Leaving Monza and going to Singapore the gap between the top two in the drivers’ championship table could scarcely have been closer. But you’d hardly know it. The guy behind had the momentum on the basis of crude results too, creeping up on Lewis Hamilton at the table summit consistently across the preceding weeks. But, again, you’d hardly know it.
Most it seemed were determined not to take him seriously; viewed him as some kind of interloper. Only there through fortune. Both in individual races as well as at the aggregate level – in the best car and with a team mate perhaps not making the most of things. He’d won races, plenty of them. But, the conventional wisdom went, he was not one from the top drawer. He had neither the rounded game nor the consistency for that. And despite the proximity just about everyone assumed that Lewis, somehow, somewhere, would strike out for the ultimate honours before the campaign was out.
Yet at this possibly the year’s toughest challenge, all bumps, turns and forbidding walls, in the last part of qualifying around the Marina Bay circuit he wiped the floor with his opponents, with a stunning pole lap clocked at well upwards of half a second quicker than everyone else’s including Lewis’s. And it felt not only like a shock but also like a watershed. Perhaps even was a realisation. Plenty of observers indeed recognised it as such, frantically re-calibrating their views. ‘Woah’, they thought, ‘perhaps he does deserve his place in this fight’. And, implicit in this, ‘perhaps we do have a title battle after all’.
It may all sound familiar. But I’m being mischievous. I’m not talking about Nico Rosberg’s extraordinary qualifying effort in Singapore last weekend. I’m rewinding to eight years before that to the qualifying session at the very same venue in 2008. With in the ‘Nico role’ one Felipe Massa. The parallels between then and now I’m sure you’ll agree are rather striking.
Massa’s season in the sun is of course well-documented and has been given particular focus lately given Felipe announced his F1 retirement a few weeks back which leads us naturally to reflect on his F1 time. And in turn to reflect on his high tide watermark, that demonstrated the heights he could reach if all was right.
The precise point of his breakthrough in that breakthrough 2008 campaign can be debated of course. Many look to the qualifying session in Monaco, when he put in another splendid late effort to beat his haughty opponents, apparently inspired by his engineer Rob Smedley suggesting that he was “braking like a girl”. As with Singapore it was among the season’s most acute challenges. It was perhaps also the first time that he had excelled at a track other than Bahrain's, Turkey's or Brazil's, where he was considered a specialist. Others pinpoint him sweeping his way around the outside of Lewis at Hungary’s first turn, to lead and control a race that his foe was expected to dominate.
Massa’s lap was a beauty, a study in committed entry speeds, bold and early on the throttle, supreme on the brakes. It may well have been the Q-lap of the season to date – Mark Hughes
But even with these his astonishing Singapore qualifying lap served as a heck of a wakeup call to observers, as well as served even more than those other achievements to cement his status. Some of those more loyalist to Hamilton ventured – with a hesitant, lump in throat tone akin of one who’d just been told their spouse was cheating on them – that perhaps Massa was running on fumes, in these days when the top 10 did the final part of qualifying with the fuel for their opening race stint aboard. Not so, he only had around a lap’s less gas than Lewis, which only scratched the surface of the pace difference.
“Massa’s lap was a beauty,” said an admiring Mark Hughes watching on, “a study in committed entry speeds, bold and early on the throttle, supreme on the brakes. It may well have been the Q-lap of the season to date.”
But there is another well-documented reason that our thoughts of Massa’s F1 time centre on 2008 and all that. In F1 as in most things we love a tale of what might have been. And Massa’s season, and particularly the events of Singapore, come with large helpings of pathos.
As he wasn’t able to make good on it all on race day. For the first 14 laps Felipe looked well on the way to doing just that, stroking out a comfortable lead. But then of course we had Renault’s notorious professional foul, after its driver Nelsinho Piquet and at least one other member of the team cooked up a scheme to crash deliberately, require the safety car to be brought out, which would be much to the advantage of its other driver Fernando Alonso who had pitted just before.
In F1 as in most things we love a tale of what might have been. And Massa’s 2008 season, and particularly the events of Singapore, come with large helpings of pathos
This at a stroke cost Massa the win probably, but all was not yet lost. He remained ahead of his title antagonist Hamilton who was similarly impeded. But… under the rules of the time for some reason the pit lane didn’t ‘open’ for the first few laps of a safety car period, meaning the field was packed by the time all were allowed to come in for servicing (it also gave massive advantage to cars that had pitted just before the safety car’s appearance, which was precisely what Renault was seeking to take advantage of).
Come lap 17 when the pit lane did ‘open’ much of the field therefore came in as one, and given this congestion Ferrari’s ‘traffic lights’ system to tell the driver when to stop and go (now de rigueur but was being pioneered by the Scuderia at the time) was operated manually by a crew member rather than automatically as usual. Again though, but… for reasons that have never been explained this manual operator got an itchy finger and signalled Massa to go early with the fuel hose still attached. The Brazilian’s Ferrari proceeded down the pit lane with the still-connected hose – ripped from the rig under the red car’s acceleration – wagging sadly in its wake. Massa then stopped at the exit for what seemed an eternity (his team mate Kimi Raikkonen had to be serviced in the meantime) before some assorted Ferrari hands ran down to remove the hose and let him go.
Suddenly he was dead last at a track where overtaking is near enough impossible. To add insult to injury shortly after green flag racing resumed he got a drive through penalty for an unsafe release (as among it all he was let out just in front of Adrian Sutil’s Force India).
The eventual upshot was that on a day that Massa looked certain to gain points on Hamilton and with it take the championship lead, he in fact lost six to his rival. And he missed out on the title in the end by just one.
