Shanghai: Formula One legend Mika Hakkinen has leapt to the defence of world champion Lewis Hamilton after the Briton came under renewed attack from bitter rival Nico Rosberg for being ‘selfish’.
The German had accused his Mercedes teammate of deliberately driving slowly to back him up into the chasing Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel in winning Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Rosberg, who finished second in Shanghai behind championship leader Hamilton, said on Monday that the pair had resolved their row after a productive ‘sit-down’ discussion.
However, the duo’s acrimonious relationship — characterised by a number of on and off-track spats last season — continues to intrigue F1 commentators and ex-drivers such as Hakkinen.
The two-time world champion said on Tuesday that he agreed with the widespread view that Rosberg should have overtaken Hamilton if his teammate’s speed had dwindled.
Speaking ahead of Wednesday’s Laureus World Sports Awards in Shanghai, he said: “That’s a good one [laughs]. The fact is that a Formula One car in high-speed corners, for example, it very much depends on what kind of downforce you are getting when you go through them and when you are following another car at that time, you will always lose your grip of the tyres because you lose the downforce.
“Racing is racing and you go flat out. If you are leading a race, that’s a fantastic place to be and what goes in your mind when you are leading into finish the race first.”
He continued: “So you do everything with the team in the right way so you are able to finish the race first. If you have to save tyres, brakes, engine, or gearbox whatever it is, that’s what you do. You don’t think about the guy behind you, what he is feeling, how his car is handling or how you want his car to handle at the end of the race, you just take care of your own stuff.”
Was Rosberg’s surprising outburst evidence that Hamilton has psyched him out — with the championship-leading Briton 17 points ahead of his third-placed nemesis?
Hamilton certainly thinks so, insisting that he is mentally stronger than Rosberg on Tuesday.
Hakkinen, who won back-to-back F1 titles in 1998 and 1999 with McLaren, was not quite so forthright, saying: “Nico has definitely got big pressure on him. He doesn’t know how it feels to be a world champion and doesn’t know what confidence a world championship generates inside you when you are a racing driver. He is still hunting that feeling.
“He wants to win but first he has to beat Lewis. But Nico is a great driver and, if you look at the qualifying result at the last grand prix, the time difference was hardly nothing. I don’t say that pole position is the key point to win a grand prix, but certainly it helps to start in pole.”
Hamilton’s dominance of the sport — he has won two of the first three grands prix of the new season — make him an overwhelming favourite to add another world crown to add to his 2008 and 2014 successes.
Would a third triumph in 2015 make him an all-time great?
“When I won my first world championship I thought: ‘This is it, this is great, guys’,” the Finn, who was speaking at a Mercedes promotional event, said. “Winning two times, three times, four times, all that is just fabulous.
“He [Hamilton] is a great driver, he is a great world champion and he will win more world championships. I don’t want to put him in the type of category with other world champions.
“For me, the results are not necessarily always the key point to see if somebody is great. It comes down to the personality, how this person is handling the other people and the Laureus [charity] is a good example, doing good things for children and doing charity work, but generally a great champion comes from the inside — how you treat other people not from the track.”
