#F1 – Championship in the balance

As we reach the mid-season break in the 2016 Formula 1 racing calendar, I think it's fair to say the pendulum has swung emphatically back Lewis Hamilton's way.  Although Nico Rosberg's early dominance left Hamilton 43 points adrift in the title race – as Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle described the German as a man "who cannot stop winning" – the incident between the two of them in Barcelona seems to have been a tipping point, allowing Hamilton to seize the momentum and precipitating a run of rotten bad fortune for Rosberg.

But such changes of fortune are, to an extent, to be expected in sport.  Any rivalry will ebb and flow – and although Hamilton has now overtaken his teammate to pull 19 points ahead as we go into the summer break, this year's World Championship still hangs very much in the balance.  Rosberg can fight back.

What he can't fight is an uneven playing field, and I fear that inconsistency in the way the rules are applied, and the way drivers are penalised for breaking the rules, is having too much of an impact on results.  Whoever ends up becoming the World Champion this year, that should not be because of discrepancies in the stewards' decisions, or slapdash application of regulations – as in any sport, the rules must apply equally and fairly to all, and every effort must be made to ensure that every driver is treated the same by those who decide what is fair racing and what isn't, and who hand out punishments when it is not.

At the moment, we are not seeing this.  We frequently see a driver penalised for a move a carbon copy of which another driver previously got away with.  And we are seeing the rules change from one weekend to the next; on track limits, radio communications, etc., the goalposts keep being moved.  This makes for race weekends where focus is being taken away from the action on track and diverted to lengthy discussions about the latest tweaks to the regulations – and it results in wheel-to-wheel racing where drivers are hesitant to make an overtaking move, as they cannot be sure whether their racing instinct will be applauded, or saddle them with a time penalty.

Uncertainty, inconsistency, and a completely lack of clarity – if you wanted a masterclass in how to ruin great racing, this is it.

Today at Hockenheim, Nico Rosberg was awarded a five second time penalty for an overtake on Max Verstappen, where it was deemed he "forced Verstappen off the circuit".  If those are the rules, then I suppose that's fair enough – but we have all seen other drivers make overtakes almost identical to Rosberg's, and not be punished in any way.  Perhaps most notably, Lewis Hamilton on Rosberg himself in the USA last year – the race at which the British driver clinched his third World Championship title.

One of these moves resulted in a five second time penalty.
The other warranted no action from the stewards.  Fair?

And speaking of Lewis Hamilton, a very interesting thing happened in Free Practice this weekend.  Hamilton was deemed to have been involved in an unsafe release from his pit box during the practice session; his punishment for this was a fine.  The only other time when a driver has been penalised with a fine for unsafe release in Free Practice – as opposed to being given a grid penalty or formal reprimand – was at the 2015 Brazilian Grand Prix, when the driver in question, Jolyon Palmer, couldn't be given a grid penalty because he was only a test driver doing a practice session and wouldn't be competing in the race anyway.

2014 Spanish GP, JEV 10 place penalty for unsafe release in FP
2015 Belgian GP, Kvyat reprimand for unsafe release in FP

— Jack/F1StatMan (@F1StatMan) July 30, 2016

2016 Australian GP, Haryanto 3 place penalty and 2 penalty points for unsafe release in FP

— Jack/F1StatMan (@F1StatMan) July 30, 2016

So why wasn't Hamilton given the same penalty that every other driver in that situation in recent years has been given?  Were the stewards just being soft on him?  Hamilton already has two reprimands this year; a third is serious – a guaranteed ten-place grid penalty.  But if other drivers got reprimanded for the same transgression, then he should too – otherwise, it simply amounts to special treatment.

I guess my big concern is that something like this will end up being the deciding factor in who gets the be World Champion this year – that the allocation of penalties is so random (and so completely baffling at times!) that a driver will end up being denied a race win or a Word Championship title because of shonky, off-the-cuff stewarding.  If we reach the end of this season, and we can look back and say "decision x was what meant that so-and-so won, or did not win, the title" that will not be in any way good for the sport.

It is time for transparency in rule-making, clarity of meaning, and consistency in application.  That is the only way we can ensure a level playing field for racing hard, but racing fair – and the only way we can ensure that the World Championship winner truly deserves his crown.

#F1 – Nico Rosberg deserves his early season success

It wasn't that long ago that I was beginning to think Nico Rosberg – talented racing driver though he undoubtedly is – would never win a Formula 1 World Championship.  It wasn't because he wasn't good enough (he quite clearly was) or had the right car – Mercedes GP has been the team to beat over the past few seasons.  But so often recently, he just hasn't quite seemed to have the ruthless 'edge' that a true champion needs.

Rosberg's success in the early part of this year is all the more remarkable because of this.  We are talking about a driver who has spent most of the last two years living and racing in the shadow of one of F1's most flamboyant and polarising characters – and one of its most naturally aggressive and stylish wheel-to-wheel racers – in Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton.  There is no question in my mind that, psychologically, this will have taken its toll on Rosberg.

Even in the final races of last season, when we were treated to a small preview of the Rosberg dominance that was to follow in 2016, it would've been easy to dismiss the German's six consecutive pole positions and three wins as being the result of Hamilton's subconsciously relaxing sightly having already secured his third world title.

But this year, with the scores reset, and everything up for grabs, Rosberg has been quickest out of the blocks in the first few races of the season.  A hat-trick of wins has allowed him to stamp his authority on the 2016 season right from the start.

Slow to start, and plagued by reliability issues, Hamilton has already slipped to a thirty-six points behind his team-mate, and with a whole lot of work to do already just to claw back that deficit and be in a position to defend his Championship title.

Rosberg has been so impressive. I can only imagine what it takes mentally to come back from two years of being noticeably second best. #F1

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) April 17, 2016

There will, of course, be plenty who are still to be convinced by Rosberg's credentials as a potential World Champion – and the job is far from done, despite his blistering start this year.  Expect Lewis Hamilton to fight back, as any great racer would, and expect Rosberg to have his own fair share of technical difficulties; this is not over yet, by any means.

But I think it is to Rosberg's credit that he has refused simply to play second fiddle to Hamilton for a third year running.  I wrote last year (in what is, incidentally, one of my most-read Formula 1 posts ever!) that, having been beaten to the title by his team-mate once, Rosberg looked as if he felt like a 'number two driver', and that translated to racing like one; I said he needed to rediscover his faith in his own abilities.

He is making a strong statement now that he has done that – that he is more than just a 'number two driver', but someone who has confidence in who he is and his own style of driving once again.  Now, he is out to show his critics that he does have 'what it takes' to challenge for supremacy within the team, and ultimately, to be a Champion – and I, for one, find that seriously impressive after so much time spent barely being able to get close to Hamilton.

All of which is setting up a very interesting situation for this season's racing.  And what could be better than that?  Well, to end on one of my constant refrains about racing – the best bit of all is that it is real, not artificially created in a lab by Bernie Ecclestone and his nefarious henchmen engineering the situation.  Thank heavens for that!

#F1: Pressure's on in Monza

A few significant talking points dominated the Italian Grand Prix at Monza yesterday.  The first, and most obvious in terms of the World Championship, was how unassailable Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes look.  With Hamilton stretching the gap over his teammate to an enormous 53 points, I think there's no way anybody will catch him for the title now.  As for Rosberg, he looks a shadow of his 2014 self as the effects of being schooled by Hamilton every weekend begin to take their toll, and I am starting to doubt whether he will ever win a World Championship.

But Hamilton was also at the centre of one of the more contentious issues from yesterday's race.  Shortly before the end, Hamilton's race engineer instructed him to put in some flying laps – an odd decision, considering that he was cruising to almost-certain victory with a gap to Sebastian Vettel in second place of over twenty seconds.

Why the sudden need to hurry?  Speculation was rife that Mercedes were worried about an issue, and that they needed enough time between their man and Vettel's Ferrari to be able to squeeze in an extra pitstop if necessary – but if Hamilton's tyres were going off, he would've felt that in the car and said something to his team before they had picked it up, and if it were an engine issue the sensible precaution would be to slow down and nurse the car to the end (there were fewer than five laps to go, at this point), rather than push the machinery even harder.

