{"id":21819,"date":"2014-05-06T06:57:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T10:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=21819"},"modified":"2014-05-06T06:57:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T10:57:08","slug":"haug-predicts-close-duel-for-mercedes-duo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/haug-predicts-close-duel-for-mercedes-duo\/","title":{"rendered":"Haug predicts &#8216;close duel&#8217; for Mercedes duo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Mercedes chief Norbert Haug is predicting a &#8220;close duel&#8221; between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2014.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-right alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2014-rif-images\/f1-2014-persons\/Norbert-Haug-1.jpg\" alt=\"Norbert-Haug-1\" width=\"442\" height=\"294\" \/>Haug&#8217;s German countryman Rosberg is currently leading the world championship, but his British teammate Hamilton has won the last three races on the trot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nico and Lewis are very close to each other,&#8221; Haug, now a commentator for the German touring car series DTM, claimed in an interview with Bild newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Each of them has a good chance of dominating the rest of the season,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>The battle between Rosberg and Hamilton is likely to be a focal point of the rest of the 2014 season, given Mercedes&#8217; current dominance over the other top teams.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope it will be a close duel between them for a long time,&#8221; said Haug.<\/p>\n<p>He denied he has a favourite: Rosberg, who he worked with at Brackley since 2010, or Hamilton, whose career dates all the way back to his junior years with the Mercedes young driver programme.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, I like them both,&#8221; said Haug.\u00a0 &#8220;I have known Lewis and Nico since they were kids and I&#8217;m proud of them both.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope we see many more hard, exciting races as we did recently in Bahrain.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s also clear that there is a loser and a winner at the end of every duel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hero and zero is never far away in motor sport,&#8221; he smiled.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Mercedes chief Norbert Haug is predicting a &#8220;close duel&#8221; between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2014. Haug&#8217;s German countryman Rosberg is currently leading the world championship, but his British teammate Hamilton has won the last three races on the trot. &#8220;Nico and Lewis are very close to each other,&#8221; Haug, now a commentator &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,154,4835,4,242],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21820,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21819\/revisions\/21820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}