At this rate, Hamilton will be making good on his veiled threat in Monaco,
where Rosberg turned into a siding at Mirabeau to obstruct his final flying
lap, to do as idol Ayrton Senna did by shoving his nemesis into the dirt at
Suzuka.
His earlier promise, though, to “break Nico down mentally” is working in the
opposite way he intended. Where Rosberg plays the implacable, unruffled
Teuton, Hamilton espies a conspiracy around every corner.
The spat has been such a consistent subplot this year, and so peppered with
cliffhangers and the language of jilted lovers, that it almost resembles a
Bernie Ecclestone-scripted subplot to stir some intrigue ahead of the
double‑points finale in Abu Dhabi.
However, the row would be nothing like so compelling without Hamilton’s
strange persecutory delusion. “Nico hit me!” he cried over the in-car radio
in Belgium, blame instantly ascribed, in contrast to Rosberg’s
interpretation of a “racing incident”.
One was reminded of another of his inimitable responses in 2011, when Hamilton
invoked Ali G to try to explain why the stewards had penalised him in Monte
Carlo. “Maybe it’s ‘cos I is black,” he deadpanned.
He is far from the only top-rank sportsman to display this diva-like
affectation.
Sergio García made half a career out of wallowing in self-pity, not least in
his various contretemps with Tiger Woods, before admitting in defeatist
fashion: “I’m not good enough to win a major. I don’t have the thing I need
to have.”
Hamilton’s own complex, though, has far stronger echoes of Senna’s. The claims
of sharp practice that Senna made against Alain Prost, against Michael
Schumacher, against the then FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre, spoke of a
man in whom a perception had hardened that everybody was out to sabotage
him. At least when Hamilton intimated that Rosberg had intentionally
triggered yellow flags in Monaco, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal,
had the sense to demolish the argument as “b——t”.
Hamilton offered an early, telling insight into his tortured mentality after
receiving a drive-through penalty at the 2008 French Grand Prix, telling
those reporters he viewed as over-critical: “I’m very strong mentally. My
belief in my ability is stronger than ever and there’s nothing that can
break me.”
The hyper-intensity of his duel that year with Felipe Massa had parallels with
the earlier tensions between Senna and Gerhard Berger, which grew so acute
that Ron Dennis once had to play practical jokes on the Brazilian to lighten
the mood. Perhaps Hamilton, by his self-casting as the victim in this
Mercedes duel, truly is on track in his ambitions to emulate Senna. Just not
in quite the way he envisaged.