“I want to be the hungriest guy in the cockpit from all 22 of us, because if I
were to come here believing that Nico is hungrier than me then I might as
well go home,” he said. “So I’ve got to be the hungriest. To win the world
championship you need to be.”
Hamilton has spoken of holding a psychological edge over his adversary, even
if this cuts little ice with the imperturbable Rosberg. “Break me down
mentally?” the German scoffed. “I think he will struggle with that one.”
Refreshingly, if belatedly, a sense of hostility is forming between the two
of them.
On Monaco’s serpentine street circuit, where drivers are within a hair-trigger
twitch of being unpleasantly acquainted with a steel barrier, F1 has its
fresh shot of adrenalin. The supremacy of Mercedes, already streaking into
the Monégasque sunset with a 113-point lead over reigning champions, Red
Bull, had bred an uncomfortable sense that one team’s stultifying dominance
has simply been replaced with another’s. A dash of internal antagonism
promises to lend some desperately needed intrigue to what, from the
constructors’ perspective, is already a non-contest.
For F1 feeds off its most compelling and consistent rivalries, even if they
have been in painfully scarce supply in recent seasons. While that between
Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna was easily the most riveting of the past 30
years, and never more so than in Monaco, Michael Schumacher and Jacques
Villeneuve also had more than their reasonable share of skirmishes
throughout the mid-Nineties. The memories prompted Villeneuve, now 43 and
competing in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, to inveigh against the sport’s
pervasive culture of civility within teams.
“You need rivalries,” he said. “This whole thing of ‘Oh, we all love each
other’ when two team-mates are on the podium, and the one who is second is
so happy the other guy beat him? No, I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. It’s fake.
“It’s the political correctness of the modern era, and I don’t think the fans
like that. What does it say? It means that you don’t fight for what you
want, and it’s a terrible message. What you want to see is fighting, people
p—– off that they didn’t win. That appears to be missing a little, and I
don’t know why it has gone this way.”
Recalling the multiple controversies with Schumacher, not least when the
seven-time champion shunted him off the track in Jerez in 1997, Villeneuve
said: “It makes people either love or hate you. But it doesn’t leave anybody
indifferent.”
If Jack Kerouac was right when he claimed indifference was a crime, then there
have been a few recent perpetrators in F1 among drivers desperate to praise
their mechanics, their sponsors, even their team-mates. Hamilton himself was
culpable in Barcelona this month, when, upon taking pole position, he said:
“Nico was a little bit quicker.” Mercifully, the emergence of his more
natural candour on Thursday should sharpen the dynamic at Mercedes.
Toto Wolff, executive director of the Silver Arrows, is a slick political
operator but steadfast in his belief that Hamilton and Rosberg help
galvanise each other on the track. “The push each other to new heights and
new levels,” he said. “I’m not sure Lewis would perform on his level if Nico
was not there, or that Nico would if Lewis wasn’t. For us, we enjoy working
with them, and we learn from both of them.”
On their precise disparities in character, Wolff is more coy. “It’s subtle –
what they do in their private life, how they structure their approach to
racing. It’s different.” But in what sense? “I can’t even tell you. That
would be too private for a newspaper, but they are different personalities.”
That would be some understatement. Hamilton is a product of Stevenage’s
Shephall council estate, while Rosberg – nicknamed ‘Britney’ by Mark Webber,
after Britney Spears, for his groomed blond image – has known nothing but
Côte d’Azur luxury and an impeccable private education that enabled him to
acquire five languages. In combined accomplishments in F1, too, they are
poles apart, with Hamilton clutching 26 wins to his would-be usurper’s six.
His success in holding off Rosberg for four successive grands prix also
fulfils a prophecy he made last year, when he declared: “Having the edge on
Nico, everybody expects that. When I get the most out of the car, then it
will be a lot easier.”
Hamilton maintains they are still cordial and respectful away from the white
heat of racing, as a result of their joint foundation in karting, pointing
out that for several months he has been storing his safe in Rosberg’s Monaco
apartment. But, he added tellingly, “when you’re so competitive it’s
impossible to be best friends”.
His latest broadside about his rival’s mollycoddled life of plenty should do
much to ensure that this remains true.