Gary Anderson: A warning for Hamilton

All Lewis Hamilton has to do is finish second in Abu Dhabi and he's world champion. It sounds like he just has to turn up and it's job done. Or does it?

It just might not be. With a clean run and normal race circumstances, Mercedes should take its 12th one-two finish of the season in the finale, and even if Nico Rosberg wins, that will be enough for Hamilton to take the title.

Having gone into plenty of races fully expecting a straightforward result from the pitwall, I can tell you that there is plenty that can go wrong. There's always a cricket bat waiting to hit you on the back of the head.

Everybody at Mercedes is desperate for a mechanical failure not to intervene. Imagine if Hamilton ends up stranded on the grid as the field takes off on the formation lap, as happened to Rosberg in Singapore?

The problem is that when everybody is desperate for things to go right, the way they do things can change. You triple-check everything rather than double-checking and rather than just going about your business in the normal way, you are thinking about it too much.

Hamilton knows how quickly things can go wrong © LAT

That's the worst thing you can do, because suddenly the way of doing things that's served you well all through the year isn't the same as the way you're doing it now.

That's when there's a risk of engineering in problems. The fear of getting something wrong can often be responsible for doing just that.

For both the team and the drivers, it will be essential to do everything as normal in Abu Dhabi. But because of the circumstances, it's very difficult for it to be just another race, and the team management will have their work cut out keeping everyone calm.

That's why Hamilton cannot assume there will be no mechanical problems. Even though Mercedes has had a reliable car in the last four races, it doesn't mean that will continue. His job will be to ensure he keeps his head, and so do all those around him.

It's for that reason he keeps saying he won't change his approach, that he's still out there to win, even though he knows second is enough. If you go for the win 18 races a year, don't suddenly change your targets and expect all to go well.

Remember the 2008 title decider at Interlagos? Hamilton only needed to finish in the top five even if Felipe Massa won the race. Well, Massa did win, and Hamilton only passed Timo Glock for fifth in the final seconds of the season.

He and McLaren played it conservative because they could afford to, and it almost backfired.

There's always the chance for something you don't expect to get in the way. In 2010, Ferrari didn't take Sebastian Vettel seriously as a championship threat and while he was off winning the race, it followed Mark Webber's strategy with Fernando Alonso.

Alonso and Ferrari handed the 2010 title to Vettel and Red Bull by getting stuck behind Petrov © LAT

The result was that Alonso spent the race looking at Vitaly Petrov's rear wing while Vettel took his first title.

It only needs one call, one mistake, one wrong assumption and you can ruin everything.

We've seen this all through the season. Look at Mercedes, which has had the strongest car all year. We've had 18 races, but it has 'only' got its cars home first and second in 12 of them, though everyone else is still wishing for just a single one-two.

So one third of the time Mercedes is not getting the results that you would expect. And while you'd expect Hamilton to finish first or second, five times in 18 races he hasn't done so. That's not far off one third of the time either.

Let's look at what's gone wrong for Lewis in those races. In Australia, he suffered an engine problem even before the race started. There was nothing he could do about that, but the result was he was 25 points down before the season had really got underway.

His next disaster was in Canada, where Mercedes suffered ERS problems. Now, you could argue here that Rosberg dealt much better with the problems, finishing second while Hamilton retired after overworking the brakes, which took a beating without the contribution to the rear braking made by harvesting energy. That was another 18 points gone begging.

In Germany and Hungary, car problems in Q1 put him down the grid. He finished third in both of those races, but these illustrate just how fine the line can be between success and failure.

Hamilton came back through the field in Germany, but it was a hairy process © LAT

In Germany, he had contact with cars while coming through the field several times. He could easily have ended up with more significant front-wing damage, or even out of the race.

A week later, in Hungary, he had an engine failure in Q1. Nothing he could do about that, but what you don't want to see is him losing it on cold brakes after starting from the pits. He did touch the wall when he went off on the first lap and it could have been all over then and there.

At the following race, in Belgium, he had the infamous collision with Rosberg. That wasn't his fault, but the result was that he left Spa with no points.

So for very different reasons, some his fault, some the team's fault and one his team-mate's fault, the easy top-two finish that everybody expects him to get in Abu Dhabi has been lost on many occasions already.

It's much simpler for Rosberg. He has to go into the weekend aiming to win. That makes things far easier because you can just go for it without thinking about whether to take it easy or whether you are taking too many risks.

For Rosberg, Abu Dhabi is really 'hammer time' and I think he's really going to love that: no excuses, just drive flat-out.

Things went awry for Williams in Brazil © LAT

What happened to Williams in the Brazilian GP shows how races can get away from you. That was a cast-iron three-four finish, but rather than 27 points, it ended up with just 16.

While Felipe Massa survived his pitlane speeding penalty, and a visit to the McLaren pits, Valtteri Bottas's race went wrong.

Even something as seemingly simple as the seatbelts can cause problems and the time lost having them checked, along with tyre issues, meant he was 10th in a race in which he should have finished at least an easy fourth.

Williams is a team on the up that has made a lot of progress under Pat Symonds and Rob Smedley, but it's not yet operationally perfect.

You would say that Mercedes is a stronger team as it has been at the front for a few seasons and is winning lots of races this year, but - and it's a big but - dealing with a championship decider between your two drivers is a new situation for everyone there.

During the rest of the year, you always know there will be another chance. But it's the last race of the 2014 season, so it's now or never.

That's what pressure is, whether you're talking about the drivers or the team.

And pressure is what causes people to make mistakes. Something is going to have to go wrong for Hamilton not to win the championship, but in my time I've seen races lost to just about every kind of stupid mistake you can imagine.

And the driver is just one of hundreds of people who can make that mistake; can you imagine the pressure on the guy changing that left-front tyre on the last pitstop?

That's why the Mercedes team won't be an easy place to be in Abu Dhabi. Good luck to both drivers, and to everyone involved in the race weekend.