Pressure on Max to tame Hamilton
AFTER a three-week break, Formula One gears up for the second half of the season. Have Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen taken time to cool off? Unlikely. Racing resumes on what is probably considered the greatest drivers’ circuit of them all, Spa-Francorchamps, and the rivalry between the seven-time champion and the 23-year-old pretender to the throne is building into one of the spikiest in recent memory.
At the last two rounds, Silverstone and the Hungaroring, Mercedes looked to have reclaimed the ground they had lost to Red Bull at the start of the year. It’s difficult to know for sure because Max was hit by Mercs on both occasions – Hamilton in Britain and Valtteri Bottas in Budapest – impacting his points score as well as his safety cell. Consider, too, his tyre blowout in Azerbaijan, which denied him victory, and one must conclude Verstappen has had the lion’s share of bad luck so far.
He and team-mate Sergio Perez are both on their third and final Honda engines of the year, following crash damage. A fourth will incur a grid penalty, and there are potentially 12 races to go. ‘We are looking where, if necessary, we will take a new engine,’ says Max. ‘I can’t say anything about that. We don’t know.’
Hamilton, who has made a couple of uncharacteristic errors, has nonetheless banked points at every round bar Baku (where he had his magic button blunder) and leads by eight.
This is the first time Verstappen has faced the white-hot heat of a title battle. Hamilton has been here nine times and only lost twice. This could give him an advantage as the pressure ramps up over the next few months, starting with the triple-header of Spa, Zandvoort and Monza. But Max disagrees.
‘The only advantage you can really have is just if you have a faster car.
If you have seven titles or zero, I think when you have spent a few years in F1, and especially more towards the front, you know you have to try and score the most points every weekend. I’m very positive. We had a lot of good races, just the last two didn’t go our way.’
Asked if Red Bull might be in danger of neglecting their 2022 car, which calls for a dramatically different machine, in pursuit of besting Mercedes this year, Verstappen says not. ‘We have enough people already working on next year’s car.
‘Nobody knows [how it’s going to turn out], so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.’ As for the current RB16B, he says: ‘I think it’s very close. I do think the last two races were in the advantage of Mercedes with their latest upgrades, but we also know we still have a few to come.’ Perez’s position at Red Bull looks safe, despite being only fifth in the standings. He says he likes how transparent the team are, and how straight-talking the management is.
Bottas and Mercedes, on the other hand, are being coy about the Finn’s future. ‘Maybe I know something, maybe I don’t,’ says Valtteri, whose position is coveted by George Russell. ‘There is no news to share yet.’
Russell is confident he will be announced in due course, though publicly he is sticking to the line, ‘Mercedes will do what they think is right for both Valtteri and myself’.
Bottas’ cause may be helped by the fact Hamilton seems to favour his current wingman. ‘I think our working relationship is better than ever,’ says Lewis of his ‘loyalty’ to Bottas.