the wind.

After each race, the teams also put out a press release with a short statement from their drivers. Here, Hamilton took another swipe at his team-mate, saying, "I was pushing so hard, giving absolutely everything that I had, and I think I had more pace than Nico."

And finally, in an open media session, per Sky Sports' Pete Gill, Hamilton said, "I know the team has felt the need to be extra warm," towards Rosberg.

Asked to elaborate, he said, "You should ask Toto [Wolff] and Niki [Lauda]. Put those questions to them about how they feel about it. What they have to do behind the scenes to keep him happy."

If he wasn't already, that last bit will surely have angered Rosberg. And that is the point. Hamilton knows his team-mate will probably be his closest rival for the championship again next season, so if he can throw Rosberg off-balance now, it may benefit him later.

Hamilton's many critics will likely point out that his comments in Mexico make him sound immature, but trash talking is part of all sports. It's just that it usually happens on the playing field, where spectators cannot hear it.

But in F1, aside from a hand gesture or two, drivers are unable to communicate with each other during the race. Therefore, any verbal sparring inevitably occurs off the track—sometimes through the media.

Hamilton is an intelligent man. He knows that by making comments in public about the team coddling Rosberg, he will force his team-mate to respond (or at least repeatedly listen to questions about it). 

The fact that Hamilton waited until Rosberg finally won a race (and after he had already clinched the championship) to unload on him does give him a whiff of pettiness. But it also demonstrates how much Hamilton values his psychological edge over Rosberg—something he seemed to lose in the middle of last season.

Moss, who raced for Mercedes in 1955, would recognise the tactic. In his book Cars at Speed, former New York Times correspondent Robert Daley quoted Moss as saying:

I love motor racing. I love everything about it. I love the competition. I love the bull-throwing that goes with it. For instance, Masten Gregory comes up to me and says: "I notice you're going flat out through such and such corner." And I say: "You may be going flat out, Masten." Now he doesn't know whether I'm going flat out or not, and I'm not going to tell him.

Ruthlessness is a trait shared by many of the great F1 drivers, including Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton has already demonstrated that he is cold-blooded on the track, and his comments about Rosberg are just an off-track extension of his relentless drive to win.

Of course, Rosberg may just brush away Hamilton's attempts to rattle him. Rosberg literally grew up in the F1 paddock and is as savvy about its politics as anyone. He will also know that if Hamilton was truly quicker in Mexico, he would have been the one standing on the top step of the podium.

Either way, Hamilton's comments will do nothing to endear him to his team-mate, and they will likely further the damage that last year's title battle did to their friendship. But at this point, neither man seems concerned about that relationship—they just want to win.

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The title fight ends, and so the title fight begins.

Just days after Nico Rosberg was left to wonder where it all went wrong in the 2015 Formula One season as his Mercedes team-mate, Lewis Hamilton, claimed his second consecutive world championship, he was focusing solely on how he would get it right in 2016.

The countless question marks hanging over him and his title-winning credentials over recent months had activated the search for answers, while the regrets of the past had, almost overnight, been replaced by excitement for the future.

That is the image Rosberg, following his post-race tantrum at the Circuit of the Americas, has tried to project ahead of this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix. 

Rather than continuing to shrivel in self-pity—ruing his second successive title defeat to a driver in identical machinery—the German has been eager to portray himself as the ultimate forward thinker, committed to self-improvement and learning from his mistakes.

And as you would expect, someone who will never, ever give up.

During the first free-practice session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Rosberg, in a prerecorded interview, explained his reluctance to admit defeat. And F1's resident brain box has stuffed a range of tricks up his sleeve in his efforts to beat Hamilton in the not-too-distant future, telling Sky Sports' television coverage:

I will keep fighting, you know, and [make a] big push, for sure, all the way. And I am every single day even between the last race and this race, trying to find that extra bit, learning more, pushing more in all sorts of directions. It's an ongoing process.

I have some new ideas that I'm just about to apply already—preparing for next year, for example—some really cool ones, which I'm excited about, but of course I'm not going to tell you because that will help him too much again.

