I'm not trying to take anything away from hamilton. I don't see any indication of rosberg having "no chance" to win. He was suffering with gearbox issues since lap 20. It's a bit unfair to say rosberg didn't have a chance when he had every chance. We saw hamilton last race finish second even though he was storming at the end, so that's evidence that there was no guarantee
I just re-downloaded the timings on my tablet and checked it all out again...
Lap 4 to 20 he went from 6 seconds behind down to 2 seconds and after the pits Rosberg went fastest by the correct amount in comparison to other drivers, but only just beat Hamiltons lap times even though Rosbergs set of tyres were just put on.
Hamilton pitted lap 25, lost 2 seconds in the pits and then instantly came out and did a 1:37.1 which was over a second faster than his teammate which triggered other drivers to take their pit stop and switch to the hard tyre and then everyone started to set their best lap times.
If you're a second a lap faster than your teammate or any driver a pass will be easy especially with DRS so he would of breezed past.
If Rosberg had pitted Hamilton could have won by staying out and just driving to the end (18+ seconds is plenty of time in hand when racing your teammate on the same tyres), Hamilton would have pretty much had a free pit stop and if he went to lap 40ish and then pitted even if he came out along side, behind or the more likely of infront then he would of walked away on the fresh rubber.
It was blatantly obvious that it was Hamilton's win as soon he did the first flying lap after the pits.
I'm not trying to take anything away from hamilton. I don't see any indication of rosberg having "no chance" to win. He was suffering with gearbox issues since lap 20. It's a bit unfair to say rosberg didn't have a chance when he had every chance. We saw hamilton last race finish second even though he was storming at the end, so that's evidence that there was no guarantee
He went something like 25 laps on the set of medium tires and was good to the regulations, coming out right behind Rosberg who after his first pit stop still had to make one more stop. The race was decided there and then. The misfortune for Rosberg is the zero points scored instead of 18.
Exactly, If I was Rosberg and got told on the radio that Hamilton had just gone a second faster on the hard tyre I would of just backed off a bit and saved my tyres, engine... etc because it was already game over. 18 points was all that was possible and he wasn't being threatened behind.