Massa even now considers it something that aches like a pulled tooth. Even though there are other losses of points that season that would have tipped the title his way (possibly inevitable when it is lost so narrowly), Massa considers Singapore a stand-alone. “It is not part of racing, it is not part of the rules” he said some years later. “That was the most significant race in losing me the championship. With what happened in the race, I cannot believe that the federation was able to leave it like that. They needed to cancel the race…”
It is in this that we got our major departure between Massa’s Singapore case eight years ago and Nico’s this time. Unlike Massa he did indeed win out; he did indeed leave Singapore with the title lead
And it is in this that we got our major departure between Massa’s Singapore case eight years ago and Nico’s this time. Unlike Massa he did indeed win out; he did indeed leave Singapore with the title lead. Someone pointed out to Nico too afterwards that being at the table top post Singapore is something of a title bellwether – in seven of the last eight seasons the pace-setter at this point has gone on to win the world championship. Nico though, with his resolute ‘take every game as it comes’ exterior, didn’t welcome being told this.
Just like Massa though in the course of the weekend Nico rather dashed some common criticisms of him. In Nico’s case, one is that he can’t perform at his best when it really counts for the title. Another that he can’t do so when the pressure is on. Neither was the case this time.
There perhaps was another tenuous parallel between Nico’s race just passed and Massa’s back then. As with Massa he led off the line and looked set for a comfortable run to victory; for Nico this was so for much more of the way – until lap 45 of 61. Yet this time as in 2008 the shift had a grimly ironic, intra-team slant, albeit on this occasion an inadvertent one. As it was Nico’s own Mercedes squad that did the groundwork for the unanticipated threat to his triumph. In seeking to get Lewis ahead of Raikkonen for third spot by having him pit one more time the knock on effect was that second-placed Daniel Ricciardo suddenly had nothing to lose from bolting on fresh, softer compound boots and with them seeking to chase Nico down. After a thrilling chase he only failed to do so by a scant half second.
But from this Nico also was able to emphasise the apparently new model him. Really there can be fewer more trying situations than when you’ve been cruising around for however long, your win appearing assured, to have the Honey Badger with the smell of a victory in his snout ripping well upwards of two seconds a lap out of your lead. “It's not a nice feeling” said Ricciardo afterwards, extending some empathy. And this at the season’s toughest physical and mental test, wherein the slightest error will likely be punished on the spot. You can add to this that it was at a vital moment for the championship. Nico did not flinch.
It was something Jackie Stewart reflected on. “I think he drove one of the better races he’s done in his career,” said JYS, “in the sense that this is a circuit where the slightest error of judgment can take you out. The pressure he was under because of the world championship points, he could easily have over-driven, he could easily have been too conservative, and he didn’t do either. He drove just a very well balanced race.”
For the first time I feel that Nico has the speed, ingredients and confidence to take this title in a straight fight – Martin Brundle
As noted it didn’t seem just about this weekend either, much more broad recalculations about Nico’s abilities, and potency in this year’s title fight, were going on as a result also. Again it felt like a watershed. At the very least the title destination didn’t seem nearly as inevitable as most had assumed at the start of the weekend.
“For the first time I feel that Nico has the speed, ingredients and confidence to take this title in a straight fight” admitted Martin Brundle indeed when looking back on the Marina Bay fare.
“He’s moved himself onto another level”, Maurice Hamilton concurred. “When he lost that lead of the championship and Lewis was coming back strong I thought ‘oh, that’s it’. In think we’d all written it off, we thought this championship’s going to be settled, around about now perhaps! I think it’s going to run right to the end as Rosberg’s raised his game, there is no question…”
How quickly things change, as Maurice Hamilton noted. We’re a mere seven weeks on from heading into the summer break assuming the title was Hamilton’s. A mere three weeks on from Spa’s aftermath when we thought similar, as Lewis had taken his long anticipated engine penalties and minimised the points damage to a much greater extent than thought.
Rosberg defies allocation perhaps more than any F1 driver that’s ever been, certainly among the front-runners and habitual winners. Even with there being plenty of evidence accrued in the full glare of being in a top car there still is no clear sense around of where he sits in the pecking order. It’s a matter that often is debated vigorously, reflecting as much…
But think of Brazil in 2014 when we thought Lewis was cruising to the title after a run of wins, only for Nico to delay it by winning out. Think of last year and his giving away of the race and the title in Austin, his cap tossing and all that. We thought he was done, but then he went immediately on a run of seven consecutive race victories. Indeed with this perhaps we can allocate him after all, at least in one way – as someone who just when we’re at the point of writing him off definitely can be counted upon to bounce right back. Never rule him out, in other words.
People will point at Lewis’s bad luck this season, with some justification, but it’s hard to fault the way that Nico has taken advantage. There also have been at least a couple of rounds, Hungary’s and Germany’s, wherein Nico looked possibly the quicker but Lewis benefited from establishing the lead and controlling things from there, in the way that Nico’s detractors ‘accuse’ him of doing.
While of course to have won 21 Grands Prix in three and a bit seasons as Hamilton’s team mate suggests he must be doing something right. With eight to his name this campaign it means also that the least he’ll take away from 2016 is the most victories in a season without winning the ultimate honours, already with six rounds to go.
“He’s got it aced” Brundle continued in Singapore, “his qualifying is good, he gets off the line, his race craft seems fine.
“Yes he wins when he’s at the front, but he keeps getting at the front.”
As outlined in F1, as in most things indeed, we love a tale of ‘what if?’ And this poignancy applies absolutely to Massa’s tale in 2008 – just what if Piquet et al hadn't concocted their sour scheme, and Felipe presumably had cruised to the Singapore win just as Nico did? Well this time, in our equivalent, it seems we’ll get to find out.