But there's always things. You need to inventive—proactive and inventive—come up with new things and keep pushing.

While Rosberg's apparent defiance and out-of-the-box approach is to be admired, his comments almost seemed to be a self-directed motivational speech and, indeed, could have been copied and pasted from the aftermath of his last championship defeat to Hamilton.

After losing the 2014 title, Rosberg told Sky Sports' Pete Gill and James Galloway how there were plenty of "strong points" he could "build on" for the following year, insisting he would "find" the "little bit" required to topple his team-mate.

Yet when he returned to action at the beginning of 2015, Nico was a weaker, more error-prone driver. His improvements were limited to a change of his in-car breathing habits, as reported by ESPN F1, and an alternative seating position, which, per Crash.net, only served to leave Rosberg—not Lewis—with a pain in the neck.

His failure to make major advancements over last winter, then, makes it all the more unclear what a driver who appears to have reached his peak can expect to gain this time. But the underwhelming nature of his 2015 campaign, as strange as it may seem, may prove to be beneficial in the long term.

Having lost the championship in a final-race, double-points decider in 2014, Rosberg would doubtlessly have spent his offseason haunted by the moments—his retirement from the lead at Silverstone, for instance, or the debilitating technical issue in Singapore—that ultimately resulted in defeat.

But Hamilton's dominance this year has been such that the destiny of the title had been obvious as long ago as the midseason stage. That will presumably make it easier for Rosberg to recover, especially since—with three rounds of the 2015 season still remaining—he can quickly rid himself of any lingering disappointment.

Although the hectic streak of three grands prix in the space of five weeks might, as noted ahead of the Mexican GP, present Hamilton with an opportunity to coast his way to the end of the season, it offers Rosberg a chance to rediscover his confidence and form, while planting a seed in his team-mate's mind ahead of next year.

With both the drivers' and constructors' championships heading to Mercedes, Rosberg—so often confused for a car salesman in 2015, such is his responsibility and loyalty to the Silver Arrows' cause—can afford to treat the closing stages of the season as an interim period, driving a little more selfishly and adventurously.

#NR6: "Tomorrow is the day and it will be a great battle for the win between the top five" #F1 #MexicoGP #Quali pic.twitter.com/RF64YtYVQc

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) October 31, 2015

#LH44: "I'm looking forward to a good battle as it was very close today" #F1 #MexicoGP #Quali pic.twitter.com/MKqK8SkkXT

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) October 31, 2015

Where he would once be the victim of a marginal overtaking manoeuvre, he can now be the initiator. Where he is normally pushed off the track, he can now be the one doing the pushing. 

And where he would previously err on the side of caution, he can now be aggressive in the knowledge that if all goes wrong, much of the damage will be done to his pride and not to his employers' title aspirations.

That, perhaps, is why Toto Wolff, the Mercedes boss, recently told Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble of his desire to diffuse any tension between his drivers before it can "escalate in to something bigger." It suggests an incident akin to Hamilton and Rosberg's collision at the 2014 Belgian GP could soon be on the horizon.

Nico's reaction/comments underline the harsh reality of his no.2 status as evidenced by T1. Never recovered from Spa '14 reprimand IMHO #F1

— Mark Gallagher (@_markgallagher) October 25, 2015

It was Wolff, after all, who advised Rosberg to "switch on to 2016 mode and try to bounce back next year" in the aftermath of the German's retirement from the Russian GP, per Autosport's Ian Parkes, praising his "strong" character and personality.

Such strength has been absent in recent races, as Rosberg, despite claiming pole position in each of the last three events, has failed to claim his first win since June, often surrendering first place in spineless fashion.

Over that period, pole position has not resembled a springboard to victory or offered Rosberg the opportunity to control a race to his liking. But it's merely a reminder of what he used to be.

With his fourth consecutive pole in Mexico, however, and now with nothing to lose, Rosberg has the licence to explore the limits in an F1 car for the first time since Spa '14. 

