Hamilton may need to re-think his tactics

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be all about the private battle between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Their personal showdown for the 2016 Formula 1 world championship is the only show in town this weekend.

Destiny is still very much in Rosberg's hands. He enjoys a 12-point lead at the top of the standings, which means he can finish as low as third in Sunday's Yas Marina F1 race and still be crowned champion regardless of what Hamilton does.

Hamilton needs help. He needs to win the race and hope at least two other cars can somehow finish between himself and Rosberg. Or he needs Rosberg to suffer some kind of misfortune - a reliability problem or other incident that either drops him well down the order, or curtails Rosberg's race altogether.

In that case all Hamilton will need to do is make sure he scores enough points to overturn the deficit. Third place is the minimum necessary if Rosberg fails to score.

A Rosberg retirement is arguably Hamilton's best hope, as under normal circumstances Mercedes should finish one-two comfortably, given its car is still easily the best on the grid when unleashed to its full potential.

Rosberg has suffered no serious engine problems yet this season, which is extraordinary in itself, but as Red Bull boss Christian Horner said ahead of Friday practice in Abu Dhabi: "You can't take anything for granted. At the end of the year the engines, the gearboxes, are all getting up there in mileage. Nobody has been infallible to reliability issues."

But Mercedes' reliability record is generally far superior to its rivals too, so Hamilton cannot really count on mechanical misfortune, even though Rosberg suffered an unexpected failure of his own here while chasing Hamilton during the 2014 title decider.

Horner also suggested Hamilton would be "smart" to consider backing Rosberg into his other rivals during Sunday's race, because "that's the only way the result will fall his way".

Hamilton rejected Horner's suggestion during a special pre-event press conference convened by the FIA, arguing that it would not be a very "practical" solution to his conundrum.

"If I'm out ahead I want to be generally as far ahead as possible," he said. "It's more of an achievement than backing up your team-mate.

"Generally there's one line through the first sector - it's very hard to follow. You pretty much need a 1.1s [per lap] advantage so that you can be in a position to overtake the car ahead, so there's quite a big delta compared to other races.

"It makes it very tough, hence why I am coming here to make sure I'm on first place on the front row.

"Nico's been pole for the last two year here. He's been very, very quick. This has generally been a relatively strong circuit for me, but I have not delivered in the last two years, so my sole goal is to do so."

So far it seems Hamilton is being true to his word. The reigning world champion was not far shy of four tenths of a second quicker than Rosberg in Friday's first practice session, held in the searing heat of a Middle Eastern afternoon.

That gap reduced to just 0.079s in the cooler (and more representative) conditions of Friday evening's second session, but Hamilton remained ahead, fractionally quicker through the first and third sectors of the lap, but dropping a few thousandths along the two back straights linked by the chicane at Turns 8 and 9.

Unsurprisingly, it looks as though the front row of the grid for this race is likely to be occupied exclusively by the Mercedes drivers.

The cooler conditions of the evening definitely helped bring Ferrari into a fight with Red Bull to be best-of-the-rest, after failing to get within a second of the pace in the high heat of FP1, but there is little chance of it bothering Mercedes when the engines are cranked up to full power for qualifying.

PURE PACE RANKING (all on ultra-soft)
1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m40.861s
2. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m41.130s
3. Red Bull (Verstappen) 1m41.389s
4. Williams (Bottas) 1m41.959s
5. Force India (Perez) 1m42.041s
6. McLaren (Alonso) 1m42.366s
7. Haas (Gutierrez) 1m43.012s
8. Renault (Palmer) 1m43.272s
9. Manor (Ocon) 1m43.600s
10. Sauber (Nasr) 1m43.903s
11. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m44.478s (soft)*

*Neither Toro Rosso driver completed an ultra-soft run.

The competitive order looks very similar to Brazil. Mercedes has a clear advantage over the rest, followed by a very tight fight behind between Red Bull and Ferrari in the cooler conditions, which help bring the SF16-H's rear tyre temperatures under control.

Williams and Force India are closely matched again, with Fernando Alonso's McLaren clinging on. Haas tends to start slow on race weekends given its relative inexperience, but could stretch away or fall behind Renault depending on what happens in FP3 and qualifying.

We also don't know how quick Toro Rosso can go yet, given both cars were stopped mid-session by the FIA owing to safety concerns, following yet another mysterious puncture on Daniil Kvayt's STR11.

As we've seen at many of the recent races, Red Bull is able to match Mercedes over the longer runs, perhaps even go slightly quicker, and so it seems again here. Taking a sample set of six laps, Daniel Ricciardo was two tenths quicker than Rosberg on average on the ultra-soft tyre, which the top 10 drivers will likely have to start Sunday's race on.

On the soft compound, which looks to be the race tyre of choice given it showed what Pirelli racing manager Mario Isola called "very low degradation" on what remains a relatively green circuit, Red Bull slipped behind Mercedes, but it was still significantly quicker than Ferrari, which averaged a similar pace on both the soft (Vettel) and super-soft (Raikkonen) compounds over an eight-lap stint.

Raikkonen's stint on the ultra-soft tyre was woefully slow, so Ferrrari needs to work on that, as well as changing Vettel's broken gearbox.