All soon became clear, however, as it was revealed that Mercedes were under investigation for having left rear tyres (on both their cars) which were suspected of being below the minimum tyre pressure, as set by F1's tyre manufacturer Pirelli.  A lower tyre pressure is supposed to give the cars more performance, but Pirelli had raised their stipulated minimum pressures considerably from the previous race in Belgium, following criticism from teams and drivers regarding tyre failures at Spa Francorchamps.

As Hamilton celebrated victory on the Monza podium, in front of the usual crowd of passionate Italian racing fans, we waited to see if he would be disqualified for being 0.3 PSI below the required pressure in one tyre.

In the end, the enquiry exonerated Mercedes, and Hamilton's win was allowed to stand.  To me, though, it looks awfully like getting off on a mere technicality.  As I understood the rule, what mattered was the outcome of whether the tyre pressures were legal or not, not the procedures the team followed – and yet Mercedes were let off because they had done the right things, even though it had still produced an illegal result in one of Hamilton's tyres.  Their defence, essentially, seems to have been "well, we didn't mean to!"  That might count for something, of course – but ultimately, breaking the rules is breaking the rules, regardless.

Regardless also of the fact that Hamilton didn't actually gain an advantage from the infringement.  This was another common defence from fans on Twitter, and a point raised in Hamilton's interview immediately after the race on Sky Sports; once again, however, breaking a rule should carry a punishment, whether you actually benefit from breaking it or not.  If not, why bother to have the rules at all?

I think, though, the main culprit in all of this is Pirelli themselves.  Their tyres are simply not good enough.  I have said this before, and it remains my position that the sooner this disastrous 'high-degradataion' tyre experiment is ended, the better it will be for Formula 1.  The only reason we were in the situation at all was because tyres had failed at the previous Grand Prix in Spa, and so Pirelli had to take emergency action to make sure their shonky product didn't end up hurting anybody.  I don't see that as a tenable situation for F1, which is supposed to be a byword for the very best in the world – the best drivers, engineers, machinery, technology, and yes, tyres.

There is no excuse for teams or drivers not following the rules – and if they don't, they should be punished accordingly.  But when those rules have been hastily cobbled together to spare the blushes of a tyre manufacture whose product ca be trusted to operate properly within the existing regulations, that hardly seems fair either.  A serious overhaul of tyres in F1 is needed.

The other main thing which seemed to be on everyone's minds throughout the Grand Prix weekend was: would F1 be coming back to Monza next year?

Sebastian Vettel's thoughts on this were pretty clear…

I agree with him completely.  This is a classic race; it is steeped in motorsport history.  If Monza is allowed to go the way of Magny Cours, Imola, Hockenheim, and other classic circuits with more racing heritage than a hundred soulless specially-built compounds in the middle of the desert could ever hope to have, it truly will spell the end for Formula 1.

#F1 in Spa

Apologies for being a little late with a post about Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps – and also for having missed writing about the last couple of races altogether.

Spa is a classic circuit, and always a favourite with the fans.  Sadly, this probably means its days are numbered – like Monza's, Hockenheim's, etc. – so it can make way for another brand new sterile complex in the middle of nowhere in a country where no one's heard of Formula 1.  (But that's a rant for another time…)

Lewis Hamilton, as he has been practically all of this season, was sublime in Belgium.  He has his third World Championship all but in the bag already – it will take an extraordinary set of circumstances now for him not to win it again this year.  Teammate Nico Rosberg, by comparison, is lacking in confidence and doesn't truly believe he can compete with Hamilton on an equal footing.  We are seeing this especially at race starts – the Mercedes is not the quickest car off the line, but Rosberg's starting in the past few Grands Prix has been abysmal.  In Belgium, he slipped from a front row grid slot down to about fifth, being overtaken by several slower cars behind him.

I think the only thing that will 'save' Rosberg now, if he ever wants to be a World Champion, is to change teams.  If he stays at Mercedes, and continues to partner Hamilton, he will always feel outclassed – and so, he will always be outclassed.

Another team where is noticeably better than the other is Lotus, who had their best race for quite some time at Spa.  Following a dismal 2014, their car this year has been quite a lot better, but they haven't really been able to recapture the form they showed in 2012 and 2013, when Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean were both podium regulars.  Grosjean's inspired drive in Belgium was his and the team's best result, and first podium finish, since the USA Grand Prix in Austin in 2013 and it was good to see him back on the podium after all this time, beaming from ear to ear and enjoying to the full a thoroughly well-deserved third place.

I have long considered Grosjean to be a very talented driver, and always felt he would 'come good' even during his troubled period when most dismissed him as a 'first lap nutcase' (in the words of Mark Webber, who was then driving for Red Bull – when the chip on his shoulder didn't slow him down too much).  But, as I have said before, Lotus are continually suffering from only having one driver who seems able to compete for points on a regular basis.

It remains a source of confusion for me that, of the two Lotus drivers, Pastor Maldonado is the one who is already a race winner, not Grosjean.  But that one win of Maldonado's, from his time with the Williams team, is something of an anomaly compared to the rest of his record in F1.  It's not that Maldonado is without talent – he certainly has his moments, and can be a very quick driver – but his 'moments' are few and far between, and he is far too inconsistent a driver to be of much worth to the Lotus team.  Grosjean has scored 38 points so far this season – more than three times Maldonado's current tally of 12 – and has only retired three times this season, compared to Maldonado's seven retirements.

Grosjean's third place last weekend allowed Lotus to climb to fifth in the Constructors' table, one point above mid-grid rivals Force India – but they're not going to stay there.  Force India have, in Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Pérez, two drivers capable of scoring points regularly; Lotus are relying on one driver to bring home the lion's share of their points, and this is going to end up hurting them in their battle to come out on top of a tightly-packed, highly competitive midfield.

The other issue which dominated the Belgian Grand Prix was tyre failures.  Nico Rosberg's Qualifying (and possibly his confidence for the race the next day, as well) was ruined by a tyre failure, and Sebastian Vettel's dramatic tyre explosion only a couple of laps before the end, as he fought with Grosjean's Lotus for third place, was a big talking point immediately after the race.  The two schools of thought are as follows…

Some people are saying that Ferrari were running the tyre right on its limit by trying to do a one-stop race, and that it was dangerous for them not to bring their driver in and change the tyres instead of letting him drive around on tyres already so old and worn – and also that Vettel was consistently running wide over the kerbs at Eau Rouge in his efforts to keep Grosjean (who was considerable quicker, and on newer tyres) behind him in the final few laps of the race.

On the other hand, Vettel's post-race interview showed him being absolutely livid with Pirelli for the tyre bursting – he said the company keeps making excuses for tyres failing (it was debris, there was a cut, you went wide, etc.), and that these things are to be expected during a Grand Prix race and so Pirelli should make tyres able to cope with them.

Personally, I can see both sides of the coin here.  I think Vettel is right in that the margin of error in the tyres' durability should not be so fine that a single piece of debris, or an adventure on the kerbs, is enough to cause a potentially extremely dangerous accident.  But then, I have long been a vocal and exasperated critic of the disastrous experiment with 'high degradation' Pirelli tyres!  I also think, however, that Vettel claiming (as he did in his interview) that he wasn't running wide, when we clearly saw him on TV doing exactly that several laps in a row, is laughable.

The application of the 'track limits' rule is so sloppy and inconsistent I, frankly, wonder why they bother to have it at all.  The rule refers to 'gaining an advantage' by driving outside the stated limits of the racetrack; if the guy behind you is quicker, and braking later for the corners than you are (as was the case as Grosjean hunted Vettel down in the last part of last weekend's Grand Prix), and you're consistently cutting a corner in order to keep yourself ahead of him (as Vettel did at Eau Rouge), there's no way anybody can say you haven't 'gained an advantage' by doing so!  It is 'an advantage' to stay in third instead of slipping to fourth place – and Vettel should have been punished by the stewards for going outside the track limits in order to keep from losing the place to Grosjean.

#F1 – Mercedes Pit-iful in Monaco

What a screw-up!  Lewis Hamilton was certain to win the Monaco Grand Prix today – until, only a few laps from the end, Mercedes pitted him under the Safety Car, and caused him to be fed back into the train of cars in third place, behind teammate Nico Rosberg and Ferrari's Sesbastian Vettel.

