Nico Rosberg's simmering anger with Lewis Hamilton spills over into fireworks at Spa

Nico Rosberg made some very bad decisions on Sunday although the championship points table doesn't reflect that.

He speaks a number of languages and I strongly doubt he’s stupid in any of them, and therefore I’d be very surprised if he actually said he ran into Hamilton on purpose as he would know the potentially grave consequences of such words.

Of course it’s a debatable point, is failing to take action to avoid an accident any different to proactively creating contact? In my experience it very much is. Senna was my barometer; he would make very bold moves and let you decide whether to have the accident or not in order to gain psychological dominance. I wouldn’t yield after a while in F3, so we crashed. But we weren’t team-mates.

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He also of course intentionally crashed into Prost at Suzuka in 1990 with a pre-determined action decided way before the race, which was unacceptable, but you have to hold your ground otherwise you’re simply mentally filed away as weak forevermore.

In some ways Senna, the emotionally-driven genius, was revered in some quarters for putting right a perceived injustice that day from the FIA and I often felt that Michael Schumacher could never quite understand that when he was rebuked and booed for some of his more questionable actions.

Rosberg’s post-race words and otherwise limited explanation do at least explain why, having turned away initially, he then not only straightens the wheel but actually turns towards Hamilton. It was an instantaneous moment of anger and petulance which has been building up for a while.

Hamilton had correctly defended the inside line and all racing drivers know that it’s a little bumpy and often dirty there but still with decent grip. It does compromise and tighten the line into the chicane however, and Rosberg was perfectly within his rights to have a run down the outside while judging Hamilton’s braking performance. We’ve seen thousands of such passes there over the decades, including later in the same race by Valtteri Bottas. However Hamilton braked late, stayed under control, and made the apex, entitling him to the normal racing line. Rosberg’s move was off, but he didn’t accept it or take rational action.

F1 Midweek Report

Teams always make several spare front wings, have them readily stacked in a frame in the pitlane ensuring they have the same settings as the race car set-up where possible, and practice relentlessly the procedure to change the nose and attached wing assembly. That’s because, as we all frequently witness, it’s rather easy to damage them, being invisible and two meters away from a seated driver on the extremities of the car.

Rosberg’s action was guaranteed to damage his front wing so it would have been an own goal had he not punctured Hamilton’s tyre. I spoke with Pirelli and they explained that contact by a front wing end fence on the relatively small curve between the tyre tread and the side wall of a rotating tyre creates a 90% chance of a puncture, but the tread and sidewall itself (and of course the wheel) are much less likely to puncture. It must be said that the vulnerable part mentioned is the one quite often hit. We saw Jules Bianchi get such a puncture on lap one of the race, but conversely Alonso hit Vettel in the last lap losing a big chunk of front wing but Vettel had no puncture. Hamilton was unlucky, Rosberg got lucky through his own actions and error and not for t