LONG RUN RANKING (ULTRA-SOFT)
1. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m46.249s (6 lap average)
2. Mercedes Rosberg) 1m46.475s (6 laps)
3. Williams (Massa) 1m47.056s (6 laps)
4. McLaren (Alonso) 1m47.823s (6 laps)*
5. Force India (Perez) 1m47.879s (6 laps)*
6. Renault (Palmer) 1m48.240s (6 laps)
7. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1m48.420s (5 laps)
8. Haas (Gutierrez) 1m48.765s (6 laps)
9. Manor (Ocon) 1m49.016s (6 laps)
10. Sauber (Nasr) 1m49.703s (6 laps)*

*Button, Hulkenberg and Ericsson were faster, but over less representative stint lengths.

LONG RUN RANKING (SOFT)
1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m45.628s (8 lap average)
2. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m46.007s (8 laps)*
3. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m46.754s (8 laps)
4. Force India (Perez) 1m46.992s (8 laps)
5. Williams (Massa) 1m47.511s (8 laps)
6. McLaren (Alonso) 1m47.599s (5 laps)*
7. Sauber (Ericsson) 1m48.529s (8 laps)
8. Manor (Ocon) 1m48.607s (7 laps)

*Verstappen and Button were fractionally faster but over less representative stint lengths. Haas and Renault did no soft compound long runs.

LONG RUN RANKING (SUPER-SOFT)
1. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1m46.777s (8 lap average)
2. Williams (Bottas) 1m47.866s (8 laps)
3. Renault (Palmer) 1m48.269s (5 laps)
4. Sauber (Nasr) 1m48.722s (7 laps)
5. Haas (Gutierrez) 1m49.221s (5 laps)

No other teams did long runs on the super-soft.

Mercedes is absolutely in the driving seat here, so it will take an unusual occurrence to bring other rivals into the mix. Rosberg is sitting in a comfortable second position at present, which is exactly where he needs to be to get the job done, with breathing space to spare.

The points leader is facing an unprecedented personal challenge - attempting to close out a world championship win from a position of strength. That will create a unique mental strain. He has absolutely everything to lose this weekend, and Hamilton needs to do everything in his power to exploit that.

Hamilton may need to reconsider his 'focus solely on winning the race' strategy - which incidentally is exactly the modus operandi Rosberg plans to employ this weekend.

Hamilton would surely be better served to do as Horner suggests - qualify on pole and then work to back Rosberg into the slower cars. Red Bull's long run pace so far suggests it is easily quick enough to cause trouble if it receives a helping hand to overcome those few tenths of pure pace disadvantage.

"Right now I'm solely focused on qualifying," Hamilton insisted after Friday's running. "At the moment I don't even know where I'm going to be. I need that pole position, that's my goal, that's what I'm gunning for.

"Then I can start to think about what I'm going to do in the race. Right now I have 0% of my mind focused on the race.

"I don't need to show strength anywhere other than on the track. I know what I'm capable of, I know where I should be, I think he [Rosberg] knows where I should be, so I'm just working on trying to do the best job I can, I'm not playing any psychological games.

"The best games are on the track. I've started good today and I need to keep that up."

That is very noble sentiment. But it will count for nothing if Rosberg 'cruises' to second place and collects the championship by five points. Hamilton needs to do more than just win. Even qualifying and running second could serve a useful purpose, allowing Hamilton to exert particular pressure on Rosberg, perhaps forcing his rival into mistakes that bring others into play and cause Rosberg to lose out strategically, in what Pirelli estimates will likely be a two-stop race for most cars.

Hamilton needs to play games. Rosberg doesn't usually deal well with things going off-script. If he ends up in difficulty he tends to lack Hamilton's powers of recovery. In Canada he could only finish fifth after banging wheels with Hamilton and going off track at Turn 1; in Germany Rosberg could only get back to fourth after making a bad start from pole, making a hash of re-passing Max Verstappen, and Mercedes misjudging the length of his subsequent pitstop time penalty.

Formula 1 history is littered with examples of title deciders that spiraled out of control for the favourite unexpectedly. Horner pointed to the 2010 season, when Vettel stole the championship from under Alonso's nose as Ferrari became strategically pre-occupied with Vettel's Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber.

Hamilton himself almost lost the 2008 title to Felipe Massa thanks to McLaren's conservative approach to the final race, and he did lose the championship from a winning position as a rookie the previous season, after going off on the first lap of the finale and later encountering gearbox trouble.

Rosberg faces what Horner calls "probably the biggest race of his career" this weekend, and pressure can do funny things to people when their dreams are within tantalising reach, so the established order can potentially be disrupted with greater ease.

Hamilton knows Rosberg is good around the Yas Marina circuit - the small gap between them in FP2 underscores that impression - but Hamilton cannot win F1's ultimate prize just by raising his own game and outwitting Rosberg in a straight fight. He needs more.

Rosberg is exactly where he needs to be right now, comfortably following Hamilton closely with no obvious threat from behind. To steal this championship away, simply winning the race in dominant fashion won't be enough. Hamilton needs to rethink his strategy and do everything in his power to throw Rosberg off course.

After all, Rosberg has everything to lose and Hamilton nothing.