Is Rosberg about to take control of the title race?

The first Austrian Grand Prix since 2003 promised much and delivered plenty. Not quite the spectacular race we hoped for but still a lot to get excited about and plenty of drama for the championship battle.

Nico Rosberg lead a Mercedes 1-2 and now finds himself with a five race buffer, it’s an opportunity for him to control the championship a bit more. If we assume there are no reliability problems then Lewis needs to win five races with Nico finishing second before Lewis Hamilton can retake the championship lead.

Despite the fact Lewis won four races on the trot earlier this year, the likelihood of him repeating it and adding a fifth isn’t great as Rosberg seems to have found a bit more fight to challenge Lewis, while it now seems other teams might be able to get involved at the front a little bit more, which could work out in favour of either driver to be honest. For Lewis at least, he might prefer a bit more competition if he can get a car or two in between himself and Nico.

Mercedes do retain a sizeable advantage though; if qualifying hadn’t have 

gone awry then I’m not sure Williams would have been quite as close as they were.  He no longer needs to take as many risks as Lewis Hamilton does, he can afford to let Lewis win a couple if he is having an off day or his car is developing problems he can nurse it home rather than keeping up the fight.

Of course he is a racing driver and he won’t want to do that at all but there are options available to him. On the other hand, we saw when Rosberg had a 25 point lead after the Australian Grand Prix that Lewis went out to dominate, and he did so for a while. 

It could happen again, and I feel sure if Lewis’ pit stops had been a bit quicker (he lost nearly two seconds compared to Rosberg) and he’d come out that much closer to his team mate and not had Valtteri Bottas’ Williams in the way during the second stint he might have mounted a more consistent challenge, a ninth to second is good, but I think the win was definitely on.

Lewis has had a few reliability retirements while Rosberg has had none. In fairness to the title battle I hope Rosberg has a couple of his own to even it up and then we can see if Lewis will take as full advantage as Rosberg has. On the other hand as Lewis said himself in his BBC sport column if he has another failure then Rosberg's lead could be too big.

It’s perfectly possible that reliability problems could strike the silver arrows again too. For the second consecutive race they struggled with cooling which affected the energy recovery and the brakes again. It wasn’t so bad this time as they eventually stretched their lead, but it raises concerns especially as it was the same sort of problem. Hot weather does not appear to be their friend at the moment.

It all looked a lot friendlier after the race between the two, but it’s obvious that it could all explode again as it did in Monaco. Hamilton has to strike back quickly, and ideally for him he needs to take a large chunk of points off Rosberg in one race, not just have a Mercedes 1-2.

It’s the small things that make up the whole and at the moment Rosberg is grabbing every little thing he can, and he’s making it work. There’s been speculation that he’s quite adept at grabbing things to make things better such as copying Lewis’ setup or searching the telemetry for where Lewis is quicker and then copying it, something that apparently annoys Hamilton. In the end why should his main competitor steal his advantage, surely he should find it for himself?

Whatever the situation though, Hamilton is so far keeping a cool head even if the championship fight momentum is not with him right now. Both could crack under the pressure, even in this race on the last lap Rosberg ran wide which could have given Hamilton a dramatic last lap victory if he hadn’t then done the exact same thing.

It is of course still too early to determine the outcome of the title race but the next race is Silverstone and Hamilton needs to impress in front of his home crowd. The momentum swing has to start there otherwise Rosberg will begin to be in control of this championship and Lewis can’t let that happen.

all photo's taken from autosport.com