Grand Prix 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

So here it is, the season finale and the two Mercedes drivers go in to it with the chance of taking the title. Hamilton leads Rosberg by 17 points so a repeat of the result in Brazil makes Lewis the Champion but double points means that the permutations are almost endless (boringly endless that is).

Two titles have already been sown up. Mercedes are constructors Champions and Nico Rosberg is the Pole Position Champion. Hands up all those who thought he would beat Lewis in qualifying? No one? Thought not. There will be a few other cars and drivers at the race but, frankly, all most of us will be interested in is which of the Merc drivers comes out on top. With 10 wins to 6 Lewis would have won on Bernie's Gold Medal system but then the Ring Master decided that simply winning races isn't enough and to keep things "interesting" decided making one race result worth twice that of any other was a good idea. I wonder what craziness will be visited on us fans next year. Perhaps something for a separate discussion.

Back to the race, this is the one which starts in the sunshine and then gets dark and it has the weird pit lane which makes the cars look like they are leaving a multi-storey car park. For anyone going, Ferrari World is just outside the circuit, somehow I don't think it will be Ferrari World inside.

Anyone got any other thoughts? Can Williams steal a win? Will McLaren carry on improving? Will this be Jenson Button's final race in F1? Sebastian Vettel will be saying goodbye to Red Bull, Sutil and Gutierrez will, most likely, be saying goodbye to F1 and we've already said goodbye to Caterham and Marussia.

Hope you are sitting comfortably, let the final race begin.
 
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Lewis will be runners up in SPOTY for the 3rd time as far I think unless someone has a go at Rory for what he did for jilting Caroline Wozniacki
 
Another look at the Mercedes duel in the Abu Dhabi: compare double point VS "normal" point
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I have tuned up two tables from f1fanatic.co.uk
 
So if I'm reading that correctly Nico has four times as many chances of winning under double points then he would under the normal points system..
 
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With the performance advantage of the Mercedes, it's really only going to come down to reliability or driver error.

Assuming nothing breaks, neither Rosberg nor Hamilton make any mistakes, and they don't get hit by anyone else, it should be a Mercedes 1-2 again.
 
Thinking back quickly through the entire history of Formula One I believe that only 3 times has the Championship Leader has retired from the final round and subsequently lost the title.

1986 - Mansell (Tire)
1983 - Prost (Turbo)
1976 - Lauda (Non-mechanical)

1964 was an interesting one, as Graham Hill's car was badly damaged early in the race and he finished well out of the points. Hamilton obviously suffered severe troubles in 2007 as well and looked destined for retirement for nearly 40 seconds.

I'm loathe to bring up this topic, but you'd have to say it's a rare occurrence in the grand scheme of things and that has been fortunate too as it doesn't get much more cruel than this. And at least Prost benefitted from this phenomenon after suffering from it the first time.
 
With the speed of the Mercs and Abu Dhabi running later in the day I hope none of these problems happen as long as Lewis has cleared the first corner

The track itself is very forgiveable with plenty of run off
 
KekeTheKing , at the risk of re-opening an old kettle of worms you could argue that Hill at Adelaide in 1994 could be included. Even though the damage was obviously caused by the collision with Schumacher, he did continue for half-a-lap.
So his damaged suspension meant that technically he did retire for mechanical reasons.
 
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