The reasoning behind this baffling strategic call by Mercedes has not yet come out.  Mercedes have apologised, and they claim they 'got the numbers wrong', thinking they had enough time to get Hamilton back out in the lead after stopping for tyres.  But why did they pit him at all?  Even if he'd had a lead of over a minute, he didn't need new tyres, and stopping under the Safety Car was a completely unnecessary risk.  (The teams' explanation they worried Hamilton would be vulnerable if Vettel stopped for new tyres under the Safety Car strikes me as little more than ex post facto excuse-making; had Hamilton stayed out, he could've controlled the race to end once the Safety Car came in, and even if Vettel had been quicker on new tyres Rosberg was between them acting as a cushion for Hamilton – on the tight, twisty Monaco street circuit, where it is notoriously difficult to overtake, there is no way Vettel would've caught up to the lead with only a few laps to go.)

My reading of the situation is that teams normally see a Safety Car period as an opportunity to take a 'free' pit stop; it allows them to bring a car in for fresh tyres, but without losing time relative to the other runners on-track, as the Safety Car bunches the whole field up and control the pace.  Teams try to react to this quickly, in order to make the most of this opportunity, and I think that is what Mercedes did today – they pitted Hamilton because that is their default reaction as soon as they see that the Safety Car has been deployed.  In other words, it was a knee-jerk reaction, not a strategic decision; another example of Mercedes switching off tactically, and resting on their laurels of having the fastest car a little too much.

In the end, the decision didn't hurt the Mercedes team too much – their drivers finished in first and third, instead of the first and second places they would have been in line to get, so they only ceded three points to Ferrari in that respect.  But in the individual Drivers' Championship, Hamilton dropped points to his closest rival, instead of extending his lead – that has to hurt.

The important thing for Hamilton, though, is how he responds to this.  His interview on the podium was rather more mature and gracious than I had expected from a driver who has a reputation for 'wearing his heart on his sleeve' (read: 'sulking') when things get difficult for him.  In private, though, Hamilton will be raging – and he has every right to! – but he has to try and channel that energy positively.

If Hamilton starts to see himself as a victim, he will only make things worse for himself.  The inevitable paranoid nonsense has been bandied about social media by 'fans' – but the idea that the Mercedes team did this deliberately (either of their own volition, or at Rosberg's behest) is patently absurd.  As I wrote last year (also during the Monaco Grand Prix, funnily enough) on a very similar topic:

To allow oneself to slip into a 'victim' mentality is one of the worst things that can happen to a world-class sportsman.  If Hamilton starts to believe he is the subject of some conspiracy within the Mercedes AMG F1 team, he will effectively derail his hopes of claiming a second Word Drivers' Championship victory this season; he will become paranoid and resentful, and he will start to kick against his team instead of working with them, and he will cease to make calm, rational decisions on the track, instead allowing himself to become motivated by revenge and an attempt to vindicate himself. 

… 

Luck plays a part in any sport.  Part of being a successful sportsman is the acceptance that you don't always get the rub of the green, and sometimes things will go against you; those who are at the very top of their game, in any area, are those who deal with that the best, and getting sucked into the downward psychological spiral of a 'siege' mentality is not the way to do that.

Speaking of luck, d'you know who doesn't have any?  Pastor Maldonado.  The Lotus driver still has not taken the chequered flag in any of this season's six races so far; I know I've brought this up before, but I really do wonder how much longer the team will persist with him.  After Qualifying yesterday, I predicted:

Maldonado may’ve out-qualified Grosjean for once – but what’s the betting he does something stupid, and it’s Romain who delivers points? #F1

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) May 23, 2015 

And so it proved.  Both Lotus drivers looked extremely quick throughout free practice, and in Qualifying…  In the race, however, it was a different story – Grosjean kept himself out of trouble, and despite a five-place grid penalty which left him start in fifteenth, he gradually inched his way up into the lower end of the points positions, and would've stayed there had be not been rammed from behind by the Toro Rosso of Max Verstappen (the incident which precipitated Mercedes' pigs ear pitstops!).  Maldonado, on the other hand, was involved in yet another incident, and adds yet another DNF to his rather unimpressive record.

It is easy to say that this incident was not entirely Maldonado's fault – indeed it is easy to say that for many of the incidents which the Venezuelan has been involved in, and there certainly is some truth in that – but he hasn't finished a single race this year, and that record speaks for itself.  There's only so much bad fortune anyone can have, before you start to wonder whether there's a reason all that bad luck keeps happening to the same guy…

The fact of the matter is, good drivers don't constantly put themselves in situations where bad things can happen to them.  They stay out of trouble.  Maldonado is the opposite of this – his bull-in-a-china-shop approach makes him a magnet for on-track incidents, and the result is no points, and a whole lot of repairs for the team to do.  The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that he will be replaced before the season's even over.

But over at McLaren, the long wait for points is finally over, as Jenson Button scored four points for his eighth place finish today.  They told us to wait until Spain – which was another damp squib for them – but this time out in Monaco, they finally got on the scoresheet.  Can it last, though?  The hard-to-overtake nature of the Monte Carlo street circuit will have helped them out a lot, and Canada (next time out) will be a very different proposition; I doubt Button will be able to keep a Toro Rosso or a Lotus behind him for so many laps at a track like that, they way he managed to this afternoon.  Canada could well bring McLaren down to earth with a bump!

#F1 – Too little, too late for Rosberg?

A first victory in Formula 1 this year for Nico Rosberg, and he seems so much happier now.  He beat his teammate Lewis Hamilton fair-and-square in Qualifying and in the race for the first time in a long, long time, and he will be feeling so much better about himself as a racing driver now.

I wrote after the Chinese Grand Prix a few weeks ago about the huge psychological effects his underwhelming start to this season have had on Nico Rosberg.  He has looked like Hamtilon's 'number two' at every race so far this season, and he hasn't really seemed to believe that he has what it takes to beat his teammate on track.  In Spain, however, he did believe – and his belief was vindicated, as he stood on the top step of the Podium for the first time since Brazil last year.

So, what does this mean for the Championship?  I think it's rather too early to start describing this as a 'resurgence' for Rosberg – one race win, ultimately, doesn't mean much (remember when Maldonado won this same Grand Prix, a few years back?) – but it is certainly an interesting prospect.

Rosberg will be buoyed by this.  He seemed much more like his old self this weekend – more like the Rosberg of 2014, who fought tooth-and-nail with Hamilton, and who genuinely believed he had what it took to win the title.  And this has come at a good time for him.

This race was very much a 'last chance saloon', after the disappointment of the opening four races; his chance of winning the championship this year had all but gone, and his chances of ever being a World Champion were starting to fade.  He's still on the ropes, but he's proven – to himself; to Hamilton; to his team; and to everyone else – that he can do it.  He can still take the fight to Hamilton, and beat him.  And the next race he'll be going into, on the back of this victory, with all the positive energy that will bring, is Monaco – his home race, where he has a winning record, where he knows he can do well.

How Hamilton responds to this, however, will be crucial.  He will want to reestablish his dominance, and not allow Rosberg to ride a wave of enthusiasm into Monaco and start to build some momentum, and a little winning streak of his own.  The peculiarities of Monaco will mean that much of this will come down to Qualifying.  Is that where this year's Championship will, ultimately, be won and lost?

Elsewhere, McLaren's woes continue.  Still no points, and another retirement for Fernando Alonso, and their season is slipping away fast.  This race was supposed to be the big turning point for them; after a dismal start to the year, the team told everyone to be patient, and wait for Spain – that was where things would start to look up for them.  Alonso believed the team could win its first points of 2015 at his home race.  Well, we waited for Spain – but nothing has changed.  The problems McLaren are having look bigger than anybody thought, and this entire season is going to be a write-off for them.

Pastor Maldonado, also, has seen no upturn in his fortunes this weekend.  He has still not completed any of the races he has started so far this season, and I don't think Lotus are going to put up with this any longer.  It may not always be his fault, but the fact is he always seems to get himself in scrapes.  Lotus have improved hugely from their torrid 2014 season, and they now have a car capable of winning points – but that mid-to-low end of the points positions is the tightest, most competitive part of the entire field, and they find themselves fighting with other teams as desperate as they are.  In that scenario, you need to have two drivers who are able to get into the mix and bring home points for the team.