And to prove to Hamilton, Mercedes and himself that he will not go down without one, last fight in 2016.

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After recovering from 14th on the grid to finish fifth in the Brazilian Grand Prix, clinching the 2009 Formula One title, Jenson Button would have been forgiven for partying long and hard into the night.

Without a race victory in four months, the British driver had been under the most intense pressure as Rubens Barrichello, his Brawn GP team-mate, and Sebastian Vettel both threatened to steal a title that appeared to have had Button's name on it since his relentless winning streak at the start of that season.

Yet having produced a champion's drive at the time he needed it most—moving out of reach of his main rivals in the standings and becoming the second successive British title winner after Lewis Hamilton's success the previous year—Button was now free to unwind and release all of that simmering, pent-up emotion.

Rather than drinking until the Sao Paulo sun came up, however, the man once dismissed as little more than a "lazy playboy" by Flavio Briatore, per Crash.net, proved his former team principal's assessment was only half-right.

Explaining why he retreated to his hotel room after spending just 45 minutes at his own celebration party, Button told the Guardian's Mikey Stafford:

I wanted a bit of alone time. I think most drivers, when they have the possibility of winning the World Championship, they go crazy.

But we all celebrate it in different ways and for me to just chill on my own was the best thing. I obviously wanted to go out and congratulate the whole team, which I did, and then I got home, relaxed and just took everything in. It was perfect. It was just time by myself, relaxing and thinking about what I had achieved. That was the best place for me. 

Button, of course, had always exuded the aura of someone content with just the one world title, but the restrained, almost unbefitting way he marked the greatest day of his professional life offered a reminder of the crisis facing champions in top-level sport.

When an athlete wins a major honour or realises a lifelong ambition, it is not uncommon for any feelings of satisfaction, fulfillment and joy to be eclipsed by a strange sense of emptiness, their minds preoccupied by not what they have achieved but what is to come.

Having climbed to the summit of the mountain and secured the one accolade their entire lives had been devoted toward, just where are these people meant to find the inspiration and motivation to continue the search for more?

It was a question worth pondering as Hamilton celebrated his third world championship, his second in succession, after taking his 10th victory of the 2015 season at last weekend's United States Grand Prix.

As he charged around the pit-and-paddock area of the Circuit of the Americas with a British flag sitting on his shoulders and the winners' trophy tucked under his arm, scaling the pit-wall fence and leaping into the arms of his race engineer, Hamilton was indulging in the kind of celebrations you would expect of a newly crowned champion.

.@LewisHamilton - 2015 #USGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/lAI7UEkHkk

— F1PhotographerFan (@F1Photographer_) October 28, 2015

Yet behind the high-energy craziness, as his former McLaren team-mate might put it, was the inescapable fact that Hamilton had achieved all he had ever wanted to achieve. At the age of 30.

Almost since his arrival in the sport as a 22-year-old in 2007, Hamilton had made no secret of his desire to match the title tally of his boyhood inspiration, Ayrton Senna, telling the Mail on Sunday's Jonathan McEvoy, for instance, how the Brazilian was his "only landmark."

And after matching Senna's race-victory total of 41 in September's Japanese GP, before edging clear with wins in Russia and the United States, Hamilton's third title, in statistical terms, has placed him truly alongside his idol.

While he, not for the first time in recent weeks, spoke of his intention to carry "the baton" for Senna, Hamilton—on his day of celebration—admitted the sheer magnitude of his success has left him with no direction, and no clear goal in mind, for the remainder of his career.

"For me the target was always to get the three Ayrton had," Hamilton told BBC Sport's Andrew Benson. "I don't know what's coming next. There is no-one else I want to equal or emulate."

His comments have attached greater significance to the final three rounds of the 2015 campaign, starting with this weekend's Mexican GP at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Having sealed each of his previous two championships, in 2008 and 2014, in last-race title deciders, Hamilton now finds himself in the unfamiliar position of being able to race for fun in the closing weeks of season, with no real pressure to rack up the pole positions and victories, and it will be fascinating to observe whether this will impact his performances.

