Why Raikkonen and Bottas will decide the title
With the start of the 2017 Formula 1 season being decided by fine margins, the expectation is the same will go for the world championship. That means the performance of the second drivers at Mercedes and Ferrari will be crucial
Not every Formula 1 season is like 1986, when Williams duo Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet took points off each other and, with a little help from a blowout on the streets of Adelaide, Alain Prost stole the world championship in the inferior McLaren. Yet conventional wisdom would have you believe it is.
That season is most often cited as supporting evidence for the strategy of a team having a set number one and number two driver. For while Piquet and Mansell did battle within Williams, Keke Rosberg played second fiddle to Prost at McLaren in the final year of his F1 career.
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