LEWIS BACK ON TOP OF THE WORLD
Hamilton sweeps to victory as Ferrari falter
LEWIS HAMILTON finally felt like a champion again. His margin of victory was crushing — 20.5 seconds — and in a trice some of the belief that had flooded away from him was suddenly rising on the tide.
‘all the best are sensitive and fragile,’ said toto Wolff, alluding to Hamilton as the paddock was packing up for the weekend.
It told of the hidden vulnerability the team had not wanted to admit to in their star man before yesterday’s restorative Spanish Grand Prix.
‘We let him down in melbourne,’ added Wolff, referring to the technical gremlin that blighted their strategy and Hamilton’s likely win at the opening race.
‘these things stay in your mind. now hopefully he can put that behind him and this can prove the start of a good phase.’
Yes, Hamilton won in Baku a fortnight ago, but that was attributable to huge slices of good luck. not since the american Grand Prix on october 22 had he seized victory by the throat. Yesterday he did, converting pole position into his 64th career victory.
He has won more brilliantly over the years — for example, that minute in the wet at Silverstone a decade ago — but few wins have been as potentially season-saving as this one.
mercedes had been searching for answers to the fundamental questions of how to conjure performance from their tyres to match the speed of the Ferraris. Suddenly that search had borne answers. and Hamilton was holding the high cards again.
‘this weekend we took the right path,’ said Hamilton. ‘I was much happier in the car. Great strategy and a great result. I am happy it went to plan.’
He zoomed off the line cleanly and, despite the introduction of a safety car after a triple crash behind him on the first lap, opened up a dominant advantage following a clean restart. off, off and away. How fortunes change. now it was Ferrari buckling.
the introduction of a thinner tyre tread appeared to dilute their previous dominance. then there was Vettel’s unwelcome second pit stop that condemned him to a fourth-place finish and a 17-point deficit to Hamilton.
the British driver and Valtteri Bottas, who made it mercedes’ first one-two of the year, stopped just once. Ferrari gambled on sacrificing track position to put Vettel on fresher rubber, under a virtual safety car phase.
or did they? afterwards, the Ferrari line
ffn f- d was that Vettel was suffering degradation and they had no choice butt to fit the new rubber.
Either way, Vettel went from second to fourth. max Verstappen finished third for Red Bull. Ferrari no 2 Kimi Raikkonen, who had endured engine problems the previous day, retired with another technical gremlin.
there are still 16 more rounds to play out. there will likely be ebb and flow, not least determined by the dynamics of each given track.
that is why Hamilton spoke of a mountain to be scaled. and why Wolff almost shook with fear when he contemplated what comes next — monaco’s streets that acted like a speed trap on mercedes last year, when Hamilton spluttered to seventh place. ‘ We are slow around the corners there,’, said Wolff. ‘I am bloody worried.’ the race was not a feast of action — probably the least spectacular event of a season rich in incident — but Romain Grosjean provided hhis own dangerous vignette. once dubbed ‘ the first- lap nutcase’ by ustralian driver mark Webber, the Frenchman lived up to the billing. He ran wide at turn three and tried to get himself back around the right way in opposition to cars coming directly at him.
Unsighted by the blanket of tyre smoke that shrouded the scene, toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly and Renault’s nico Hulkenberg could not avoid the out-of-control Haas and off they went. Grosjean went to the medical centre as a precaution. there was nothing serious to report, though the stewards gave him a three-place grid penalty for monaco.
Verstappen’s third place came despite his running into the back of Williams’s lance Stroll and damaging the front of his Red Bull in the process. But he kept at it, and brought his bruised machine home for some valuable points.
the inquest was beginning at Ferrari. ‘ We were not quick enough,’ said Vettel. ‘Second, we struggled over the weekend with the tyres. third, it was a bad weekend in terms of reliability.’
as for Hamilton, there was none of that self- recrimination. He said he would sleep like a baby last night.