LEWIS HAMILTON and Nico Rosberg have set the stage perfectly for a tense opening skirmish at the Italian Grand Prix by qualifying their Mercedes cars alongside each other on the front row of the grid. Asked if being read the riot act by the team management after their collision in Spa would be playing on their minds as they raced into the first corner wheel-to-wheel, Hamilton replied: “It won’t be ringing in my ears.”
The inference was, of course, that it might still be a distraction for Rosberg, given that the German was blamed by the team for the failure to record another 1-2 in Belgium.
Regardless of whether Hamilton’s response was simply an attempt to put more pressure on Rosberg’s shoulders in the early stages of today’s race, the tension between the two teammates has increased the drama of this battle for the drivers’ championship.
Given that the run down to the Retifillio chicane is long, the turn is tight and approached from super-high speed on low downforce wings that boost straightline speed but rob the cars of their usual grip under braking, the possibility for error in the competitive intensity of the moment is considerable.
Even if that passes without incident, there are 53 laps of hard, intense racing around the fastest track on the calendar. Monza is a circuit on which overtaking is relatively easy between evenly-matched cars, meaning that a seat on the Mercedes team pit wall will not be the most comfortable in the house.
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After a recent run of difficult qualifying sessions — including brake failure and an engine fire — Hamilton is hoping this pole is the springboard to a return to his early-season form when he won four consecutive races. But he is wary. “For the past seven races I’ve always gone in thinking it would be a clean weekend,” he said, “and we saw how those turned out. We also saw the issues we had with my car [in practice] here and that Nico had with his [also in practice]. So we need to make sure we have reliability.”
Rosberg had missed Saturday morning practice with a gearbox problem but was relieved to find that this had not seriously compromised his progress in qualifying. “On my first run the car felt better in many areas so I was able to go straight into it,” he said.
On the matter of the recent conversation with Mercedes management, he said: “It’s been the same policy since the start of the season. Nothing has changed, so it won’t particularly be on my mind. We are free to race.”
Even if Rosberg fails to finish here and Hamilton wins, the German will still be leading the championship — albeit by just four points. It would be no surprise if fortunes between the two protagonists swung wildly between now and the title finale in Abu Dhabi in late November.
Hamilton secured his first pole in eight races in resounding fashion, with a margin over Rosberg of almost three-tenths of a second. But whether he can maintain such superiority in the race is a different matter.
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Hamilton’s best hope of clawing back his 29-point deficit could lie in Rosberg having to race the Williams of third-fastest qualifier Valtteri Bottas, something Hamilton alluded to when he said: “I hope we can get a bit of competition from these guys [Williams].”
Bottas was far from dismissive of the idea, having qualified just one-tenth slower than Rosberg on a track that is well-suited to his low-drag Mercedes-powered car. Felipe Massa underlined the form of Williams by qualifying alongside Bottas at a circuit where he has previously represented Ferrari seven times in front of the wildly partisan crowd.
Massa is under less pressure at Williams than ever he was in his Ferrari years and surely took some satisfaction by qualifying three places ahead of Fernando Alonso, who was the faster of the two Ferraris. This was not the glorious day it might have been for Luca di Montezemolo in what is expected to be his final visit to the home track as chairman of the team. Rumours persist that the 69-year-old will stand down after the company announces what are set to be record profits in October and will then join Alitalia. The Italian airline is expected to be taken over in the coming weeks by the Abu Dhabi-based Etihad, a company that already has strong links with Ferrari.
Although Montezemolo, who has headed Ferrari since 1991, attempted to divert questions about the validity of the rumour, he stopped short of making a full denial.
Jenson Button qualified sixth fastest, directly behind his rookie McLaren teammate Kevin Magnussen. This was not the best outcome for the veteran who continues to seek a commitment from the team about his future beyond the end of the season. Ron Dennis, the McLaren boss, is believed to be waging a relentless recruitment campaign involving Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Hamilton, regardless of all three being contracted to their current teams into 2015.
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As usual at Monza, which signals the end of the season’s European phase, the intrigue off the track competes with the action on it.