NICO ROSBERG
It is a given that Mercedes would come in first and second, but which driver would be which. Hey, its Nico Rosberg in the top slot and Lewis Hamilton in second. In fact, Rosberg made a clean sweep of the weekend coming out on top of all three practices, all three qualifying runs and the race. Doesn't seem like that should be all that hard to do, but it is the first time a driver has done that in about 10 years. In two weeks they will be going into the last race of the season at Abu Dhabi and either driver could be the champion. This year the last race will be for double points which I am not fond of the concept. My vote is for Nico Rosberg.
I am very happy that Felipe Massa came in third in this race. Seventy-five percent of the drivers have a race in their home country, but none as popular Massa. The Brazilian crowd loves him.
Disappointing is that fact that the grid is still two teams short. Marussia is definitely out of the picture and Chaterham is trying to crowdfund the last race. In the last 24 hours they raised 1.5 million dollars. Earlier in the year one of their drivers, Kamui Kobyashi, was crowdfunded to reserve his seat on the team. It is all about money.
Speaking of money, three other teams appear to be having money problems. They are Sauber, Lotus and Force India. All the pot money goes to the big teams and almost none to smaller independents. This is not good because without the independents there would be no race. I would hate to see anyone of these teams go. Especially Sauber, which has been around since the 70's and Peter Sauber still owns 66% of the team. Formula One claims this contract goes until 2020 and their answer is to add a third car to the big teams to make of the numbers on the grid. As much as I like Formula One I am not that much interested in seeing a half a dozen teams race each other. Independents should be given a chance.
photo credit: © 2014 gpupdate.net