Abu Dhabi GP: Rosberg takes pole, sets up winner-take-all race against Mercedes teammate Hamilton
Ryan Joseph Ramos November 22, 2014The battle for the 2014 drivers’ championship is going down the wire. Nico Rosberg took pole position in qualifying for the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the final race in the F1 season calendar that’s worth double the championship points. His Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton qualified into P2, making this the eighth straight front-row lockout by the Silver Arrows team and setting up a final battle that will determine the top driver this season.
Apart from that, this result means that a Mercedes driver won the pole position in 18 out of the 19 races in the season, and the team has also secured the front row 12 times in total. On another note, Mercedes power has been responsible for all pole position qualifying victories in the 2014 F1 season. Apart from the 18 won between Rosberg and Hamilton, Williams-Mercedes’ Felipe Massa won the other pole. Massa and teammate Valtteri Bottas secured the second row for Sunday’s race.
It was a tighter qualifying battle than Mercedes would have wanted, with the Williams cars pushing hard as well. In Q2, Rosberg’s time was only good enough for fourth as Massa and Bottas made good on their late runs. However, Rosberg really wanted this. During the final runs, he went 1:40.480, beating out Hamilton (1:40.866).
Despite taking care of qualifying, Rosberg has a tough task ahead of him: he’s currently trailing Hamilton by 17 points, which means Rosberg would have to win AND Hamilton would have to finish lower than second place if Rosberg wants to claim the title. We all know Hamilton won’t be settling for second place, and he has no intention of doing anything but winning the race.
Both Mercedes drivers said they liked ther cars’ respective setups during qualifying, and they did have great pace throughout the practice sessions as well as qualifying, so the race should be a good showdown–assuming the Williams guys don’t play the role of spoilsports.
Rosberg even joked that he offered ‘a great wellness programme’ to Valtteri Bottas so that the driver can be well-rested for the race and have a great performance, obviously so that Rosberg can have a car between him and Hamilton. Kidding aside, Rosberg was excited at the chance to play for a championship, something he’s never been in previously.
It also looks like the team will let the two slug it out in the final race. “They are in the zone now and we will leave them in peace to prepare for tomorrow evening,” said Toto Wolff.
