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Former Mercedes director James Vowles revealed that the team had created a 'rules of engagement' document for Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2014 when they knew the two would be fighting for the title. The 2014 season was a seismic shift in F1 as it was the first change of guard in the sport.
Red Bull dominated the sport from 2010 to 2013 but from 2014 the regulations changed and what we had was a set of rules that saw Mercedes take the lead. The team had two capable drivers: Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg and they did not want to have a situation in which there would be a fallout.
In conversation about the dynamics at Mercedes at the time on the High-Performance Podcast, James Vowles revealed that the team had created a 'rules of engagement' document for Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
"The biggest thing that we got into with the drivers in 2014, for example, was that both of them knew – both Nico and Lewis knew – that it was one of those two winning. They knew, by the way, before we turned the first wheel in the first race," Vowles said.
He added:
"My role in this was I constructed a document that created some very clear… how we were going to work with each other, and how we were going to fight each other – at the time, it was called the rules of engagement, but changed later to another term that was less military, but racing intense."
James Vowles reveals the contents of the document for Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg
James revealed that the document contained a page that had the details of what it meant to be a sportsman. There were some really clear boundaries on how the two drivers would behave on the track. He said:
"It was some really clear boundaries on ‘This is how we’re going to behave and this is how we’re going to perform’. There was a lot to do. And it started with this, and an an ethos that I believe in today."
He added:
"The whole first page was about being a sportsman and, to explain that – you can win a world championship but, if you’ve done so in a way that is not fair and sportsmanlike like, you will have regrets for the rest of your life. You have a championship to your name, but it’d be sullied, it’d be muddied, it won’t be pure."
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were together for four years, from 2013 to 2016. The duo battled for the title from 2014 to 2016 in which Lewis won the battle in the first two seasons while Rosberg triumphed in 2016.
