Rosberg was better this year - Raikkonen

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Nico Rosberg was better than Lewis Hamilton in 2016 and fully deserved to win the drivers' championship, according to Kimi Raikkonen.

Sunday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix saw Hamilton take victory but Rosberg secure the second place he needed to win the drivers' title for the first time. Raikkonen was champion for Ferrari in 2007 and when asked if Rosberg - who won nine races to Hamilton's ten - deserved the championship, the Finn replied: "For sure.

"He scored more points, so I don’t understand why he wouldn’t deserve it. They had the same car, Lewis and him, and he came out on top, so fair play, he was better this year. It’s as simple as that."

And Raikkonen also defended Hamilton's tactics in the race, with the leader managing his pace to try and leave Rosberg under pressure from Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen behind. Mercedes says it is yet to decide whether it will take any action against Hamilton for ignoring team instructions to speed up, but Raikkonen believes "it's part of racing" and did not have an impact on the final result anyway.

"Obviously it’s not my business and it didn’t really change anything. I don’t know if they were going full speed or not, but it’s not my business, it’s theirs.

"It’s racing. It didn’t affect the final result, I don’t know how much was being done. I don’t know and the end result didn’t change one bit. It’s part of racing and if it gets completely ridiculous, I guess there would be Stewards involved. But as far as I saw, there was nothing, really, it never really got close. It’s part of things."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.