agdamis

Am I the only one that finds it odd that post Hamilton securing his third championship, Nico has miraculously found pace............

Circuit Motorsports

Pressure off Hamilton. No need to push as hard. We're talking a couple tenths of a second difference. And as we have seen that the driver in front easily dictates what happens at Mercedes.

FGL28

Any race where Maldonado is involved in an accident is a good race.

Larry Herman

Mercedes can build a great car, but once again has proven that their race strategy is second rate. Hamilton could have easily caught Rosberg if that hadn't kept him out so long. And I think that the excuse that they didn't use the super softs because they were afraid that they would grain was lame. If they grained, where would that have left Hamilton, SECOND....duh.

Wait till Ferrari get closer next year.

FGL28

I agree.

But did anybody see the photobomb Ricardo pulled on Button?

A fun guy who I would want on my team.

Nizer

You assume it was a mistake? Interesting.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.....

Texas RS

Good call... and now we have to see if a real champion emerges next year. We can always hope.....

consolidated

Did you see Buxton say Verstappen maybe the best driver of not only a generation, or era but our lifetime based on his and others opinion? I recall he even said something about Senna...bold prediction.

multi21

The play was to put the supersofts on because Lewis was guaranteed 2nd place if they went on the Softs. The only thing I can say is that Mercedes doesn't want Nico to be a zombie during the off season and wants their #2 to have some semblance of hope for 2016 and all of a sudden gets 6 poles and 3 race victories in a row and Hamilton is complaining about car balance.... race manipulation at it's best.

BTW, it's funny when Buxton tosses those out of the blue gems like he did on Max, the driver (in this instance Max V.) comes out and flat spots a relatively new set of tires and has to come in prematurely because of vibration. Yes, a relatively minor mistake, but not a move that a "once in a lifetime driver" would have made. Let's see what plays out before anointing one the best of all time...

Finally, the story about Ron Dennis calling from beyond to get his drivers under control because they had a little fun on the podium and Alonso taking in the sun after another DNF is pure Ron

My993C2

If you remember (was it after the Italian GP?) when they changed the rules for minimum tires pressures. Ever since then Rosberg has had the edge in qualifying over Hamilton and won more races than Hamilton when Nico was not self destructing on the track. This might explain why Rosberg finished the season stronger than his Brit team mate.

As far as Verstappen is concerned. Without a doubt the boy is talented and belongs in F1. But he's also immature. Ignoring Blue Flags when the leaders are trying to lap him ... driving off the track to gain an advantage and then whining about what a victim he is. He's still got some learning to do. But give him a good car and yes he could be a WDC one day. But thankfully I don't have to listen to most of the nonsense Buxton has to say. The vast majority of the races I watch a recycled BBC feed and while the BBC are not as good as Sky Sports F1 coverage, the BBC is still miles ahead of NBC's F1 coverage. But even the BBC's David Coulthard had a "WTF" sort of moment during one point of yesterday's race. At about 2/3 of the way through the race Coulthard was saying "Vettel could make his soft tires last, that perhaps he didn't need to make a 2nd pot stop". But the funny thing was that just a few laps earlier, Coulthard made the correct comment that Vettel had to make a 2nd stop because he had yet to run the option tires in the race. LOL

PPo

Interesting race... Congrats to Vettel for hauling the car up to fourth place. It always amazes me when a car starts near the back of the grid, and by the end of the race they are in their natural position (give our take a few spots).

With respect to team Mercedes... I think we are seeing the influence that the team has when deciding on strategies for their drivers during the race. Simply put, Hamilton couldn't catch Nico because of position and strategy in the last few races. ("Okay Nico, you can go to Strat 10 now") Sure some stuff happened during the year, but I would be willing to bet when the team had to make a decision, they gave Hamilton the slight advantage because of his early points lead and his WDC experience. Not saying the title was manufactured or BS or anything else like that... The decision has to go one way or another, and Hamilton was in position to benefit from the decision more times than Nico. In the last three, Nico reigned... Good for him.

multi21

All great points. Let's not forget at age 17 and a rookie in F1, Max was asked by his team to yield to his teammate who was on a different strategy sometime this year and the answer was "no". I think his dad has a lot to do with that too as he was interviewed afterwards and said he would have kicked his son's *** if he had done it. No doubt a future star especially given his age and what he did in a mid pack car, but Buxton is a bit of a drama queen with his crazy announcements of best we'll ever see in our lifetimes....

Max Verstappen's stellar maiden F1 campaign ended on a sour note as he was assesses not one, but two penalties that dropped him out of the points at the Abu Dhabi finale.

Both Toro Rosso drivers had made strong starts to the race, and picked up places at regular intervals, but Verstappen's first indiscretion, added to an out-of-sequence pit-stop, began to see his evening unravel. The Dutch sensation had been duelling with veteran Jenson Button when the pair touched, sending Verstappen wide over the kerbs. While that, in itself, wasn't an issue, the stewards took umbrage at the Toro Rosso then retaking the track in front of its rival, and added five seconds to Verstappen's eventual race time.

“I'm not sure who exactly was in front, but we touched wheels and I just went wide,” the teenager confirmed, admitting that he had no thought of giving the place back to Button, “I saw him, and gave him space, but of course he tries to go for it as well so we touched. If I'd really wanted to, I could have pushed him off the track, but the thing is I don't want to do that.

“At least we had a fight – and I think he enjoyed it as well. I was clearly faster so I continued and opened a gap of five seconds, but it doesn't matter – if you finish twelfth of 16th at the end, it doesn't matter because you don't score points.”

Compounding Verstappen's race, however, was a further 20-second time penalty awarded for apparently ignoring blue flags with the charging Lewis Hamilton homing in on the Toro Rosso. This time, the Dutchman was a little more confused about the punishment.

“I saw after the race that I suddenly lost a lot of positions,” he said, “I thought 'okay, that happens…', but I don't know why it is under investigation because it has happened to me many times before that it has been that close – but, for me, it wasn't even that close.”

Both penalties also brought additional points to Verstappen's licence, with the totting up procedure now taking him to eight for the season after he collected two for his collision with Romain Grosjean in Monaco and three for speeding under a safety car at the Hungaroring. With a total of twelve points triggering a one-race ban, and no chance of the Dutchman erasing any black marks from the rolling accumulator until the middle of May next year, he is going to have to take it a little easier in the opening rounds of 2016.

Penalties apart, however, he insists that he enjoyed the race.

“In the beginning, it was all very close and that was quite enjoyable,” he reflected, “After the first pit-stop, the pace was quite good and I was catching up to the cars in front of me and, once Carlos [Sainz] let me by, I was also catching up to the guys in front of [him], so it was all good.

“But then I had a massive flat-spot into turn eight, and I still don't know why as I'd had all the same braking, but maybe it was a bit unlucky that I locked as it was both wheels, and from there on the race was compromised a lot as I stopped way too early. You try to manage it with the other tyres to the end, but it was just too hard for the right front on this track. If you back off, you lose temperature and everything gets worse and worse, so I had to stop again for the supersoft, which was not great as it was a new set and, on this track, after a few laps it just dies.

“We could have been ninth or tenth, around the Red Bull and the Lotus but, at the end of the day, I think it has been a great season, so one race like this… I'll take that. At least I enjoyed my overtakes...”