“My belief to win individual races is as high as ever, and I showed that on Sunday”. But it still wasn’t enough to win the race. When he finally reemerged in second place, Hamilton was almost 15 seconds adrift of Rosberg-a gap that proved impossible to make up. It is not one thing that goes wrong but many things that run into each other, that is why I am extremely curious and excited to see if we got it right.
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By lap 20, Hamilton had cut the gap to 13.4s, reporting that his “tyres are fine” as he continued his pursuit of the German.
The outcome of this year’s drivers world championship may be decided by the capricious nature of Mercedes’ clutches unless the team finds a reliable solution to its ongoing poor starts.
“I can tell you now that I do have a two-year contract starting next year with McLaren-Honda”, said Button.
Hamilton attributed his problem at the start to an “inconsistent clutch”.
“I could see Nico pulling away, and while anything can happen, the chances of the win decreased lap by lap, second by second”, Hamilton added.
“We do practice starts all weekend and they are varying a little bit, and then every now and then we get a drastic variation”. It’s something we need to work on and it’s the only thing we will be talking about Tuesday. “We just had an over-production of torque and the wheels were spinning from the get-go”.
Rosberg has won back-to-back races following Hamilton’s grid penalty and third place at Spa, but the German denied the “tide” of the title battle was now going his way.
“An F1 race is never straightforward”.
The British driver’s bad start was very surprising considering the brilliant display all through the practice sessions which saw him claim pole and led to Rosberg admitting there wasn’t nothing he could have done to beat his rival on Friday and Saturday. It is never easy, but it wasn’t the toughest race.
Mercedes drivers’ have failed to take advantage of seven pole positions this season.
Unlike here two years ago when Rosberg made two separate mistakes at the first chicane to gift-wrap victory to Hamilton, an error-free performance from the German saw him secure his second lights-to-flag win in as many weekends, and his seventh of the season.
Rosberg insists that his approach to the championship has not changed.
All the other leading teams were on a two-stop and while there was excitement with some battles here and there, it was a largely mundane race.
“I really feel close to the Italian culture in many ways”.
Rosberg’s self-belief and confidence, which took a heavy hit during July, is also rising. “I felt good on qualifying pace as well, just that Lewis had his best day of the year, and when he has his best day of the year, it is hard to beat him”. “We have to address that topic because it lost him the race”.
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Matthew Walthert is an F1 columnist for Bleacher Report UK.
