zaterdag 20 september 2014

Lewis Hamilton top in Singapore GP practice, Nico Rosberg 13th.




Toto Wolff is the man who somehow has to keep Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg apart - and together - in the midst of the most fractious intra-team Formula 1 title battle in years.
The Mercedes drivers have found the close bonds they forged as teenagers racing together in karts tested to the limit as the pressures of competing for one of the biggest prizes in sport have taken their toll.
Wolff, as Mercedes' motorsport director and team boss, has watched this from the inside.

Toto Wolff said: "It has changed from, let's say, an almost amicable relationship at the beginning of the season to a very intense moment, where it was almost like realising Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are enemies competing for the world title."

This, Wolff admits, has been a shock for his both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.


Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton


Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton competed together as boys in karting.

"It's also a learning process," said Toto Wolff. "These boys have been calibrated their whole life that their main priority is to win the drivers' championship in F1. And here they go - they are in the same car, competing against each other for that trophy and one is going to win and one is going to fail.
"This is a new experience for them - a difficult experience maybe."

For everyone involved, in fact. Suspecting the season might develop in the way it has, Mercedes imposed some written 'rules of engagement' on Lewis and Nico at the beginning of the season.
The document's detail has not yet been made public, but its essence was clear - you can race freely, but in doing so you must never put the team's interests at risk, and crashing into each other is forbidden.

It worked fine for a while and then, TotoWolff says, "the more we got into the season, the more intense it got, the more the flexibility of that document was being tested. And then it came to Spa".

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