At the moment, Lotus are relying solely on the solid but unremarkable seventh- and eighth-place finishes of Romain Grosjean; if they had two drivers finishing in that sort of area on a semi-regular basis, they would have overtaken Sauber in the Constructors' Championship by now.  Personally, I think this year will be Maldonado's last season in Formula 1.

#F1 – Why does it always Bahrain on me?

When I wrote about last week's Chinese Grand Prix, the focus was entirely on Nico Rosberg's psychological struggles, and how disadvantaged he's been compared to his teammate so far this season.  In Bahrain, Rosberg seemed happier and more relaxed – and as a consequence, he drove better.  He still had to settle for third in the end, though…

Hamilton was relatively comfortable throughout the race, and he led most of the laps.  Ultimately, I don't think the win was ever in doubt, for him.  However, Ferrari showed that their resurgence in Malaysia at the start of the month was not a flash in the pan – they really have got a package which can challenge Mercedes, and two drivers capable of scoring points and podium finishes.  That makes them genuinely threatening.

In the first three races of this year, it has been Sebastian Vettel who has been doing the business for Ferrari, taking the fight to the Mercedes of Hamilton and Rosberg; Kimi Räikkönen, by contrast, has been a little disappointing – often through no fault of his own.  It has been interesting to see Vettel in this role of 'challenger', actually, after he was so frequently criticised during his time at Red Bull as being too reliant on Adrian Newey's masterful engineering, and only being so dominant by dint of having by far the best car on the track.  This theory was borne out last year when Red Bull were no longer the dominant team, and Vettel seemed to fall away as his young teammate Daniel Ricciardo was the one to cease victory from Mercedes on a few occasions.

This season, however, Vettel has definitely answered his critics – and emphatically.  This year's Ferrari is a very good car, but it still plays a meek second fiddle to the might of the Mercedes.  Vettel has been able to match Mercedes, and beat them, in the second-best car.  The answer is that Vettel is not a race winner only when he has the best car – but he is a race winner when he has a car in which he feel comfortable.  Last year's Red Bull was not a car Vettel enjoyed driving, and his performances demonstrated that; at Ferrari, Vettel feels happier, and so he is driving better.

Räikkönen, too, feels much better in this year's Ferrari than he did in last year's car – and this time out, he showed that he is also a threat to the pace-setters at Mercedes.  Räikkönen was his usual, laconic self – but I expect that he will secretly be quite pleased to be back on the podium, and to seem more on level terms with a multiple World Championship-winning teammate in a way he never managed when he was paired with Fernando Alonso at Ferrari last season.

Further down the order, Williams' race was compromised by Felipe Massa's failure to launch for the formation lap, but Valteri Bottas drove an excellent race to keep Vettel behind him and finish fourth.  Daniel Ricciardo is still the real deal, hauling the Red Bull into sixth place where its Renault engine doesn't really deserve to be.  However, his teammate Daniil Kvyat has had a troubled start to this season, with the Bahrain Grand Prix being no exception, which leads me to question Red Bull's strategy of promoting young drivers from their junior programme so soon – I'm not sure whether Kvyat wouldn't have benefited more from a second season at Toro Rosso, rather than being fast-tracked into the senior team, with all the added pressure that entails, at just twenty years old.

For Lotus, a vastly improved car and a switch from Renault engines to Mercedes engines has brought more consistent points finishes – but only from one driver.  Romain Grosjean has brought home all the team's points so far, while Pastor Maldonado has failed to finish a single race this year.  Now that Lotus have a competitive car again, they need two competitive drivers if they are to amass points and realise their potential – there is only so long that Maldonado's erratic ways can be tolerated by a team fighting in a packed midfield.

Finally, I have felt for a long time that it is not right to try and make Formula One 'more exciting' artificially.  Obviously, we all hope races will be exciting – but occasionally they aren't, and that's just a part of the sport.  Much was made of the spectacle created by titanium skid plates sparking against the tarmac during the Bahrain Grand Prix – this does have a practical function, but it is also true that this was a decision made with improving 'the show' in mind.  I am quoted in this BBC Sport article on the topic (rather amusingly described as 'a purist' – they must've read my previous F1 posts!) which goes into more detail in this area.  I will admit that the sparks did look pretty awesome – what worries me, though, is that sparks cease to be a by-product of parts of the car touching the track surface for whatever reason, and start to become an aim in themselves…

If engineers are being required by the rules of the sport to design and create cars which look good, it starts to become theatre, not racing.  Racing cars should be designed to go as quickly as possible (within the rules), and however they look is how they look.  All that matters is the performance.  If designers have to consider aesthetics as well, this could impact negatively on the performance and therefore on the quality of the racing, and this would not be a good thing.

The 'look' of the race should always be secondary to the actual competition of racing; if sparking and other excitement is genuine, that's great – but if it isn't, we shouldn't try to add it in artificially.

#F1: Mind games in China

Today's Chinese Grand Prix may have been described as 'unremarkable' or even 'dull' by many fans, but it has added some interesting new details to the overall narrative of this 2015 Formula 1 season.  Following a somewhat unexpected challenge from a resurgent Ferrari team who ended up taking victory in Malaysia two weekends ago, Mercedes were back on top in Shanghai, and it was more or less 'business as usual' for Lewis Hamilton, with the World Champion Qualifying on Pole, leading every lap of the Grand Prix and taking the win at the end.

However, the continually shifting dynamics of Hamilton's relationship with his teammate Nico Rosberg have been fascinating to follow so far this season, and this weekend was no exception.  As I wrote after the race in Malaysia, Rosberg has seemed cowed and timid compared to last year, seeming still to be suffering the psychological effects of losing the Championship to his teammate last year – Hamilton, by contrast, has been confident and self-assured.  I think the Mercedes team have noticed this too, and there have been plenty of reports that Rosberg was told to 'toughen up' and be 'more aggressive' for the race in China.  He certainly changed his approach in response to this – but it was a disaster for him.

I think Hamilton and Rosberg are intrinsically different characters.  Of course, this is no bad thing – and it doesn't mean that either man's mindset is empirically 'better' or 'worse' than the other's.  Last year, stable, unflappable Rosberg often seemed to have a psychological edge over the more emotional Hamilton; his calm, steely demeanour meant he was better able to deal with setbacks, and the pressures of fighting a close title battle with his teammate and friend, than Hamilton, whose volatility often left him vulnerable and exposed.  To put it simply, Rosberg raced with his head while Hamilton raced with his heart.

Unfortunately for Rosberg, now that Hamilton has beaten him to the title once, he is struggling to come to terms with that.  He feels like a Number 2 driver – and so, he acts like one, and he races like one.

I mentioned after Malaysia about how 'jittery' Rosberg seemed – especially in the way that he seemed to be always on the radio to his team asking for more information about what was going on in the race.  In trying to be 'more aggressive' this time out, he simply came over as surly and sulky.  I think Rosberg has (mistakenly) interpreted the team's instructions to be more aggressive as telling him to be more like Hamilton – and, not being cut from the same cloth as his teammate, this approach isn't working for him.

Rosberg needs to be his own man, and race his own way.  He needs to return to the mindset he had last year – that although they are very different in many ways, he is Hamilton's equal, and is capable of beating him on merit.  At the moment, Rosberg doesn't seem to be able to believe he is capable of beating his teammate, and that lack of belief is manifesting itself either in a strange timidity which we have been unused to seeing from the German, or in a morose demeanour which may make people want to stay well clear of him on track, but certainly isn't helping him go any faster.

Nico Rosberg is a very good racing driver, with plenty of strengths of his own.  It may be difficult for him to keep faith in his own way of doing things, having been (as he will no doubt see it) bested last season by Hamilton's 'heart-on-his-sleeve' approach.  But at the moment, he is not comfortable in his own skin, and that translates to being uncomfortable in the car; he is still pulling in the results at the moment, because the Mercedes is still the best overall package in the paddock, but the team won't put up with a sulky, malcontent, underperforming driver forever.