With the job already done and title No. 3 in the bag, will he—subconsciously or otherwise—revert to something of a comfort zone, allow himself to be distracted, make mistakes and depart for his off-season holidays a month in advance?

Or—as the debate regarding his place among F1's all-time greats continues—will he, much like last year, gain even more confidence from his success and advance to an even higher level, increasing his focus and taking the opportunity to reinforce his superiority even when he doesn't necessarily need to?

The championship fight, if one ever existed in 2015, may be over, but Hamilton's biggest battle of the season is yet to come. Not with Vettel, you understand, or with Nico Rosberg, his Mercedes team-mate—but with himself.

This is the beginning of the rest of his career.

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Sing it out
Boy, you've got to see what tomorrow brings

@nico_rosberg had a bad day but a GREAT night. Respect. pic.twitter.com/9PrC0EW7zk

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) October 26, 2015

Things didn't quite go to plan for Nico Rosberg on Sunday, with the German losing the U.S. Grand Prix to Lewis Hamilton. The result meant he also lost his slim chances of claiming the Formula One World Championship.

He was then caught up in a cap-flinging incident with his Mercedes team-mate, as the scale of the defeat dawned on the 30-year-old in Austin, Texas.

Rosberg was able to put the defeat behind him, though, visiting Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar and taking part in a spot of karaoke. On stage, he opted for Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" as his song of choice, per the Daily Telegraph.

The moment @nico_rosberg endeared himself to me further when he chose Livin on a Prayer as his song pic.twitter.com/zaIUCLos9j

— McLarenKaren22 (@McLarenKaren22) October 26, 2015

Unfortunately, footage of the driver flexing his vocal muscles are yet to hit the Internet. It is surely only a matter of time before somebody who filmed the great moment will oblige on social media.

[Daily Telegraph]

It was inevitable, Lewis Hamilton clinching the 2015 Formula One world championship. With four races remaining heading into Sunday's United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, it was a question of when, not if, the 30-year-old would match the great Jackie Stewart's British record of three titles (only Michael Schumacher, Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel have more).

In the end, not even a hurricane could derail Hamilton's epic season. The rains came and came and came over the weekend, wiping out the second free practice session and the final part of qualifying. At some points, Noah's ark would have been a more suitable vehicle around the Circuit of the Americas than an F1 car.

Hamilton prevailed, though, after a late-race mistake from his Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, taking his fifth win in the last six races and 10th of the season. He is now 76 points clear of Vettel in second place with 75 points available over the final three races.

With the championship decided, we can step back and once again look at the bigger picture: Where does Hamilton's third title leave his legacy among the sport's greatest drivers?

Today also saw #LH44 become the first driver to claim 10 or more #F1 victories in consecutive seasons! #TheWon pic.twitter.com/f9Qmsw0wys

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) October 26, 2015

Well, his win in Austin was the 43rd of his career, moving him one ahead of Vettel and alone into third place on the career list behind Schumacher and Prost.

And, yes, Hamilton has had the best car for the last two years, but Schumacher had a similar advantage for many of his title seasons, and Prost and Ayrton Senna (who is just behind Hamilton and Vettel on the career wins list) did not win their titles tottering around in midfield-level cars.

The best drivers usually end up in the best machines and, fastest car or not, Hamilton is an incredible talent, perhaps just now testing the limits of his abilities.

Before the start of the 2014 season, when we ranked each of the 32 world champions, Hamilton was 11th (certainly not a foolproof ranking system, but it at least gives us an idea of how Hamilton measures up against drivers from other eras). After his 2014 title, he jumped to ninth, and when we update the rankings at the end of this year, he will move up again.

At that time, I wrote that if he won another title or two, "we will not be discussing Hamilton's position among the drivers of his generation, but rather among the very best drivers in history. He is already on the cusp of that discussion—maintaining his current form for a few more seasons will push him over the edge."

He is there now. Hamilton has always had the speed and raw talent to be one of the all-time greats; now he has the results to back it up.

