Rosberg guilty, but not really a villain

Until the two Mercedes drivers reached the end of the Kemmel Straight and turned into the Les Combes right-hander on lap two of the Belgian Grand Prix, the conflict between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg was a cold war.

There had been flashpoints, games of brinksmanship, suspicions, hostility and a growing atmosphere of distrust, but this was the moment when the warning shots stopped and the live ammunition was used for the first time.

Debates will rage over who really started this conflict, and exactly when. But the one indisputable fact is that it was Rosberg who fired the first shot on track. And from a world championship perspective, it hit the spot perfectly, putting his title rival out of contention - even if Rosberg himself lost a chunk of his front wing, and possibly a chance of victory, in collateral damage.

Things had looked bleak for Rosberg a few minutes earlier. A poor getaway allowed both Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel to jump him on the run to the tortuously tight La Source hairpin. Vettel's bold attempt to go around the outside of Hamilton for the lead at Les Combes resulted in the Red Bull driver having to abort and cut across the runoff, promoting Rosberg to second.

He crossed the line to start the fateful second lap seven tenths behind Hamilton. Rosberg exited Eau Rouge around 6km/h faster than Hamilton. He had no choice but to attack.

Hamilton went on the defensive and Rosberg moved to the outside as they hurtled up the Kemmel Straight. At the turn-in point, Rosberg's front wheel was somewhere between Hamilton's rear wheel and the mid-point of his Mercedes, and he decided to contest the corner.

It wasn't an unreasonable decision - had Hamilton slowed a little too much, there was the possibility of slinging the car around the outside and having the inside line for the left-hander that follows immediately.

Hamilton's race was ruined as a result of the clash © XPB

But when it became clear that the gap was closing, who knows exactly what was going through Rosberg's mind?

Perhaps it was April's Bahrain Grand Prix, where he was unhappy at being forced to get off the throttle to avoid a clash when trying to go around the outside of Hamilton for the lead.

Perhaps it was last month in Hungary, where he was angered by Hamilton's refusal to let him past.

But what he certainly wasn't thinking was how best to secure another one-two finish for Mercedes.

Rosberg had a split-second to decide whether or not to wind off the lock and eliminate the risk of contact. He decided not to and the right side of his front wing grazed Hamilton's tyre. The result was Hamilton suffering a puncture and Rosberg losing an endplate.

"I heard someone say it was inevitable that we were going to crash one day," said Hamilton. "I don't feel like today there was that inevitability.

"I took the inside line, I had the corner. We braked very deep into the corner because if I'd braked early he would have come down the outside, which would have meant that he was alongside me through that section.

"I still made the corner with the same line as I would do normally and I just heard a big thud. I thought there would be an investigation."

Then came Hamilton's bombshell, revealing that Rosberg "said he did it on purpose, he said he could have avoided it and did it to prove a point".

It's a comment that requires a little more context. What Hamilton said was not under duress or under intense questioning; it was volunteered after a pause in his explanation of what happened. After the first shot had been fired, Hamilton decided, legitimately, to respond by revealing Rosberg's position in the post-race team meeting.

But what it certainly does not mean was that Rosberg had this in mind when he launched the move on the straight. What was deliberate was not aborting the move, as Vettel had done a lap earlier.

As for what point Rosberg was trying to make, it's unclear, but it seems likely that he felt that there'd been too many times, primarily in Bahrain, where he had to back out of a move around the outside to prevent a collision. He felt Hamilton should have left space for him on the outside at Les Combes.

"You can ask Fernando [Alonso], you can ask all drivers: when a car is less than half a car length alongside you and you're on the inside, it's your racing line," said Hamilton.

"It's not your job to go massively out of your way and leave extra room. And it wasn't one of those corners where there was a wall there or anything because Sebastian, the lap before, was actually further up and he was sensible about it."

Hamilton was convinced Rosberg hit him on purpose © LAT

While the stewards did briefly consider the incident, there was no official investigation. And rightly so. Rosberg was guilty of a lack of pragmatism, but he was entitled to attempt the move.

Had this clash happened between drivers from different teams, it would have been perceived as a racing accident caused by over-optimism on Rosberg's part rather than malice. Even so, the smart move for Rosberg would have been to wait. After all, a lap later he would have had the advantage of the DRS. But his reluctance to talk about the collision in much depth after the race hinted that he realised he had not made the right call.

"I had a good run on Lewis and tried to go around the outside and we just touched," he said on the podium. "So that hurt both of our races. From a team point of view, of course that's disappointing, that's just the way it is."

"As the stewards judged it a racing incident, that's the way one can describe it," he said a few hours later. "In such an incident, it's natural for there to be varying opinions. That's completely normal and I understand the British people will more often than not tend to be on the side of Lewis and the Germans will be on my side more often than not - that's the nature of the thing."

