Track Torque: Who will be world champion?
This is the last race of the year and, for the first time, is going to earn double points.
LEWIS Hamilton, with 334 points is 17 points ahead of Nico Rosberg on 317, followed by Daniel Ricciardo with 214 and Sebastian Vettel, 159.
The new world champion can only be Hamilton or Rosberg, and obviously Hamilton must be favourite with the 17 point advantage.
This is the last race of the year and, for the first time, is going to earn double points.
This means that if Rosberg wins the race he scores 50 points and Hamilton, if he finishes second, scores 36, which is a difference of 14 points but still not enough to give Rosberg the championship, so there needs to be a different mathematical scenario for Rosberg to get the championship.
The normal point scoring is 25 points for a win, 18 for second, 15 for third, 12 for fourth, 10 for fifth, eight for sixth, six for seventh, four for eighth, two for ninth and one for 10th.
Besides the two favourites, the Williams boys from Grove could set the cat among the pigeons by getting in between the two Mercedes.
This is a definite possibility as both Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa have the ability and speed in their cars to trouble the Mercedes duo.
The other drivers who could possibly trouble Hamilton and Rosberg could be Jenson Button in the McLaren Mercedes and maybe Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari.
Once the race is over we will have a three month wait before the new season begins in March 2015.
McLaren is already trying out its new Honda engine car on the test bed and it won’t be long before all runners enter the series of winter tests which will take place in Spain to see how the 2015 cars are going to perform.
We are all waiting to see whether they will allow a change in engine design for 2015.
I certainly hope this will be the case and help Renault and Ferrari be more on a par with Mercedes.
As I have mentioned before Mercedes utilises a turbocharger with the air and exhaust turbine set approximately 30cm apart as opposed to the normal combined unit.
This has resulted in a much more efficient set-up and hence power advantage for all Mercedes engine cars. Let’s hope the others can close the gap during the (northern hemisphere) winter period.
Sunday’s championship final is a race about only two people, Rosberg and Hamilton.
They are very evenly matched and grew up together from go-karts to the smaller racing formulas, and then to Formula 1.
Both dearly want to win, especially Rosberg, as he has not yet won a world championship.
It is anyone’s bet as to who is going to be superior this weekend.
We hope there are no untoward incidents and that it is a clean race and that the best man on the day wins in the heat of the moment and desert of Abu Dhabi!
Qualifying is on Saturday at 3pm and the race is on Sunday at 3pm.