Rosberg has the potential to be a World Champion, but he needs to stop comparing himself to Hamilton and rediscover his belief in himself as a driver if he is ever to realise that potential.  The longer this saga goes on, the less likely it becomes that he will achieve that goal this season – and the affects of losing out to Hamilton two years running could finish him off.  Is it 'now or never' for Nico?

#F1 – Mercedes unsettled, Ferrari resurgent

Quite a few interesting things to have come out of yesterday's Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang.  The big headlines were the first Ferrari victory since Spain 2013 – and the return of Sebastian Vettel to the top of the Podium, after a win-less season in 2014.  But we'll get to that…

In his interview for the BBC ahead of the race itself yesterday, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg spoke of the disappointment of narrowly losing last year's Championship title to teammate Lewis Hamilton; however, he also said that he was 'over it' after just one day.  I'm sorry, Nico, but I'm just not buying it!

When you look at his driving (both yesterday, and two weekends ago in Melbourne), Rosberg is still very clearly feeling the effects of having lost out to his teammate at the end of the 2014 season.  Where Hamilton appears relaxed, confident and assertive on track – clearly a driver who is enjoying himself, and who has found a rhythm in the car – Rosberg seems cowed and nervous by comparison.  On several occasions, Rosberg has pulled out of overtaking manoeuvres, or has seemed half-hearted under braking, in a way which would've been quite uncharacteristic of him last year – and the way in which he is so frequently asking his team for information about other cars and other teams over the radio makes him seem jittery and unsure of himself.

To me, it seems obvious that Rosberg has not yet recovered psychologically from the toll of the 2014 title battle, and the damage which losing to Hamilton caused him; he won't truly be back to his old self until he can take the fight to Hamilton on track – and win – to start building his confidence back up.  Unfortunately for him, there seems little chance of his actually achieving this, at the moment – Hamilton has looked in another class so far this season, and he has made Rosberg (himself an exceptional racing driver) look naïve and ordinary by comparison.  Rosberg knows this too, and as a consequence Hamilton has him beaten before they even get into the cars.

However, for all his confidence, and all his momentum so far this season, Hamilton has his weaknesses too.  And this is where Vettel comes back into the picture…  I don't think Hamilton and the Mercedes team expected such a robust challenge from Ferrari this weekend, and I think the result was the Vettel caught them napping slightly.  For an élite racing team, that's pretty poor.

Once Hamilton realised he had a fight on his hands in the shape of Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari, he became agitated and surly, snapping at his race engineer over the radio and appearing to criticise the team for strategy decisions in public.  For all his tremendous natural racing flair, Hamilton is a driver who is quick to react when he believes he has been wronged – I wrote last year that his achilles' heel as a sportsman is how quickly he allows himself to descend into a 'victim' mentality when he feels things aren't going his way, and we saw signs of this again towards the end of yesterday's race, as he began to see a Vettel win as the most likely outcome of the afternoon's racing.

Hamilton can complain all he likes that he was put on the wrong tyre by his team, and that this is why he lost the race to Vettel, but this is just sour grapes – Vettel looked the better driver for the vast majority of the Grand Prix, and the Ferrari was clearly the fastest car in a straight line.  Hamilton could have been on any tyres, and it wouldn't have made a huge amount of difference, Vettel was just too strong for him.  Vettel thoroughly deserved to win in Sepang yesterday.  He was confident and self-assured, and he is obviously loving life at Ferrari!  I wonder whether this story strikes anyone else as familiar, though?  A confident, young German driver with a ruthless competitive instinct and forensic attention to detail who already has a few World Championships under his belt moves to a Ferrari team who've spent a few years in the wilderness, drifting aimlessly along while other teams take the glory – before long, Ferrari become a force to be reckoned with once more…

So, is Vettel the new Schumacher?  Well, more than one thing contributes to a racing team's success – that much is obvious.  But the fact that Vettel has been a positive influence at Ferrari, and that their return to form is at least partly linked to his arrival at the team, is (to me) self-evident.

But credit must also go to the designers – in particular, James Allison, poached from Lotus a couple of seasons ago.  It is worth remembering that when Schumacher left Benetton for Ferrari at the end of the 1995 season, he took with him the technical team of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne who had made the Benetton team so successful; although he didn't come from the same team as Vettel, or at exactly the same time, Allison seems now to be filling that rôle, and the car he has designed for this season is better than anything Ferrari have produced for a number of years.

In short, for the first time in quite a while, we are seeing a Ferrari team with purpose and direction – a Ferrari team hungry to achieve success once more.  The link between this upturn in performance and the arrivals of Allison and Vettel is too strong to ignore; their influence is clearly having a big affect on Ferrari.  So where does this leave Kimi Räikkönen?

Räikkönen had a pretty torrid season last year – his first back with Ferrari after his sabbatical, and subsequent stint with Lotus – and played a poor second fiddle to Fernando Alonso throughout the season.  Although I would give the edge to Alonso on pure racing ability, Räikkönen is a great driver in his own right (and a former World Champion too, let's not forget!), and I do not think the gulf between him and Alonso is anything like as large as it seemed to be last year.  The 2014 Ferrari did not suit Räikkönen one bit – it was a pretty weak effort all-round from the Italian team, to be fair, but somehow Alonso was able to wring its neck to a greater extent than his Finnish teammate, who often found himself languishing outside the points as a result.

This year, Räikkönen is obviously much happier with the car he has been given, and his performances and attitudes on track have borne this out.  And yet, he still doesn't seem to get the joy his teammate does, in terms of race results.  Is Kimi the unluckiest man in Formula 1?  I would say there are plenty of candidates for that title, but Räikkönen's name has to be up there.

In Australia, Ferrari were running strongly, but had a few issues with pit-stops; those issues all happened when Räikkönen was in the pits, and never when Vettel was stopping for tyres.  In the end, Räikkönen had to retire due to safety concerns regarding a wheel which had not been put on properly during a stop, and he scored no points while Vettel went on to take his first Podium finish in Ferrari red.  Yesterday, Räikkönen was matching Vettel's laptimes during qualifying – until he got caught out by the rain.

The weather had a much bigger effect on the Finn than on his teammate, simply down to when they had gone out on track, and he ended up qualifying in eleventh place, nine grid slots down from Vettel in second.  And this meant that, at the start of the race, Räikkönen had traffic to deal with – he suffered an early puncture, and although a Safety Car period shortly after helped nullifying some of the time he lost as a result of the puncture, that set the tone for him, in a race where he was always trying to make up lost ground.  Fourth place was a decent result behind a flying Sebastian Vettel and the two Mercedes of Hamilton and Rosberg, but could he have tried for a Podium place if he hadn't been beset by yet more misfortune?  Surely his luck will have to turn soon?

I hope so.  A strong, confident Kimi Räikkönen is good for Ferrari, and good for F1 in general.  With Ferrari coming back into the picture, Mercedes still strong, and a mid-grid of exciting young talent and teams who have certainly improved hugely on their 2014 cars (which leads me to wonder whether Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat felt a little like they were both back at Toro Rosso this weekend, as both of their junior team's rookie drivers finished ahead of them?), this should be a fascinating season to watch as it unfolds.

#F1 Singa-Poor joke in the title

I suppose it was about time Lewis Hamilton had the rub of the green, so-to-speak, in terms of reliability issues.  With Nico Rosberg in trouble from from the formation lap, Hamilton drove a faultless race from pole to capitalise on his rival's woes, bringing home twenty-five points to edge ahead of Rosberg in the World Drivers' Championship standings.  Talk of the race in Monza two weeks ago being 'a turning point' was not entirely misplaced, it would seem.

At least we get a chance to knock some of the nutty conspiracy theories on the head.  Earlier in the year, a few people were convinced Hamilton's mechanical issues were being orchestrated by the Mercedes team because they decided Rosberg would be a 'more fitting' World Champion.  Patently ridiculous though that is, it echoes the sort of nonsense we got used to hearing from some fans of Mark Webber who were convinced Red Bull were deliberately sabotaging Webber's car in order to favour Vettel.