With Hamilton dropping a minute recovering to the pits and - thanks to floor damage caused by flailing rubber hobbling his Mercedes - unable to score, Rosberg's second place meant an 18-point gain in the drivers' championship. From that perspective, the outcome was positive for him, especially as there are limits to what the "consequences" promised by team management, which shared Hamilton's view of the collision, can be.

But this was not Alain Prost driving into Ayrton Senna at Suzuka in 1989, and it certainly wasn't Senna ploughing into Prost at the same venue a year later, so the vilification Rosberg was subject to in some quarters was disproportionate.

Instead, this was a world championship contender weighing up the potential pluses and minuses of not avoiding a clash that he felt was triggered by Hamilton failing to give him room. He knew he had an 11-point lead heading into the race, so could afford to make his point, and the 18-point swing in his favour was a bonus.

World championship fights are always high-stakes games of poker, weighing up risk versus reward, and Rosberg will certainly be happy to take the criticism given the net result.

Ricciardo was flawless once again © LAT

It's hard to say which was more inevitable. That Hamilton and Rosberg would eventually drive into each other this season, or that it would be Daniel Ricciardo who was there to pick up the pieces and take another classy victory.

Like his previous victories in Canada and Hungary, it was dependent on Mercedes hitting trouble, but there is no shame in that, given the pace advantage of the Silver Arrows.

A mistake at the exit of Blanchimont on his final Q3 lap left Ricciardo fifth on the grid. He held position at the start, so had some work to do to establish himself as the best-placed to profit from the Mercedes collision. On lap four he passed Alonso's Ferrari into Les Combes. One lap later Vettel ran wide at Pouhon.

With the Red Bull running very low downforce, to ensure it had the necessary straightline speed in sectors one and three, the twisty middle sector was always going to be a thrill-ride and Vettel did very well to catch the car, but his loss of momentum was enough to allow his Australian team-mate to scythe past into second place.

Rosberg was unable to pull away thanks to his damaged front wing and was instructed to hang on as long as he could, going deep enough into the race to be sure of being able to complete a two-stopper (although he would later switch to three for strategic reasons).

With Ricciardo parked within DRS range, Rosberg made his first stop for medium rubber and a new nose on lap eight. The nose change meant the stop took 10 seconds, relegating him to fourth once the first round of stops had shaken out. But Ricciardo's advantage over Rosberg was only six seconds at this point.

"Nico came in for a front-wing change and we were able to get into the lead, and then the pace was pretty good," said Ricciardo. "It was just up to me to stay consistent and stay focused."

Ricciardo knew that Rosberg's Mercedes had a performance advantage and was still on target to win. But during Rosberg's second stint, a combination of Vettel (who he initially couldn't pass) and Valtteri Bottas (who used the DRS to breeze past him into Les Combes on lap 17 to take fourth) meant he wasn't making progress. During this phase of the race, the pendulum swung in Ricciardo's favour.

Rather than wasting more time, Rosberg pitted again for mediums on lap 19 in the hope of provoking a reaction from Ricciardo. Rosberg's three-stop strategy was a low-risk way to attack, because he was always expected to salvage at least second place. When he made his final stop on lap 34 (with 10 to go), he re-emerged fourth, just behind Bottas.

Ricciardo had to keep pushing even with his big lead, knowing that Rosberg was looming © LAT

He wasted no time in dispatching him through Blanchimont and set about reeling in the revitalised Kimi Raikkonen, who had jumped from sixth to second thanks to an early first stop. The Finnish Ferrari driver didn't have the rubber to defend and fell victim to a DRS pass on the run to Les Combes on lap 36.

At the end of that lap, Rosberg was 19.7s behind Ricciardo and told he was on target to catch him right at the end of the race. But he couldn't quite keep with the curve, an oversteer moment at the rapid right-hander after Stavelot, renamed in honour of Belgian journalist/racer Paul Frere in 2008, revealing how hard he was pushing.

Ricciardo crossed the line with just over three seconds in hand. Once again, the Australian demonstrated that he has the steel under pressure to go with his prodigious speed.

As Ricciardo, now a three-time grand prix winner, beamed on the podium, it was an uncomfortable time for Rosberg, even with the comfort of a 29-point championship lead.

The great scraps for the world championship are often contentious. While Rosberg was guilty of questionable reasoning and should have backed out of his move, he had attempted a legitimate, but optimistic passing bid and profited from it far more than he could ever have hoped. This is not the crime some make it out to be.

As for Hamilton, his unhappiness with what had happened was completely understandable. He certainly did nothing wrong and knows that even four consecutive victories would not necessarily allow him to regain the championship lead.

Only time will tell how lap two of the Belgian Grand Prix will really affect the world championship. But Hamilton's response when asked whether he could trust Nico if they head into the first chicane at Monza wheel to wheel underlined that this could be a turning point in relations inside Mercedes.

"I'll have to make sure we are not wheel to wheel."