Launching a last-lap-of-the-season pass on George Russell, Nico Rosberg believes Lewis Hamilton had the better set-up but that doesn’t take away from his epic drive.

A wretched qualifying at the Yas Marina circuit last Saturday appeared to scupper Hamilton’s chances of ending his Mercedes career on a high note.

Did Lewis Hamilton have the better set-up in Abu Dhabi?

Hamilton qualified down in 18th place after Kevin Magnussen clattered a bollard in Q1 that became stuck under Hamilton’s W15, costing him as much as four-tenths of a second in the final sector.

He lined up in 16th place due to penalties for two of his rivals and starting on the hard Pirelli tyres worked his way towards the front. He was running fifth heading into the final 15 laps, his team-mate Russell 14 seconds ahead.

He caught him with five to go and two laps from the end was running within DRS range. The seven-time World Champion overtook Russell around the outside of Turn 9 on the final lap, racing from 16th to fourth in his Mercedes swansong.

“I thought it was an amazing end,” Rosberg told the Sky F1 podcast. “It was just perfection, and it’s unbelievable that it turned out like that.

“From the disaster of the Saturday that they managed to finish with such a spectacular Sunday, which was just perfection.

“Coming through the grid all the way from the back, all the way to fourth and then catching the team-mate who started much closer to the front of the grid with five laps to go, and doing a spectacular overtake around the outside.

“It doesn’t get better than that as a send-off and that was amazing, amazing to see, and super. I think everybody was so relieved that actually there was such a positive send-off in the end, which was not to be expected with the way Saturday went. Lewis drove a brilliant, brilliant race.”

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Nico Rosberg: ‘It must be said though…’

But, and there’s often a but to most stories, Rosberg reckons a few of Mercedes’ communications implied Russell wasn’t on the preferred set-up.

“It must be said though,” Rosberg added, “also in the wording in the radio comms that I believe that they were experimenting with two different set-ups. And I think George, it turns out was not on the good set-up for the weekend. So there was that.

“Fair play to George, he really underplayed it, and never really made a big thing out of it, which was the way he had to do it because it was all about Lewis on the weekend. But I do think that it’s fair to mention that.

“Nevertheless, Lewis did a brilliant job and again showed his great, great qualities.”

For Rosberg though, the highlight of the Grand Prix was hearing Hamilton’s race engineer Pete Bonnington give the ‘Hammer Time’ order one last time.

Bono: “Okay Lewis, we’ll go strat mode 5 and it’s Hammer Time!”

“It was amazing to see Bono with a ‘Hammer time’ comment one last time, and it worked,” said Rosberg. “‘Hammer Time’ was there one last time to be seen. The legendary ‘Hammer Time’ which led to he greatest partnership of all time between Mercedes and Lewis.

“So it was really a wonderful, wonderful ending.”

The Abu Dhabi race marked Hamilton’s last with Mercedes as the Briton is off to Ferrari next season to chase his record-breaking eighth World title.

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