Mercedes aren't deliberately going to fix one of their cars to have to retire from the race - costing their team, and one of their drivers, a decent haul of points.  They weren't 'sabotaging' Hamilton earlier in the season, and consciously favouring Rosberg for the title; I'd have thought that was obvious to everyone - but just in case it isn't, the issues on Sunday show that, more often than not, these issues do 'even out' over the course of a season.

However, this Championship is still wide open.  The momentum may have swung Hamilton's way; having taken the lead, he may well be the favourite for the title now - especially given his performances in the last two races, where he has looked absolutely unbeatable.  One statistic I'm not overly fond of seeing, however, is the comparison in the number of races won - Hamilton has won seven races this season, against Rosberg's four.  However, you don't win Championships by having more race victories than your teammate; this is a race series, not a one-off event, and Rosberg understands as well as anyone the importance of consistency over the course of an entire season.

What's going to be interesting now is Rosberg's response.  He seemed calm enough in the immediate aftermath of his retirement in Singapore, but this is the first time the reliability issues within the Mercedes team have really hurt his side of the garage, and with Hamilton inching ahead in the title race it will be fascinating to see how Rosberg handles the pressure.  I think he has the mental steeliness to cope well.

Ultimately, it could be the mechanical reliability which decides this Championship.  Is that fair?  Possibly not.  But Formula 1 has always been about designing ultimate racing machines - about technical prowess, as much as driver skill.  To say that the quality and durability of the cars shouldn't play a part in the competition is to misunderstand the sport.  Whether Hamilton or Rosberg ends up being crowned 2014 World Champion - because it will be one of those two drivers, whatever the Red Bull team say - can you really say whichever one of them wins it in the end won't be a worthy Champion?

#F1: Monza Bonanza

It has been my goal for a while, now, to post a short write-up of each Grand Prix in the days following it (or, at least, before Qualifying for the next race starts!), even if nothing truly remarkable has happened, as some kind of 'regular feature' on this Blog.  Although, in all likelihood, it is doubtful whether I shall successfully be able to navigate this small, dreamlike coracle of prose between the Scylla and Charybdis of work commitments and laziness, I am going to attempt it nonetheless - and therefore humbly set out my thoughts on yesterday's Italian Grand Prix in Monza herein…

Hamilton back to his best

I wrote here after Monaco about how important it is for Lewis Hamilton not to let himself get dragged into a downward psychological spiral of victimhood, and to carry on racing his way rather than always comparing his fortunes on-track with Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg's.  It was clear that Hamilton was not happy after what happened between himself and Rosberg on the first lap in Belgium two weeks ago, so I was very pleased to see that he seemed to have put that behind him as he came to Italy.

Hamilton was too much for Rosberg in Qualifying in Monza, and took a brilliant Pole position.  His start was poor, and he ended up chasing the race in fourth place; it would've been easy, at this point, to get disheartened again, and to turn into Mario Balotelli - "why always me?"

Thankfully, Hamilton didn't let this happen - he put the disappointments of the start behind him, knuckled down and set about the task of reeling in Rosberg's lead.  After the first lap, Hamilton was flawless; he didn't do a thing wrong as he hunted down Rosberg, and it was one of the most dominant and complete performances I have seen from him recently.  (The speculation that Mercedes 'ordered' Rosberg to give way to Hamilton as 'punishment' for the incident at Spa is so inordinately stupid that I shan't address it here.)

If Hamilton goes on to win the Championship this year, this race at Monza will be looked on as a turning point in the season; I hope his new positivity continues as we go to Singapore in two weeks time.

Rosberg not a bad egg

The booing of Nico Rosberg on the Podium - both last time out in Belgium, and again in Italy yesterday - is simply not on.  He is a racing driver, paid to deliver results for his team, and at the moment he is leading the Championship - fair play to him.

Personally, I do think it would be brilliant to see a British driver win the title again, and there is no question that Hamilton has the means to overhaul Rosberg's lead in the remaining races.  However, if Rosberg is crowned World Champion after the final race in Abu Dhabi, he will have won the title on merit and he will be a worthy Champion.

Penalty precedents

Another talking-point after yesterday's race was the five second time Penalty given to Kevin Magnussen by the Stewards after they deemed he had 'forced' Valtteri Bottas off the track while defending his position from Bottas' overtaking manoeuvre into the Turn 1 chicane.  I disagreed with this decision, and took issue with the Penalty for two reasons.

Firstly, the Penalty was issued as a 'Five Second Stop/Go Penalty' - ie. to be taken in the Pit Lane - but it was decided that, as no further Pit Stops were planned (Monza is traditionally a one-stop race), the five seconds could simply be added to Magnussen's overall finishing time.  In my view, this changes the nature of the Penalty - and, therefore, changes the nature of the race.  The Stop/Go Penalty is about more than just the time you lose in the Pit Lane - the time you spend stationary puts you at a different place on the track, possibly amongst different cars also fighting for position.  The result of this is a different type of race.  Simply adding the time on at the end of the Grand Prix removes this element of uncertainty, and turns the race into something of a time-trial event for the cars involved; Formula 1 has never been about that.

Secondly, the Penalty itself was overly harsh on Magnussen, who was defending his line from Bottas' oncoming Williams.  Neither car was driving dangerously (unlike Esteban Guttiérez' weaving around on the straight when he hit Romain Grosjean's Lotus and gave himself a puncture), it was simply a 'racing incident' - the sort of thing which is perhaps to be expected when cars are fighting for position on a race track.  I worry that the Stewards will set a precedent for giving Penalties for ever more minor incidents, thus making the drivers more cautious in their approach, reducing overtaking and on-track battles and sterilising Grand Prix racing.

It is, perhaps, ironic that this creeping trend towards risk aversion comes at the same time as a whole new slew of ridiculous proposals to 'make the sport more exciting'.  I have almost lost count of the number of time I have written about how moronic it is to try and 'engineer' and 'create' drama in motorsport, and how making the racing more artificial is an insult to the fans.

We were treated to some fantastic on-track action at Monza yesterday, from the likes of Bottas and Magnussen, as well as Jenson Button, Sergio Pérez, Felipe Massa and Daniel Ricciardo - that the powers-that-be in F1 could seek to discourage this sort of wheel-to-wheel racing through ever more petty Penalties, while at the same time hoping to manufacture more fake 'excitement' is mind-boggling.  The racing we saw yesterday was raw and real, not 'created for our entertainment' by titanium skid-blocks and tyres which barely last five laps; I would hate a situation to develop where the only overtaking moves we ever see are DRS-assisted in specially designated zones, and racing instinct has been neutered by the fear of incurring punishment for being too bold.

Ricciardo a rising star

Each time I see Daniel Ricciardo race, I am more impressed by him than I was the last time.  He is a master at seeing space on the track, reading situations and picking braking points, and he is a joy to watch in the car.  Given the right car, he will go on winning races for a long time to come.

I confess I entertained the possibility that Ricciardo's appointment at Red Bull (a 'promotion', if you like, from the junior Toro Rosso team) was in order to provide four-time World Champion and apple of Helmut Marko's eye Sebastian Vettel with a compliant teammate, already well versed in 'the Red Bull way' of doing things.  Various rumours had circulated last year about the possibility of Fernando Alonso or Kimi Räikkönen stepping into the second Red Bull alongside Vettel, and speculation was rife that Ricciardo was eventually chosen because Vettel had been reluctant to have his status as Red Bull's de facto Number 1 driver challenged by another word-class former Champion.  Given the way the season has gone for him so far, perhaps Vettel is now wishing he did have Räikkönen or Alonso as his teammate, after all…?

The Pit Lane brain drain

If this season has taught us anything, it is the importance of high-ranking technical staff within a Formula 1 team.  Any team which has enjoyed periods of dominance within the sport would not have been able to manage that without a visionary heading up the technical side of the operation - Ross Brawn at Ferrari (and, later on, at his own 'privateer' team), and Adrian Newey at Red Bull are perhaps the best examples in the modern era of Formula 1.  If further proof were needed, however, we need only look at the fortunes of two teams whose fortunes this season could scarcely be more different from their results last year.

