Mika Hakkinen: Lewis Hamilton is blameless and Nico Rosberg is under pressure
FORMER double world champion Mika Hakkinen has weighed in to Mercedes' 'selfish' row saying Nico Rosberg now has "big pressure" on him and that Lewis Hamilton is blameless.
Rosberg accused team-mate Hamilton of only thinking about himself when slowing down to protect his tyres at the Chinese Grand Prix here in Shanghai, saying the Briton had compromised his race.
Rosberg's argument was that Hamilton's dirty exhaust air from slowing down would have ruined his own tyres.
Hakkinen, who had his own on-track feuds with Michael Schumacher, said Rosberg has much to do to put things right ahead of this weekend's grand prix in Bahrain.
"I have been in this situation with Michael where there has been a situation where I was much quicker than him and he was definitely challenging me in a very interesting way," said Hakkinen.
"It requires a lot of nerves from the drivers to be able to be a good racing driver and not to start fighting, because it doesn't make any difference [to the result]. 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 racing driver. He is still hunting that feeling. He wants to win but first he has to beat Lewis."
The one question on most people's minds when Rosberg, at that time in second place, complained that the race leader was slowing down was: "Why not overtake?"
Grinning, Hakkinen said: "That's a good one. 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 are following another car at that time, you will always lose your grip of the tyres because you lose the downforce.
"If the car in front of you, if it goes two tenths, three tenths slower in these type of corners, there is no chance to overtake and you lose your downforce and that means you are overheating your tyres, generating heat on your brakes, the engine, all the things in the car.
"But racing is racing and you go flat out. If you are leading a race, that's a fantastic place to be and what goes on in your mind when you are leading is to finish the race first.
"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, gearbox whatever it is, that's what you do.
Nico has definitely got big pressure on him
"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."
And Hakkinen, top of the Formula One world in 1998 and 1999 with McLaren and, speaking ahead of the Laureus World Sports Awards in Shanghai, said the row would ruffle Rosberg more than Hamilton, who he believes is unshakeable.
Hakkinen said: "Lewis has a great talent. He has great experience, winning a world championship, super confidence inside him. Nothing can shake him. He knows he's fast."
But it was unclear whether the Finn thought Hamilton was worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the pantheon of F1 greats if he secures a third world title this year.
Hakkinen said: "When I won my first world championship I thought, 'This is it, this is great guys'. Winning two times, three times, four times, all that is just fabulous.
"I won the world championship twice and if you can win it more than once it is already a great achievement.
"If you win it once it is a great achievement because it takes so many years and a lot of work and a lot of disappointments that you go through in your mind and to come out of that disappointment is the biggest challenge.
"It's all the time, non-stop. You are fighting but losing so when you are achieving this world championship, everything that comes off the back of the is just extra.
"So 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. Generally, a great champion comes from the inside how you treat other people not from the track."
Make your own mind up.