Earlier in his career, and even at some points last season, there were times when Hamilton seemed emotionally fragile. But since Rosberg collided with him at the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix, the Brit has been on another level, winning 16 of 23 races.

He has even turned his one weakness from 2014—qualifying—into one of his greatest strengths, taking 11 poles in 16 races this year.

In the post-race press conference in Austin, Hamilton spoke about matching Senna's three championships, saying of his goal:

It was always to get the three that Ayrton had. Of course, he wasn’t from the same country as me but he was the guy that inspired me as a youngster. Now I’m like… I don’t know where it’s going next. There is no-one else I look to, that I want to equal or emulate now. I’m just going to start… as I said one race ago or something like that, I feel like I’ve got the baton now for myself and Ayrton and I’m going to carry it as far as I can, as strong as I can and keep building and see where I take it.

There is no reason to believe Hamilton will do anything but continue to burnish his own legacy.

Ferrari have closed the gap to Mercedes this year, but the Silver Arrows still have a distinct pace advantage. With the regulations largely stable again for 2016, Hamilton will be well-placed to shoot for a fourth title.

But if Vettel and Ferrari do continue to close in, it will only help Hamilton's standing in the eyes of neutral observers.

The one criticism you could possibly levy against him over the last two years is that, like Vettel in the four preceding seasons, he won with the best car. A strong challenge from Ferrari next year would give Hamilton the chance to beat Vettel in a closer fight.

Despite our attempts to do so with the world champion rankings, it will always be impossible to accurately compare drivers who never raced against each other. No one can say with any degree of certainty that Fangio was better than Schumacher, Senna was faster than Jim Clark or Stewart was more talented that Prost.

What we can say is that each of those drivers was among the best of their generation and among the best to ever drive an F1 car.

We can also say, now with more certainty than ever, that Hamilton belongs among them.

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The 2015 Russian Grand Prix could have set up a tense and exciting fight for the Formula One world championship.

It could have relaunched Nico Rosberg's title bid, given a boost to him and his fans and raised the hopes of neutrals who wanted the battle for the crown to go all the way down to the wire.

After qualifying on Saturday, that outcome seemed more likely. And when Rosberg calmly defended from Lewis Hamilton into Turn 1, it was starting to look closer to a certainty that the German would win from pole, cut Hamilton's lead to a mere 41 points and head to Austin, Texas, for the U.S. Grand Prix with momentum on his side.

But it was not to be. An issue with the throttle pedal put Rosberg out of the race, with Mercedes later revealing a failed throttle damper was the culprit.

Bitter disappointment for @nico_rosberg as he was forced to retire from the race due to a failed throttle damper pic.twitter.com/XQeDN05KkI

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) October 11, 2015

It was the cruellest blow for Rosberg, and neutrals the world over will have held their heads in their hands. As the chequered flag fell, a scenario that would have seen Rosberg take seven points off Hamilton had swung to one in which the championship leader took 25 points off his rival.

The prospective 41-point gap was up to 73 points with only 100 left to fight for, and to add insult to injury, Sebastian Vettel kicked Rosberg down to third in the standings.

The desperation was evident in Rosberg's body language as he exited the car, and though he tried to retain a positive outlook, he sounded subdued when he was interviewed on Sky Sports F1's live race coverage.

And the pain will have been all the more intense because of the four remaining races, three are at circuits on which Rosberg has proved he is fully capable of seizing the upper hand.

His qualifying performance at the Circuit of the Americas in 2014 earned him pole position, four-tenths clear of Hamilton in second. The German was far cleaner than his British rival when both pushed to the limit, and he got off the line well, leading into Turn 1.

But as has so often been the case in 2015, Rosberg's race craft let him down. It should always be hard to overtake an identical car with tyres of a similar age, but Hamilton got his rubber working better after the first round of stops and was in DRS range of Rosberg as the two W05s entered the back straight on Lap 24.

Rosberg then made two key errors. The first was operational—he later told Sky Sports he'd made a mistake in deploying his hybrid energy at a critical moment.

