Hartley pain, Hamilton joy
New Zealand Formula One driver Brendon Hartley suffered more frustration as Lewis Hamilton claimed a fifth world championship in Mexico.
Hartley, pushing for some much needed points, caused a mid-race collision and suffered a time penalty to eventually finish the Grand Prix of Mexico in 12th position and be relegated to 14th yesterday.
Hamilton cruised home in fourth and that was enough to secure the world title with two races left in the 2018 championship – at Brazil and Abu Dhabi.
Max Verstappen took the chequered flag in Mexico City with Sebastian Vettel second and Kimi Raikkonen completing the podium.
Vettel needed to win the Mexico race to keep the championship alive while Hamilton needed only to finish in the top seven to secure the title.
Hamilton joins Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio in second on the all-time list and now has Michael Schumacher’s seven titles in his sights.
Hartley, under massive pressure now to save his job with Toro Rosso, will rue some missed opportunities here.
Hartley was 14th on the grid but immediately dropped three places from a messy start in the middle of the field that left him with some tyre damage.
‘‘I had a good start. It was a little bit of a mess going into turn four. A car pulled in front just before braking, I locked the brakes and flat spotted the supersofts,’’ Hartley said.
‘‘Unfortunately, we had to pit on lap one and after that I effectively did a one stop race from there.’’
He was down to 18th after three laps but by lap 14 had worked his way back to 14th and then improved to 13th. He got up to 11th before disaster struck on the 41st of 71 laps when he made contact with Esteban Ocon and came off worse in the damage stakes.
Hartley also copped a 5sec time penalty for causing the collision.