OH, SO CLOSE!
Of course we cannot yet know what Vettel’s final season at Ferrari will bring, but assuming the SF1000 isn’t up to the job – and pre-season testing certainly suggested it isn’t – it’s probably safe to assume Vettel won’t be bowing out of Maranello as the 2020 world champion, in which case 2017 will go down as the season he came closest to realising his Ferrari dream.
Ferrari redoubled efforts on the technical front, producing an innovative, benign and pliable car under Binotto’s leadership that was supremely effective over a race distance. Vettel was in turn back to his opportunistic best, taking four wins before the summer break to make up for the slight edge in pure pace still enjoyed by Mercedes.
Vettel seemed re-energised by the awesome levels of grip and cornering potential available from this new steroidal version of F1, much closer to the dynamic he enjoyed in his early years of grand prix racing in the mid-to-late 2000s, and going some way towards making up for those muffled hybrid engines he’s always disliked. Hamilton called Vettel’s early season form “a championship-winning road”.
Vettel led Hamilton by 14 points after August’s Hungarian GP, a new three-year contract followed, but thereafter Vettel’s challenge went off the road as Ferrari’s improved reliability reached its limit, Mercedes got on top of what Toto Wolff called its ‘capricious diva’ of a car, and Hamilton found an extra gear – winning six of seven races from Belgium through to Austin to bury Vettel’s hopes.
Truth was, over the balance of the season Vettel needed to be perfect to beat Lewis to the title in a slightly inferior car, and unfortunately Seb didn’t produce perfection. Team and driver made crucial mistakes at critical times. The inexplicable red mist moment that led Vettel to drive into Hamilton deliberately behind the safety car in Baku, when Seb felt wrongly that Lewis was brake testing him, also suggested a certain mental frailty lurking in the background of Vettel’s psyche.
Hamilton lost points to Vettel that day but left the track emboldened; Vettel diminished. Come the end of the year, the same could be said for their respective standing in F1.