The second was a simple driving error. With Hamilton homing in, Rosberg stayed on his normal line, only making a half-hearted defensive feint at the last second when it was already too late.

Would Hamilton have got past in the end regardless? Maybe, but not on that lap and, given how Rosberg's pace improved a few laps later, perhaps not at all.

Rosberg's race craft has been better in 2015. A repeat of his great Saturday from last season would have given him a great opportunity on race day.

The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the venue for the Mexican Grand Prix, is an unknown for everyone. But on November 15, the F1 circus lands in Sao Paulo—and Interlagos is one of only two circuits on the modern calendar, the other is the Red Bull Ring, at which Hamilton has raced but never won.

His record there reads more like that of an aspirational midfield driver than a two-time world champion. He was seventh in 2007, fifth in 2008, third in 2009 and fourth in 2010. A pair of retirements accounted for the 2011 and 2012 races, and he could only manage ninth in 2013.

Last season, Rosberg won from pole, comfortably withstanding everything Hamilton could throw at him. Hamilton was quicker over a long run, but he was also lucky to get away with a big error—his spin on Lap 28 could very easily have put him out of the race.

The raw statistics are not kind to Hamilton—he was taken out of the lead in 2012, having qualified on pole and set the fastest lap—but if he has a bogey track, Interlagos is it.

Again, Rosberg could have capitalised.

The season will end in late November at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi—a track at which Rosberg has never been outqualified. And when his car has remained healthy, he has never finished behind a team-mate, either.

Last season, he dominated qualifying, taking pole by a margin of four-tenths of a second. Hamilton was closer to the time of third-placed Valtteri Bottas than he was to the lap of one minute, 40.480 seconds produced by Rosberg.

That familiar story was told in the race: Hamilton got a better start, led into Turn 1 and was never challenged thereafter. But had Rosberg got off the line well—and not developed the ERS failure that saw him fall to 14th—it would have been a very different race because, despite its long straights, overtaking at the Abu Dhabi circuit is not easy.

Especially not in equal machinery. Another golden opportunity.

Maybe none of that really matters now. Hamilton's 73-point lead means he needs just 27 points from the remaining races to be absolutely certain of taking the title.

Realistically, to stand any chance at all, Rosberg needs to win all the remaining races. He needs to convert the potential to be quicker over a single lap—which he has, certainly at three of the remaining four venues—into cold, hard pole positions.

He then needs to get off the line well and, at the very least, have sufficient race pace to keep his team-mate behind.

To top it off, he needs Hamilton to fail to score on at least two occasions and be off the podium at least once. Even the most optimistic Rosberg fan wouldn't put a penny on that happening.

But then, no one in their right mind would have taken a punt on a faulty throttle damper ending Rosberg's race in Sochi, and history tells us that no championship lead, however dominant it may look, is entirely secure.

The fat lady is completing her breathing exercises, exchanging final pleasantries with the composer and getting ready to stride out onto the stage. Maybe she's even wondering what her post-finale bouquet will smell like.

But for a very good reason, she isn't singing just yet.

Cast your mind back to 2007, when Kimi Raikkonen recovered from being 17 points behind—with only 20 left to play for—to win the 2007 world title. No fan could forget the unlikely, bizarre circumstances that allowed the Finn to snatch the crown for Ferrari.

And Hamilton won't have forgotten, either—he was the man Raikkonen overhauled. Relative to the Finn, the then-rookie needed to score just four points from two grands prix, something he'd achieved in 14 of the 15 races before he arrived in China for the penultimate round.

No driver could have asked for an easier task, but he retired in an absurd manner from one race and only scored two points in the other. Would a similar run of misfortune for Hamilton—perhaps a first-corner tangle in Austin and a reliability issue in Mexico City—be any less likely?

If you're a neutral, a Rosberg fan or even a Hamilton fan who'd rather see their man take the title in dramatic fashion, don't despair.

Luck, probability and the form book say there's only going to be one outcome.

But they said the same thing in 2007, and look what happened then.