Like father like son. The newly crowned World Champion Nico Rosberg has emulated his father’s feat after 34 years. His father Keke was the 1982 F1 champion and that made Rosberg’s title win at Abu Dhabi even sweeter. Rosberg had a great F1 season but this year’s World Championship could only be decided in the last race of the season at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit on Sunday November 27. Lewis Hamilton was the winner but he couldn’t be crowned champion. All Rosberg needed to do was finish at least third at Abu Dhabi; he did better than that. While Hamilton was the race winner, Rosberg took the second place and emerged as the 2016 World Championship by a margin of 5 points. Yet, there were dramatics in the race with Hamilton ignoring team-Mercedes’ orders. The Brit was instructed not to back his teammate into close rivals Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen but he defied the team orders. As for Nico Rosberg, he kept his cool and by finishing at the podium, won the World Championship for the first time in his career.
As the race began, Hamilton broke away instantly into the lead with Rosberg on the chase. Max Verstappen had a contact with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and went into a bad spin on the first corner. He soon dropped to 18th place. On Lap-8, Rosberg went for tyre change and Verstappen regained 11th spot. On Lap-20, there was some scare for Rosberg as he came dangerously close to Verstappen in trying to overtake the Red Bull driver. It was tyre-to-tyre but Rosberg was able to push Verstappen wide on the outside lane and sped away to fall behind Hamilton. On Laps 28 & 29, Hamilton and Rosberg made their second pit stops in that order and when they came out, they fell behind current leader Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari. Vettel finally went to pits on Lap-38 and Hamilton and Rosberg regained the first and second places yet again. But the desert drama was yet to begin.
With four laps remaining, the top four drivers were separated by just 4 seconds. Hamilton was in the lead with Rosberg less than 1 second behind and the two were closely followed by Vettel and Verstappen. At this point, Hamilton began slowing down to block the passages of his pursuers. It looked like he engineered to send his teammate behind Vettel and Verstappen. The fourth place finish would have ended Rosberg’s World Championship dream and if Vettel could also overtake Hamilton, Mercedes managers would become furious. Therefore, they repeatedly urged Hamilton to speed up the race but the Brit kept defying them. With one lap remaining Vettel did try to overtake Rosberg but the Mercedes driver fended him off. Rosberg was reminded by Mercedes managers that he had to avoid any entanglement with seconds remaining. The drama soon ended with Hamilton winning the race. The 2016 World Championship, however, went to Nico Rosberg as he finished second. Sebastian Vettel was third followed by Max Verstappen. Daniel Ricciardo was fifth and Kimi Raikkonen sixth. Force India drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez finished seventh and eighth respectively followed by Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.