MOTORSPORT: Duel in the desert for F1 title

It will be 55 laps and 305.355km on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina circuit, with almost 375 gear changes each if they go the distance.

Starting in daylight but finishing under lights at night, the track temperature could drop as much as 15 degrees Celsius during the race on the edge of a desert in the Middle East.

Third place on Sunday, worth 15 points, would seal a first world championship for Rosberg, whose father Keke took the title in 1982 and won Australia’s first F1 GP at Adelaide in 1985.

The younger Rosberg has won in Australia twice – in 2014 and this year at Melbourne’s Albert Park.

They would be the only father-and-son apart from the late Graham and Damon Hill to be F1 champions.

If Hamilton wins and collects 25 points in Abu Dhabi he needs Rosberg to be fourth or worse at the chequered flag for him to be champion for the third season in a row and the fourth time in his career.

Already with the second most GP wins in F1 history, 52 (two of them in Melbourne, in 2008 and 2015) to Michael Schumacher’s 91, a fourth title would put Hamilton alongside Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel, whose four came consecutively with Red Bull Racing in 2010-2013 before the move to Ferrari last year he may now be regretting.

But the odds at the end of this longest F1 season in history favour Rosberg … strongly.

Unlike Hamilton, he’s had a dream run with reliability.

Only once has Rosberg failed to finish this year – in Barcelona, Spain, where the Mercedes pair collided on the opening lap and were immediately out of the race.

That handed an unlikely victory to teenager Max Verstappen on his debut with Red Bull. The only other race Mercedes hasn’t won this year was in Malaysia, where Australian Daniel Ricciardo was victorious for Red Bull.

Ricciardo is assured of third place in this year’s championship, with 246 points to Rosberg’s 367 and Hamilton’s 355, while Vertappen could yet wind up fourth. He’s on 192, sandwiched between Ferrari’s Vettel on 197 and Kimi Raikkonen on 178.

Abu Dhabi will be the last GP for 2009 world champion Jenson Button, whose McLaren-Honda seat is being taken next year by Belgian youngster Stoffel Vandoorne.

Button has a contract that could allow him to return in 2018, but that was a deal done with ousted team boss Ron Dennis and was seen as “insurance” in case Fernando Alonso quits McLaren. Button – victor in Melbourne in 2009, ’10 and ’12 – says now he can’t see himself coming back to F1 driving.

McLaren this week appointed American marketing whiz Zak Brown as its commercial chief, while MotorSport magazine’s GP correspondent Mark Hughes reported that Honda should make bigger horsepower gains than its rivals next season as it incorporates features that Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault already have – turbochargers outside their six-cylinder engines’ vee, “and therefore not constricted in size below that appropriate for the energy efficiency loop of the hybrid engines”, plus turbulent jet injection (TJI).

Another departing veteran is Felipe Massa, unlucky to miss out on the 2008 championship to Hamilton after winning that season’s final round in his homeland, Brazil.

The focus this weekend inevitably will be mostly on the Merc men, with only the Renault-powered Red Bulls, and perhaps the Ferraris, likely to be capable of any influence in the title battle.

“It is Nico’s to lose,” said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.

“We could be Lewis’ best friend if we get both our cars between him and Nico.”

Ricciardo’s inkling is that Rosberg will clinch it.

Although Hamilton has come home strongly, winning the past three GPs in the US, Mexico and Brazil, he needs something to go horribly wrong for his teammate to snag a fourth tile.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says he’s leaving it “in their hands to race in a sportsman-like way”.

Rosberg won in Abu Dhabi last year and has outqualfied Hamilton all three times they have gone there as teammates. Hamilton won there in 2014 and, with McLaren, in 2011.

But history will count for nothing on Sunday. It will be about getting the job done this time, with Hamilton needing the gods to smile more on him than Rosberg.

The pair have selected identical tyre compounds for the weekend, with Pirelli taking its ultrasoft rubber – not used since the Singapore GP in September – to Abu Dhabi among its three compounds.

The head of Toyota’s new WRC project, Finnish four-time world champion Tommi Makinen, denied Ogier had been offered a 10 million euro ($A414.2 million) contract for next season.

“Of course we are talking,” Makkinen said. “The problem we have is car availability.

“We will run with just two cars until the [northern] sprint time.”

Juho Hanninen, the Finn who has done the bulk of the testing of the Yaris, is locked in for the entire WRC.

Ogier drove the Toyota on wet tarmac and on gravel in Spain on Wednesday, while he is to drive the Ford at Cumbria in north-west England today.

Toyota appears the most likely new team for him, with Hyundai, runner-up to VW this year, and Citroen, returning full-time next season and Ogier’s earlier supporter, already committed to three drivers each before the shock news of VW’s sudden pull-out.

‘The Giz’ has severed ties with McLaren for now because his (V8) Supercar commitments next season won’t allow him to go back to defend the Blancpain endurance series he won in Europe this year.

That was with Von Ryan Racing, while his Bathurst victory came in a 650S entered by Tekno Autosports.

For the next Bathurst 12-Hour he will partner fellow New Zealander Craig Baird and an as-yet-unnamed Mercedes factory driver in an entry from NZ businessman Scott Taylor.

To date Taylor’s GT Merc has been prepared by Erebus Motorsport, and he has said he will continue that arrangement season, with an all-Australian line-up for Bathurst, while the Van Gisbergen-Baird entry will prepared by another team.

‘The Giz’ is set to clinch his first Supercars title at the final Sydney 500 next weekend, in a Triple Eight Holden Commodore, but the celebrations will be brief as he skips off to the Sepang 12-Hour in Malaysia the following weekend.

That is the final round of the inaugural Intercontinental Challenge that began at the Bathurst 12-Hour and he will be partnered by Portugal’s Alvaro Parente and France’s Come Ledogar in what will be his final McLaren drive – for now, at least.

Ramsay described FT5000 – a concept under which former motorsport journalist and magazine publisher Chris Lambden is combining a Swift-designed chassis with a Ford Coyote V8 engine – as “an open-wheeler with real muscle”.

“Now we just need other serious teams and drivers to join us for what I believe will be a terrific formula and series,” Ramsay said.

Lambden is hoping to organise a summer series for FT5000 in 2017-18.