For all my family, I love you all. “Why we are all wasting our time for delays, delays, delays?”, said Mercedes non-executive chairman and retired triple champion Niki Lauda before the final postponement.
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It was Rosberg’s mistake that helped make this one happen. With twenty laps to go, the race had developed into a three-way contest between Rosberg, Hamilton and Vettel in that order.
For Hamilton, that means not knowing yet if he’ll start from pole position on the track where he has won two of the last three years.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was the first British driver to take back-to-back titles and only the 10th from any nation to win more than two.
Meanwhile, F1 Head of Communications, Matteo Bonciani said on TV that they would wait another hour to see if a few runs would be possible.
A third season championship earns Hamilton a spot among the great drivers in the sport’s history.
Hamilton is the first ever Brit to win back-to-back world titles and only the second, along with Sir Jackie Stewart, to win three.
After hard qualifying when Rosberg took the pole position, Hamilton warned he’d be cautious and wouldn’t do anything “crazy”.
“This is Lewis’s day”.
“For me, that was the target”, he said.
Four-times world champion Vettel pushed Rosberg for the second place he needed to keep the title fight alive, but ultimately crossed the line in third. The second and third have been much more dominant. His closest rival has been Rosberg.
Considering the morning session was taken by drivers with a very minimal amount of laps, the afternoon rain was so heavy that the F.I.A, the governing body of motorsport for formula one, felt that the lightning mixed in would be too risky for the marshals working on the track.
It will be the fourth time in the last 11 years that Formula One has had to include qualifying the morning of the Sunday race.
Rosberg is a 5-4 chance with Hamilton, who starts second, 6-5. Hamilton regained the lead but faced deteriorating tires.
“Turn one for sure was very aggressive”, Rosberg told NBC. “Lewis came into me”. Hamilton pitted and Rosberg retook the lead. Vettel is already facing a 10-spot penalty grid because Ferrari is using a fifth engine this season.
But the race and the championship again boiled down to Mercedes duel over the final 10 laps.
And then Rosberg opened the door to the world champion.
Hamilton embraced both Rosberg and Vettel and had an emotional moment to himself, but Rosberg was clearly and understandably upset.
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“Today, so many times, I thought I’d lost the race”.