Williams have had a dismal time in recent years, and hadn't really produced a car capable of challenging for Podium finishes for ten years.  This year, however, they have reemerged as a serious force in the paddock, and yesterday they overtook Ferrari to claim third place in the Constructors' Championship (that this happened at Ferrari's home race could only have added insult to injury for the veteran Italian marque who haven't been able to produce a decent car since 2009).  The decision of the Williams team to switch to the Mercedes engine for this season was inspired (the Mercedes is easily the best engine in the field), but when it comes to designing a car the capture of Pat Symonds as a technical director is huge, and with him on board Williams have shot back up the standings as a result of his influence.

Contrast this with Lotus, who were, this time last year, the closest challengers to the dominant Red Bulls.  Last year's Lotus was a very well-designed car, even on a much tighter budget than that available to most of the top teams in the paddock, and was particularly remarkable for how kind it was to its tyres.  This year, however, the Lotus team has seen an exodus of talent, with highly-rated designer James Allen leaving to join Ferrari, and star driver Kimi Räikkönen following suit, and team boss Eric Boullier jumping ship to McLaren.  Lotus now find themselves adrift at the back of the field, with a car which looks about as easy to drive as a ride-on lawnmower, and considerably less enjoyable.  In yesterday's race, Romain Grosjean - who finished on the Podium more times than any other non-Red Bull driver in the second half of last season - found himself fighting for most of the race with the Caterhams and Marussias which are generally referred to as the 'back teams'.  How the mighty have fallen!

#F1 - eyes on the prize

I think it's fair to say that Lewis Hamilton didn't look very happy at the end of the Monaco Grand Prix earlier this afternoon.  His troubles began yesterday, in Qualifying, when his teammate Nico Rosberg made a mistake - causing Yellow Flags, and denying Hamilton the chance to snatch Pole position away from his teammate when it looked like he was on a very good lap indeed.

There was inevitable controversy around this incident; reminiscent of Michael Schumacher's infamous stunt in Qualifying at Monaco eight years ago, speculation as to whether Rosberg had scuppered Hamilton's flying lap on purpose rumbled on through the night, and into this morning - despite the race Stewards' ruling that Rosberg's mistake had not been deliberate, and that he should be allowed to keep his Pole position.

Naturally, Hamilton was unhappy about how his Qualifying had ended - but he seemed to take a relatively philosophical view on raceday, putting the events on Saturday behind him and looking to maximise his chances in the race from second on the grid.  However, he ended the race in second (where he'd started), and with more grievances than ever - especially over the way in which the team handle Pit Stop strategies between their two drivers.

Hamilton has felt hard-done-by on several occasions this weekend, and (depending on your perspective) you might look at his race weekend in Monaco and feel he does have a point.  However, he has to remain stoical, put these issues behind him and look ahead to the next to the next Grand Prix in Canada, in two weeks time, instead of dwelling on what he perceives as the injustices of the previous race.

To allow oneself to slip into a 'victim' mentality is one of the worst things that can happen to a world-class sportsman.  If Hamilton starts to believe he is the subject of some conspiracy within the Mercedes AMG F1 team, he will effectively derail his hopes of claiming a second Word Drivers' Championship victory this season; he will become paranoid and resentful, and he will start to kick against his team instead of working with them, and he will cease to make calm, rational decisions on the track, instead allowing himself to become motivated by revenge and an attempt to vindicate himself.

When the stakes are so high, and the margins so tight, it is understandable that tensions surface and frustrations boil over when things don't go your way.  Hamilton's reaction to a disappointing weekend is nothing surprising - but how he handles that disappointment over the next couple of weeks, and the mindset with which he approaches the race in Canada two weeks from now, will tell us a lot about his Championship bid this year.

Luck plays a part in any sport.  Part of being a successful sportsman is the acceptance that you don't always get the rub of the green, and sometimes things will go against you; those who are at the very top of their game, in any area, are those who deal with that the best, and getting sucked into the downward psychological spiral of a 'siege' mentality is not the way to do that.

To win the World Championship this year, Lewis Hamilton needs to make sure he doesn't lose sight of the big picture - he needs to keep his eyes on the prize, and not let little things drag him down.

#F1 - the Pirellephant in the room

Having only just finished watching the British Grand Prix (indeed, the programme - with the post-race interviews and the experts' analysis - is still on on my TV as I type this), I am struggling to understand how anyone (with the exemption of race-winner Nico Rosberg, of course!) can describe that as having been 'a great race'.  It was a fascinating race, and it was highly dramatic - but, in my opinion, for all the wrong reasons.

The performance of the Pirelli tyres was, again, a big talking-point at this race.  Frankly, the issue with tyres is getting hugely embarrassing now, for all involved with the sport - but when you see tyres (the same tyre each time - rear left - on different cars) spontaneously delaminate or blow-out for seemingly no reason, no fewer than four times, you start to think something has to be done about this issue.

The problem for me, as a race fan, is that even if you take out the actual tyre failures, the tyres have turned Formula 1 too much into a 'pot-luck sport'; that much was clear towards the end of today's race, as anyone who'd managed to get into the pits and change tyres when the final Safety Car period was announced got shuffled up the order ahead of those who hadn't had that opportunity - with fewer than ten laps to go, Kimi Räikkönen went from second down to fifth position, while Fernando Alonso came up from eighth place to finish third, and the only reason for that was the tyres.  What this means is that putting on fresh tyres in the 'free pit-stop' gained by being in the right place at the right time when the Safety Car comes out renders all the hard work throughout the rest of the race (both quick driving and astute tactical decisions by the team) pointless - essentially, it doesn't matter how good you are, or how well you race, the tyres will decide where you finish.

There is so much nonsense talking about Formula 1, about whether it's 'boring', or whether they need to make it more 'exciting' - in my view, none of that is really the point.  The tyre failures are clearly a very serious issue (and, indeed, a very dangerous issue) and that cannot be allowed to continue to happen, but from a more long-term perspective the impact these tyres are having on the quality of the racing is something about which we should also be very concerned.

The idea of creating a tyre specifically designed to wear out and degrade much quicker than you would want, in order to 'force' more excitement in the sport, is a concept with which I've never been very comfortable.  To be perfectly honest, I'd actually rather see a more 'boring' (sometimes derisively called 'processional') race in which it is clear that the winner is the driver who deserved to win, because he is the best, and/or is driving the best car, rather than a race full of thrills and spills which is ultimately won by someone who maybe shouldn't really be there on merit alone, but simply got the luck of the draw in terms of tyres.  (And just to be clear, I am absolutely not suggesting that Nico Rosberg was an undeserved winner today - he drove very well all weekend.)

Sadly, although there's been a lot of noise made about tyres this season (and I don't see that fuss dying down any time soon!) there have been relatively few people espousing this view that if a race is only exciting because they've had to make a tyre which is deliberately unreliable that drama excitement is somewhat false - not only that, but it's rather unfair on teams and drivers when the tyres are so flaky that it negates the need to perform well in qualifying, or to show good racecraft on-track during the race.

And what's the solution?  Well, undoubtedly there will be as many different opinions about the solution as there are about the problem; in my view, two things need to change - firstly, the tyre manufacturer, and second the testing regulations.  A new tyre manufacturer simply because it's time to pull the plug on the Pirelli Experiment - fairly self-explanatory, really.  But the testing regulations need to change too, because whoever comes in as the new tyre supplier must have the opportunity to test their products in representative conditions, to ensure that they will perform to a high enough level, and in the manner expected.

As ever, I know the FIA will be monitoring this Blog, eager to see my suggestions for the sport of Formula 1 (they love my Sandwich Reviews as well), so I shall stop writing now and publish, to put Jean Todt out of his misery.

#F1 - the latest 'team orders' controversy

Today's Malaysian Grand Prix ended in controversy and anger, as Sebastian Vettel took the win ahead of teammate Mark Webber, despite team orders from the Red Bull garage to hold station behind Webber in second place, following the team's final round of pit stops.  The post-race interviews and analysis dwelt on the subject extensively, and almost 1500 people have posted comments on the BBC's post-race report, the vast majority of which are also concerned with the topic of team orders.

One of the interesting things about today's race was the stark contrast in the ways in which the 'team orders' situation was handled by the Red Bull drivers, when compared to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes.

But first, let's talk about team orders in general, for a minute...

