Team Review Japanese GP: Mercedes

Despite another promising qualifying session, it turned out to be a familiar race result for Team Mercedes at the Japanese GP.

There was news of Mercedes giving the Red-Bull’s some fight, but the hopes ended in the very first lap as Lewis Hamilton in a bid to overtake Sebastian Vettel suffered a rear puncture and retire on lap 9 with damage to his cars underfloor causing aerodynamic trouble (from the first lap contact).

Nico Rosberg though carried his resilience as he finished eighth after serving a drive through penalty that dealt a blow to his chances of finishing in the top 5.

The result meant that Mercedes fell 10 points behind Ferrari, and their lead on Lotus reduced to 23 points (Lotus grabbed 25 points from the race) in the Constructors’ table.

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton had a difficult Japanese GP as he retired with aerodynamics problem

The free practice sessions and qualifying session saw Hamilton match Vettel for pace. The race turned out to be a horror for the Brit. In a bid to overtake slow moving Vettel going into the first corner he had a contact with the Red-Bull’s front wing that resulted in a rear-tyre puncture.

There was not much left of the tyre by the time he made it to the pits hoping to get back chasing the lead pack. But there was more damage than expected and on lap 6 Hamilton knew there was something wrong( “the car’s all over the place” said the radio message).

Mercedes decided it was only sensible to retire him, and Hamilton was asked to drive into the pits on lap 9. A disappointing race for Hamilton has him 16 points behind 3rd place Kimi Raikkonen, with a 13 point lead from Mark Webber in the driver’s table.

Nico Rosberg

Nico Rosberg managed to finish in eighth place with four points despite an eventful race

The race began well for the German as he moved into fourth place on the run down to turn one and managed to stay ahead of the two Ferrari’s.

Rosberg was on a three-stop strategy and did his first stop on lap 13. The pit-stop was timed well, but the team was unaware of Sergio Perez in the Mclaren heading for his pit-stop and both drivers took evasive action to avoid a collision.

The incident though led to a drive through penalty (after complaints from Mclaren to the FIA) for Rosberg on lap 16 that cost him more than 20 seconds, pushing him down the order into 12th place.

Rosberg, despite the penalty kept pushing his Mercedes, overtaking Jenson Button on lap 22. He completed his round of pit stops on lap 24 and 39 but had an incident with Perez resulting in damage to his front wing.

Thankfully for him and Mercedes, the damage didn’t need a pit-stop and Rosberg went ahead overtaking Felipe Massa for eighth place on lap 47.

He tried hard to catch up Esteban Gutierrez but with Sauber’s straight line speed, some good defending and the Mercedes hitting a critical fuel point made it difficult to overtake the rookie.

Despite all odds, Rosberg managed to salvage 4 critical points for his team. He is sixth in the drivers Championship with 126 points behind Mark Webber(by 20 points) and ahead of Massa(by 36 points).