– For three years, the duel between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg shaped Formula 1. Between 2014 and 2016, the then Mercedes drivers dueled three times in a row for the World Championship title. A key date is April 6, 2014, when the first real duel between the two took place on the racetrack.
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The Bahrain Grand Prix was the third race of the 2014 Formula 1 season, and after Rosberg won the season opener in Australia and Hamilton won the second race in Malaysia, the two fought directly against each other for victory in Sakhir.
Rosberg started from pole position, but Hamilton took the lead right at the start. During the course of the race, there were repeated duels and position changes – ultimately with the better outcome for Hamilton, who won the race.
Even though there was no collision, the “Duel in the Desert” is considered today as the starting point of the “Star Wars” at Mercedes, which lasted for a total of three seasons and escalated further over the years. Expert Marc Surer commented on the 2014 Bahrain GP for Sky at the time.
“Nico Rosberg was too nice at that point,” he says in an exclusive video interview on the *Formel1.de* YouTube channel about the duel between the two Mercedes drivers. That’s why Hamilton ultimately prevailed in Bahrain back then.
Surer: Hamilton exploited the regulations perfectly
“Lewis Hamilton is not a nice guy, we have to say that very clearly,” says Surer. Hamilton already knew all the “tricks” back then and knew “when he is practically at an advantage in terms of the regulations, and he always exploited that brutally,” explains the former Formula 1 driver.
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“I think he is someone who knows exactly what he is doing,” says Surer. Rosberg, on the other hand, acted too fairly against Hamilton for a long time. A good example of this was a scene in Turn 4 in Bahrain at the time, the expert recalls.
Bahrain 2014: How one race changed the Mercedes story forever
“He left him out to dry, as we say, on the outside line by simply driving his line and leaving no room,” he says about Hamilton and explains: “That’s no longer possible today. Today there are new rules. If someone is halfway alongside on the outside, you have to leave them room.”
“Back then, this rule didn’t exist and Hamilton exploited it brutally,” says Surer. Only later did Rosberg also drive harder against his teammate. “Two years later he was no longer too nice. That’s what brought him the World Championship title,” Surer recalls.
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Hamilton became World Champion in 2014 and 2015 respectively, Rosberg won his first title in 2016 and then retired from Formula 1 immediately. Thus, the “Star Wars” came to an abrupt end after three years.
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