VETTEL FERRARI WIN CAN SPARK 2018 PUSH

German’s victory gives hope for sleeping italian giants

Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari hasn’t considered throttling back for the remainder of the year, and insists his Brazilian Grand Prix win can be a foundation for a fightback in 2018.

Vettel ended the Prancing Horse’s win drought with a commanding drive at Interlagos to notch his first win since July.

While Vettel and Ferrari’s title challenge has imploded since the summer break, the fourtime world champion says any lessons learned now can push the team forward next year.

“Everything we learn will go directly into next year’s car, so taking our foot off the throttle right now would be the worst thing to do,” he said.

Victory in last weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix was Sebastian Vettel’s first since the Hungarian GP in July. It’s a stark indication of how the fortunes of Ferrari have waned since the summer break. But the result virtually secures his runners-up spot in this year’s drivers’ championship.

The outcome of Sunday’s race was decided when the field descended towards Turn 1 on the opening lap. Pole position holder Valtteri Bottas wasn’t as clean away as Vettel and as the pair braked into the downhill lefthander, the Ferrari just found the smallest of gaps between the Mercedes and the pitwall to ease into the lead.

Over the next 71 laps, at a hot and cloudless Interlagos, Vettel managed to preserve his machinery, while maintaining a two-second margin to Bottas. That was enough to earn him his 47th F1 victory and his eighth for Ferrari.

They were joined on the podium by the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, the Finn holding off a spirited comeback drive by Lewis Hamilton. The newly-crowned world champion was forced to start from the pitlane after a qualifying shunt, but quickly made progress through the pack. At one stage he was over 18 seconds off Vettel’s lead, but drove superbly to be just 5.4s shy of the winner at the flag.

In fifth and sixth places were the two Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Dan Ricciardo and they finished ahead of a terrific race-long scrap between Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso. The two- time champ just couldn’t find a way past the retiring home hero, who’s defensive performance gave his beloved fans something to cheer about.

Qualifying

There was drama just moments into the start of qualifying. Q1 is normally a relatively straightforward affair for the top teams, but Hamilton made a rare mistake on his first flying lap and shunted his Mercedes hard into the barriers.

Having swept through the apex of Turn 6, as he continued around the right-hander towards T7, his W08 bottomed out. A few sparks flew up from the front of his floor, his car began to rotate and before he knew it, the Mercedes had clattered into the tyre wall. Temperatures had dropped compared to Friday’s practice running with the skies over Sao Paulo dark and overcast.

“I was just taken by surprise,” said Hamilton afterwards. “When the car bottomed out it stalls the floor and that often happens when the tyres are cold. I haven’t made any mistakes all year and it’s been a long time since I’ve put the car in the wall, but it’s my fault and I take full responsibility.”

With Hamilton in last place, Mercedes decided to use Sunday’s race to run new power unit parts and took the decision to break the parc ferme rules to start the four-time champ from the pitlane.

There was at least some joy for Mercedes, as Bottas scooped pole position from Vettel’s Ferrari on his last lap in Q3. Vettel had been quickest on his first run, stopping the clocks on 1m08.360s, while Bottas’s was just 0.082s behind. The Ferrari failed to improve at the end, while the Finn set a 1m08.322s lap, pipping Vettel by just 0.038s. The German conceded that he had been a bit too “chicken” braking into Turn 1 on his final lap.

“In my first attempt in Q3, I knew I had a little bit left because I lost the rear a bit,” said Vettel. “So I wanted to get there at the same point as I knew I could gain time, but I chickened out a little too early and I lost time.”

Behind Vettel, his team-mate Raikkonen was third quickest, ahead of the Red Bulls of Verstappen and Ricciardo (although the latter had a 10-place engine penalty).

The other star of qualifying was Alonso, who hustled his Mclaren up to sixth on the starting grid, despite being second slowest in the speed trap.

Race

After four days of threatening rain clouds, Sao Paulo awoke on race day to clear blue skies and glorious sunshine. When the pitlane opened, half an hour before the start, Massa was the first to leave his garage to a rapturous cheer from the local Paulistas. It would be another emotional farewell performance.

Interlagos is notoriously narrow, particularly through the tight Senna S of Turns 1 and 2 and contact between cars is typical on the opening lap. And this year was no different. For Vettel, his strong launch off the startline and decisive overtake of Bottas for the lead into Turn 1 was the moment which sealed his victory in the race.

