Bottas is doing a good job, his race in Russia was something that Nico rarely did - beat Hamilton in a straight up fight where neither had a reliability issue and whilst I rate Rosberg and feel he is a top 8 driver in the post 2000 era its easy to get carried away with his achievements because of the win total.
Like I said above, he won all his races in a 2 horse race scenario. If you are in a two horse race, if something happens to the other horse, you win the race. Bottas will not get that luxury and Nico wouldn't have got it this year either as he would have still have had to beat Vettel. This isn't a Nico bash post, just the pure statistics of his wins.
Rosbergs wins
2013 Silverstone - Hamilton gets puncture when in control and heading for win Monaco
2014 Australia - Hamilton retires from pole with engine failure Monaco - Rosberg intentionally/unintentionally blocks Hamiltons pole lap Austria - Hamilton has the pole lap deleted for running wide in qualifying, then messes up his 2nd run and starts 9th. Germany - Hamilton starts P20 after brake failure in qualifying Brazil - Hamilton so much quicker he is able to attempt an over cut, just when he gets the gap up enough he spins pushing to hard on old tyres.
Up until this point, he had won Monaco 2013 on merit and also Austria and Brazil due Hamilton making a mistake so that is on merit too, but the ultimate pace wasn't enough to beat Hamilton. Silverstone, Australia and Germany all relied on Hamilton reliability issues. At this point, I personally did not rate Rosberg and found him very lucky to have challenged for a title in 2014 and most of his race wins good fortune. This did change somewhat from the middle of 2015 when he pulled some wins on pure merit and I was impressed and weary of him going into 2016, he also took the last 6 pole positions of the 2015 season.
2015 Spain Monaco - pit wall confusion and miscalculation means Hamilton pits and loses win Austria Mexico Brazil AD
I have left them blank when they are on merit and all of these were very very good drives. All pole and win. He only got one lucky win that year and even lost a likely win in Russia too. This is why 2015, especially the second half was his best period for me. He was Hamiltons match then and looked very strong going into 2016, but the 2016 car did not suit him as much as the late season 2015 one.
2016 Australia - Hamilton messes up start from pole Bahrain - Hamilton messes up start again from pole and then is hit by Bottas damaging his car China - Hamilton engine failure, starts P20 Russia - Hamilton engine failure, starts P10 Europe - Hamilton crashes in qualifying, starts P10 Belgium - Hamilton engine changes, starts P20 Monza - Hamilton messes up start from pole Singapore Japan
20 wins 7 - were Hamilton had a mechanical failure whilst in front of Rosberg or during qualifying resulting in low grid position. 4 - Hamilton made driver errors that cost him the win. 2 - Monaco "mix ups", the pit wall miss calculation and the qualifying blocking incident
7 - Weekends he was clearly the faster and better driver or at very least he made a good start whilst Hamilton messed his up.
Also worth noting here that Nico was on course to win in Russia in 2015 on merit and retired and did retire from the lead at Silverstone in 2014 but was being caught. As far as I am aware he didn't "lose" any other race wins, except Hungary 2014 with the SC timing but then he had the good fortune that weekend of Hamilton blowing up in qualifying. So he had a potential 2 further wins if things worked out better for him.
Like I have always said, Nico had the speed to beat Hamilton hands down 3-4 times per season and then another 3-4 times due to circumstances. Fortunately for him, in 2016 he beat him the 3-4 times on merit but Hamilton had so many issues he beat him 5-6 times due to circumstances and got himself the title.
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In the interest of balance, a look at the inherited and/or lucky Hamilton wins whilst alongside Rosberg
2014 Silverstone - Rosberg retires with gearbox failure from the lead. However, Hamilton was catching him at 0.5 per lap and looked good to overtake and win on merit
2015 Russia - Rosberg retires from a certain win. Hamilton inherits it.
2016 Germany - Rosberg messes up the start from pole and drops to 5th.
31 wins
23-24 - wins by simply being the better driver that weekend 5 - wins when Rosberg made an error whilst ahead. (Italy 2014, Austria 2016, Austin 2015, Austin 2014) 3 - inherited wins due to Rosberg misfortune, I can only think of two, but probably another one.
Potential 8-10 race wins lost due to reliability issues and other issues. The win totals read 31-20 and to me that flatters Nico, if you remove Nico's bad luck and leave Hamiltons that might read 29-22. Do the same the other way and it would look more like 40-11.
Nico comes out of the partnership looking a lot better on paper than he ever did on the race track. That is the problem of a dominant car. If you are the quicker driver and your team mate has a reliability issue, it doesn't change the result because he was in P2 anyway. However, if the faster guy has an issue, the slower driver who was running P2 wins the race. Exactly the same as what happened with Senna and Prost over 88-89.
I tried to present the analysis objectively and without any bias, please point me toward anything you feel doesn't add up or I missed anything and I will amend the numbers.
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