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satanboy
Psychonaut seven
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Mercedes are doing their utmost to address Lewis Hamilton’s greatest fear heading into the championship showdown: that a technical gremlin will decisively swing the title.
Reliability has been the one Achilles' heel of the otherwise dominant Mercedes all season, afflicting both Hamilton and his team-mate Nico Rosberg in fairly equal measure. Formula One’s fans will tune next Sunday desperate to see a straight fight, not influenced by any problems with the car. Mercedes are keenly aware of both their drivers and the fans anxiety. “We are trying to make sure the car is in best shape,” Toto Wolff, team boss, said on Sunday. It is thought they have kept mileage on both the drivers’ engines as low as possible since the Japanese Grand Prix on Oct 5. Under new rules for this season, each driver has just five engines a season. Hamilton has already seen one of his engines go up in flames in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix in July. Other key parts have been kept as fresh as possible to try and avoid a mechanical breakdown. “We have reduced some mileage on crucial parts,” Wolff told BBC Radio 5 Live. “We are trying to provide them with the best possible car to make sure there are no technical issues. In terms of driving, they know what to do.”
With double points also threatening to tarnish the conclusion to one of the finest championship duels in years, a car failure would be a bitter pill for both Hamilton and Rosberg to swallow. Hamilton has retired from two races this season with a mechanical problem, while Rosberg was the last to fail to finish in Singapore with an electrical issue. Hamilton leads Rosberg by 17 points heading into the final race in Abu Dhabi, knowing that second place will guarantee him a second championship. The 29-year-old said last night: “People talk about how long it's been since I won the title – but I honestly feel like I'm fighting for my first World Championship all over again. Sure, I'm older and maybe a little bit wiser than I was back then. “I've learnt a lot in the years since 2008 – but I'm still the same driver. I still have the same hunger, the same will to win, and I've been giving it everything I've got from the word go this season. I've had ups and downs along the way – but I've never once given up.”
Meanwhile, Caterham’s administrators have been accused of cynically “burying bad news” by flaunting the success of their fans donations scheme on the day they laid off all 200 staff. One former employee, who preferred to remain anonymous, accused Finbarr O’Connell, the administrator for the team, of seeking to divert attention from the mass redundancies at the factory in Leafield, Oxfordshire, by announcing the plan to race in Abu Dhabi. “The whole cavalcade of publicity surrounding it on the same day that you have made the employees redundant is a disgrace,” they told Telegraph Sport. O’Connell said the “vast majority” of staff had asked to be made redundant and that the timing was “purely coincidental”.
telegraph