“Initially I had a very good start and thought ‘I’ve got this’,” said Vettel. “But then I was a bit too greedy with the throttle, spinning up the wheels and losing a bit of momentum on Valtteri. Then I looked over and saw he was struggling and I gained on the second

phase of the start. That was just enough to give me momentum to hang in there into the first corner. Obviously that turned out to be very important.”

In contrast, after the joy of securing his third pole position in F1 on Saturday, Bottas was rather more subdued after the race on Sunday, conceding that he’d lost the victory in those crucial few seconds after the start.

“The issue was just initial wheelspin,” said the Finn. “As soon as I started to release the clutch, it broke traction and that’s why I had a poor getaway. I was trying to cover the inside, but looking in the mirror I could only see Kimi behind. I didn’t see Seb, so I was guessing that he could be shooting for the inside – and so he was.”

The pace up front between the two was close the whole race, one mistake for Vettel could have allowed the Mercedes to get within DRS range and pounce, but it was an error-free drive from the German.

Bottas’s best chance came during the one and only pitstop sequence. The Finn was 1.643s behind the Ferrari and pitted from the supersoft to the soft on lap 27, a lap before the leader stopped. Bottas then set the fastest middle sector of the race on his outlap and when Vettel emerged from the pits, it was the closest he’d been to the Ferrari since the start. But it was to no avail, Vettel was quickly up to speed and maintained the gap to the flag.

“Pace-wise it was very, very close,” added Bottas. “We put a lot of pressure under Seb, especially around the pitstop and we tried the undercut. I got pretty close, after he came out of the pits, but just not quite enough to try to overtake. So, yeah, definitely disappointed after a good day yesterday.”

Remarkably, Bottas was just 2.706s ahead of his team-mate Hamliton, who finished fourth with his decisive drive through the field. His cause was everso-slightly helped by the intervention of the safety car following a number of incidents on the opening lap.

As the field rounded the narrow Senna S, there was contact, as firstly the Haas of Kevin Magnussen squeezed Stoffel Vandoorne, who ricocheted into Ricciardo’s Red Bull. It was game over for the Haas and Mclaren drivers, but Ricciardo was able to continue unharmed, albeit at the tail of the field.

Just as the safety car was being deployed there was more contact heading into the double-apex righthanders of Turns 6 and 7. Force India’s Esteban Ocon was attempting to overtake Romain Grosjean, when the Haas driver carried too much speed into T6, lost the rear of the car and hit Ocon on the outside of the bend. Grosjean was awarded a 10-second penalty, while Ocon recorded his first retirement from F1. “It’s a shame, because it has been three years since my last retirement in single-seaters,” said Ocon. “There was nothing I could do. Romain lost his car and crashed into me. Days like this happen, but I hope it will be another three years before it happens again.”

After four laps neutralised behind the safety car, racing resumed on lap five and with it, one of the crucial moments of the race. Massa was able to jump Alonso for fifth place when green-flag racing resumed.

But the star of the grand prix and the winner of the fan vote for driver of the day was Hamilton. With a car arguably the class of the field, a brand new engine and nothing to lose from a championship perspective, he was able to race to the max. He was 14th when the safety car pulled into the pitlane and started to charge his way through the field with ease. He was 10th by lap eight, seventh by lap 14 and fifth by lap 21.

Nine laps later, when the top four had pitted, the Brit was in the lead of the race. He spent 13 laps at the head before he made the switch from softs to supersofts on lap 43. Increasing the length he was able to stay out on his first stint, was one of the keys to his impressive performance – and his ultimate fourth place finish.

“I thought fifth or sixth might be possible today,” said Hamilton. “But I knew it would be difficult to make these tyres last. The team were telling me ‘plus seven’ as my original plan to stop was on lap 37. When I was on lap 30, I couldn’t believe I had to do another 14 laps on that set of rubber.

“I think I managed the tyres really well today, but I wasn’t really looking after them the way the others were,” he continued. “I was leaning on them a lot more. At the end when I was told how close I was to Vettel I did wonder [what was possible], but unfortunately I had no life left in the tyres.”

A number of drivers were struggling with tyre life in the latter stages, including seventh-placed Massa. For lap after lap, Alonso kept up with the Williams, but despite every effort, couldn’t quite make it past his former team-mate. It was a great drive from the Brazilian at his final home race before retirement. It was the result he wanted last year, instead of that crash in the rain and emotional walk down the pitlane. Not many drivers get the chance to say farewell twice. Obrigado, again, Felipe.