Laureus Ambassador David Coulthard, who won 13 Grand Prix in a distinguished career and is now a respected TV commentator and analyst, here assesses the Formula One Nominees for the 2016 Laureus World Sports Awards.
He also gives his views about the current Formula One season. Excerpts from his interviews to Laureus.com:
Q. In the Laureus Awards this year, Lewis Hamilton has been nominated for the Sportsman of the Year Award. Is that a worthy nomination, would you say?
DAVID COULTHARD: Well, not to be disrespectful to the others that have been nominated, and clearly as a motorsports person, I think that Lewis has continued to show that he has all the qualities of an elite sportsman, certainly in motor racing, he's delivered consistently since he first joined for McLaren in 2007 right through until today. He has been crashed, he's been the man that you watch during qualifying to see what lap time he can deliver, and he races in a sort of Senna‑esque way. So there's no question that out of a quality field of drivers, he deserves that nomination.
Q. Also nominated, you have Usain Bolt, Djokovic, Curry, Mes from that list? si, JordanSpieth. That's a pretty impressive list. Who would you see as the main rival to Lewis
DAVID COULTHARD: Really I think it's very difficult to separate any of them. They are all top of their fields. Therefore, it's always going to come down to a matter of opinion rather than, I motor racing and have done since I was a young kid. I don't study all of the other sports with the same level of detail.
But any sportsman who makes it to the top, clearly is not by accident. It's through application and hard work and any sportsman who stays at the top for any period of time and stays injury‑free, which a lot of the other sports are more susceptible to injuries than racing drivers would be, then they are worthy nominees.
Q. And Mercedes have been nominated for Team of the Year again. What makes that team so good?
DAVID COULTHARD: I think it's the attention to detail. It's easy to say a sweeping statement of great engineering and human performance. But I was in the garage on Sunday at the Bahrain Grand Prix, and it really is about the tiniest of details that people might not fully appreciate why that would make a difference in car performance or driver performance.
But what it does is set a tone, that then is picked up by every single member of the team, and they notice whether the drinks bottles are pointed in the right direction; they notice whether the cables are grouped together behind the laptops in a uniform way. Little details like that, which don't have a direct impact on the performance of the car or preparation of the driver.
But it's all sight point and touch point, which just then filters through the whole organisation. And then you're less likely to make mistakes and you're more likely to find areas where, in a sport of diminishing returns, because of various engineering restrictions and materials and things like that, it just means that you exploit all of those to a high level.
Q. It's obviously early days for this year, but do you expect them to dominate again this year?
DAVID COULTHARD: I expect them to win the championship again this year. Dominate, I think is going to be difficult, with the hybrid regulations.
Ferrari won three Grand Prixes last year in arguably what was a more dominant position from than the lap times would suggest this year. But I do see the backer for the World Championship to be between the two Mercedes drivers with an outside bet of ‑‑ but I think Ferrari will keep them on across the course of the season.
Räikkönen seemed to be a bit stronger in Bahrain and Australia than he had been relative to Vettel in the past couple years, so that might mean that the stronger team overall might challenge Mercedes.