Every time an issue like this rears its head, we (as F1 fans) have to put up with reading streams of Blogs, articles and comments about how team orders are "ruining the sport", and how F1 is "not real racing" because of team orders, and other things.  Let's not forget that team orders are only of use to teams in a few specific situations - ie. when your team's cars are in adjacent positions in the race, and also on the same pit-stop strategies (two stop, three stop, etc).  Red Bull's team orders came into effect around Lap 43/44, when Webber was leading the race, and Vettel was close behind him in second - but at the start of the race, Vettel started from Pole position, while Webber was fifth on the grid.  How did they get from fifth and first to first and second without "real racing"?

Fans who claim to be fed up of "stage-managed" races seem to forget that team orders can only manage two of the twenty-two cars on the track.  No amount of team orders can stop another car from another team putting a spanner in the works of your carefully-managed performance.  (Unless you believe the conspiracy that F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone stage-manages the performances of all the teams - in which case, why are you even watching the races at all?)

Formula 1 is an unusual hybrid of an individual and a team sport - and, in the end, there are trophies (not to mention significant financial rewards) for both.  It is also a sport which is spread out over a period of many months, and divided into nineteen individual races, all of which contribute to the whole of the Championships; for the teams, and the drivers, it is important not to lose sight of the bigger picture - when the title is decided, it's the total points over the entire season which counts, not who won each individual heat.

Of course, as fans and spectators, we want to see close action, high drama and exciting wheel-to-wheel racing at every race.  In my opinion, however, there is room in F1 for team orders and close racing to coexist.  The close racing aspect, however thrilling, is only one side of the F1 coin; there is another side to F1 (which, for my part, I find equally gripping) - the intrigue of tactics and strategy, of design, and of two drivers (often with hugely contrasting styles or personalities) fighting for points not only for the team, but also within the team.  Add to that the fact that the regulations state that a finite number of engines (eight) and gearboxes (one every five races) may be used by each car throughout a season, and it therefore necessary sometimes to conserve power in order to make these components last, rather than going all-out on track at all times.  It is a fine balance, yes - but that's what makes this, in my opinion, one of the best sports in the world.

So how does this all relate to today's events...?

Well, let's talk about Mercedes first.  Despite starting fourth and sixth, Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg found themselves in a very strong position behind the two leading Red Bulls - indeed, for much of the race, they were keeping pace with Webber and Vettel, and looked like they may be able to challenge for a top-two finish.  Unfortunately, the team had made a miscalculation regarding how much fuel to put in the cars at the start (possibly down to the belief that more of race would be run in wet weather conditions than actually ended up happening) and towards the end of the race Hamilton's car in third, especially, was running on less-than-maximum power in order to save fuel and ensure they didn't run out before the end of the race.

Rosberg, in fourth place behind Hamilton, was also saving fuel, although to a less critical degree, asked his team on the radio whether he should overtake his team mate, and was told "no".  After remonstrating with the team, and being told "no" twice more, Rosberg accepted his fate, and cruised home in fourth place, behind Hamilton.  Team Principal Ross Brawn's explanation on the radio to Rosberg was about fuel consumption (Rosberg would burn more fuel by the overtaking Hamilton - and both cars would burn more fuel by racing each other rather than cruising, and would risk not making it to the end of the race at all, effectively turning 27 points for the team into 0) and also about safety.

Whatever you think of this decision, and the way it affected the end result of the race (Hamilton and Rosberg finishing third and fourth, instead of fourth and third - and Mercedes getting 27 points, instead of 27 points), the way it was handled by the drivers showed maturity and class.  Rosberg acted like a team player, and brought the car home in fourth place (which is still an excellent result, 12 World Championship points, and two places gained him his grid position) while Hamilton credited his team mate during his interview on the podium.

At Red Bull, however, it was a rather different story!  After the final pit stops, Webber was ahead of Vettel, and the team instructed both their drivers to turn down their engines and bring the cars home safe and intact.  Webber complied with this instruction; Vettel didn't.

Vettel attacked Webber, and passed him.  Webber - understandably very angry about this - refused later to interact with Vettel, either before or during the podium ceremony.  Vettel apologised during the drivers' press conference, but Webber refused to accept his apology.  I'm not surprised.

As ever, the internet is awash with comments about this - and, as ever, a huge number of them are anti-team orders.  "What's the problem?" people ask.  "Vettel and Webber are racing drivers - we want to see them race, not just follow each other around!"

I want to see them race too - but not when one of them (Webber) has turned his engine down, under the impression that the other (Vettel) would do the same (as agreed), only to find he's being attacked and can't defend himself because he's running on less power.  That's not fair - and it's not "real racing" either.

What Vettel did was not the "ruthless" drive of a Champion who "just wanted it do badly", as some people would have you believe - it was reckless, foolish, and above-all, disobedient.  He gambled a guaranteed 43 points for the team on the chance that he might win it - as it happens, he did win, but if he had taken both the Red Bull cars out of the race (as in Turkey in 2010), the repercussions would've been huge.

Vettel, however, believed he had some sort of God-given right to win this race.  Never was this more clear than when listening to his radio message to the team earlier in the race:  "Mark is too slow - get him out of the way!"

He instructs the garage to issue team orders which work in his favour, yet petulantly ignores any that don't.  He expects to be given a free pass to the lead of the race (which, in the end, was effectively what happened, as he made a pass on a team mate who was powerless to fight back) and he expects to be able to get away with disobeying his team boss, despite risking putting the whole dynamic of the team (and, therefore, their hopes of a fourth consecutive World Championship double) in jeopardy.

As I've said, Formula 1 is a long game.  The race doesn't end at the Chequered flag in Malaysia - it ends in Brazil, in November.  There are many, many factors to take into consideration during the season, and the fall-out from this incident is going to be one of them.  Vettel may have grabbed the win here, but how will he feel in November if he watched another man walk away with the title of 2013 World Champion, and looks back at today's race thinking maybe this moment of hot-headedness was a turning point?  Will it have been worth it?  I doubt it.

I was never the biggest fan of Sebastian Vettel - but I have even less respect for him, after today's happenings.  However, I won't deny that, from a fan's point-of-view, this certainly sets us up with a fascinating situation going into the Chinese Grand Prix in three weeks' time.

Unlike the Mercedes drivers, who handled their team orders with grace and maturity, and just knuckled down and got on with things, even if they weren't entirely happy about it, like true professionals, the Red Bull team is imploding in front of our eyes.  It is impossible to know exactly how things will play out from here, but it looks as if the events of today's race will change the face of team orders at Red Bull for a good long time - possibly for the rest of the season.  The consequences of this could be very far-reaching indeed.  We could potentially end up with a situation where other teams are able to manage their cars to maximise their points haul, and to ensure the most efficient use possible of resources like gearboxes, fuel and tyres, while Red Bull are unable to do so.  Yes, Sebastian Vettel's rashness today could come back to haunt him in a big way.

But back to the central issue - that of team orders - now...

Many people believe that without team orders, Formula 1 would be more exciting.  Considering that they're all everyone's been talking about since this race, it seems that - on this occasion, at least - it was their very presence which has made it exciting.

Anyone who thinks that today's race was 'boring' because of team orders clearly didn't see the seemingly ongoing scrap for places between Lotus' Kimi Räikkönen and McLaren's Sergio Pérez, the drama of the front wing coming off Fernando Alonso's Ferrari on the first lap (and his inexplicable failure to come into the pit lane, resulting in a retirement from the race soon after), the chaos in the pit lane with Force India, Toro Rosso and McLaren all involved in some way or another, and the very promising showing from Jules Bianchi and his Marussia team.

The fact is that team orders are a part of the sport - whether you like it or not - but they are not a big enough issue on their own to "ruin" a whole sport.  Formula 1 is a very complex business, and it has many elements which make it up - team orders are but one of these elements.  My advice to anyone who hasn't been watching Formula 1 for very long, or who is thinking of watching it for the first time, is not to get too hung up on any one of these details in isolation, but to enjoy the glorious tapestry of the  sport in its entirety.

Formula 1 may not be perfect - but, in my opinion, anyone who thinks it's boring must be watching with their eyes shut.