Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid at Suzuka during the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. Illustrative image, not from the Brazilian Grand Prix. Photo: Takayuki Suzuki / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Nico Rosberg won the 2014 Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos on November 9, 2014, beating Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton by 1.457 seconds. Hamilton’s spin on lap 28 decided the race, and the result trimmed his championship lead to 17 points with one round left, a finale that was going to pay double points.
What happened at the 2014 Brazilian Grand Prix
Rosberg took pole position with a 1:10.023 and led the early laps of the 71-lap race. He pitted from the lead on lap 7 and Hamilton followed a lap later, which let Nico Hülkenberg, on a different strategy, lead for a handful of laps. Rosberg passed Hülkenberg for the lead on lap 14, and Hamilton did the same a lap after that, setting up a two-car Mercedes fight.
The swing came after the second round of stops. Rosberg pitted on lap 26 and handed Hamilton the lead, but Hamilton’s tyres were finished. On lap 28 he locked his rear tyres under braking, spun onto the run-off area, and rejoined 7.4 seconds behind Rosberg. Rosberg made his last stop around lap 50, stayed in front, and held off Hamilton over the final laps. Hamilton set the fastest lap, a 1:13.555 on lap 62, and still finished 1.457 seconds adrift. Formula 1’s own race analysis described it as a dominant Rosberg performance that set up the title decider.
Felipe Massa completed the podium for Williams, 41.031 seconds back, even after a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane. Jenson Button was fourth, Sebastian Vettel fifth and Fernando Alonso sixth. The one-two was Mercedes’ 11th of the season, a Formula 1 record at the time.
The competitive context: a title fight with a strange rulebook
Hamilton arrived in São Paulo 24 points clear of Rosberg, 316 to 292. Brazil could not settle anything, because the Abu Dhabi finale was set to award double points. Even if Hamilton had won and Rosberg had scored nothing, Rosberg would still have been 49 points back and mathematically alive. Rosberg’s win, worth 25 points to Hamilton’s 18, moved the totals to 334 and 317.
That left Rosberg needing to win the finale and have Hamilton finish third or lower. Anything else, and the champion was Hamilton. The same Interlagos circuit had produced a one-point title swing before; we covered it in our look at Hamilton’s last-corner pass on Glock in 2008 and in Räikkönen’s one-point title in 2007.
Why the 2014 Brazilian Grand Prix mattered
For Rosberg, it was a measured, controlled win that kept him in the fight against a teammate who had beaten him for much of the year. For Hamilton, it was a self-inflicted loss that left the title in his hands but gave Rosberg a route back. The double-points finale, a rule change widely criticized when it was announced, now threatened to turn a 17-point lead into a one-race gamble.
The lasting effect
Abu Dhabi did not become the shootout Brazil had promised. Rosberg took pole, but an ERS failure dropped him to 14th, and Hamilton won the race and his second world championship, as the FIA’s race report noted. He finished the year on 384 points to Rosberg’s 317. Mercedes finished the year with a then-record 701 constructors’ points. Double points were used only once; from the 2015 Australian Grand Prix, Formula 1 went back to its normal scoring system.
Rosberg would win his own world title in 2016, and Hamilton’s run from 2014 led to the sixth championship we marked in our Austin 2019 history piece. Mercedes is still the team at the center of Interlagos title talk: this month it arrived needing only a three-point edge on Ferrari for the constructors’ crown, as we explained in our Stat of the Day. For another Abu Dhabi finale that turned on a pit-lane charge, see our 2012 Abu Dhabi history piece.
Related Reading on Backfire Racing
- Today in Motorsport History, November 2: Hamilton Passed Glock at the Last Corner and Took the 2008 F1 Title by One Point
- Today in Motorsport History, October 21: Räikkönen Wins the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix and the F1 Title by One Point
- Today in Motorsport History, November 3: Hamilton Clinched a Sixth Title in Austin in 2019 as Bottas Won
- Today in Motorsport History, November 4: Räikkönen Won the 2012 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as Vettel Charged From the Pit Lane
- Stat of the Day: Mercedes Needs Just 3 Points More Than Ferrari at Interlagos to Win the Constructors’ Title
Lead image credit: Takayuki Suzuki / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0), Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid at Suzuka during the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix; illustrative image, not from the Brazilian Grand Prix.
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