DUBAI // Nico Rosberg has been beaten in every qualifying session and race so far in the 2015 Formula One season by Mercedes-GP teammate Lewis Hamilton, and former F1 driver Mark Webber has warned the German he needs to raise his game, and quickly, if he is to have any chance of becoming world champion this year.
Rosberg was a consistent challenger for victory in 2014, leading the standings for four months during the summer, and although he lost out to Hamilton for the drivers’ title at the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November, he claimed 12 pole positions and five wins.
However, the German has been regularly put in the shade by Hamilton this season and has already fallen 27 points after only four rounds.
Webber, speaking on Monday in Dubai to promote this year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which takes place on November 29 at Yas Marina Circuit, said it was important Rosberg was able to define his relationship with Hamilton in his mind so he can perform to his best.
“You can look at Lewis’s momentum from the back of last year to the start of this year and he is clearly on fire and driving really well, so Nico has got to find whatever way he can, whether it is a rivalry, whether it is a friendship or whatever else it is, to get himself back into performing,” the Australian said.
“If he is executing his maximum then that is his maximum, but in his own words he knows he needs to find that bit more to beat Lewis.”
Webber, who won nine races during his F1 career before retiring at the end of 2013 to move into sportscar racing and compete in the World Endurance Championship with Porsche, will serve as an ambassador at Yas Marina over the grand prix weekend, as he did last year, with his role including talking to fans and explaining the action in some of the hospitality suites at the facility.
Webber, 38, expects Mercedes to continue to be the dominant force in F1 this year as the season heads towards the finale in Abu Dhabi, but has been impressed by the form of Ferrari, for whom Sebastian Vettel won the second race of the season in Malaysia in March.
Vettel and Webber were teammates at Red Bull Racing for five years and they had an often volatile relationship, most notably in Malaysia in 2013 when Vettel ignored team orders and passed Webber to win the race.
Webber said tensions between the pair had thawed considerably since he had departed F1, and he sent the four-time world champion a congratulatory message after his latest triumph.
“I’m on pretty good terms now with Seb,” he said. “We were in touch after he won his race in Malaysia. That was a very pretty impressive victory.
“My message to him was ‘it looks like you are back to your old days’.”
Webber, who started 215 F1 races between 2002 and 2013, raced five times at Yas Marina and his first as a spectator last year coincided with F1’s first ever double points race being held there as it served as the final round of 2014.
Webber acknowledged he had misgivings about the system, which has been dropped for this year, though he believed it had served its purpose well as Hamilton, who would go on to win the race, had needed going into the weekend to be second to guarantee his second world title, rather than sixth as would have been the case under the normal system.
“As a traditionalist I am not a huge fan of the double points, but it worked well last year, to be honest and it kept it alive,” he said.
“I think now with the last few years of F1 we have seen only one or two teams take the fight to the last race. When I was racing in 2010 there was four drivers going for the championship with the standard points [system] and that is something that happens once every 20 years and is quite rare, so the initiative was cute.”
gcaygill@thenational.ae
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