BRAKE POINT
Winning is best way Hamilton can punish Vettel over bust-up
LEWIS HAMILTON has been told that beating Sebastian Vettel in Austria today will be the perfect retribution for the German’s antics in Azerbaijan.
Vettel deliberately drove into the British driver last Sunday because he felt he had been ‘brake-tested’.
A brake test is a term used when two drivers are very close together and the front driver deliberately brakes hard.
Vettel was furious with his rival but, unsurprisingly, Hamilton in turn was livid at the Ferrari ace’s conduct, and even more so when the FIA decided not to punish him.
Malice
The two will resume hostilities this afternoon with Hamilton starting in eighth place and Vettel second nd behind Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas. And former Formula One star David Coulthard (right) said: “Beating Vettel would be the best form of retribution for Lewis, 100 per cent.
“And that is the way Lewis is wired anyway.
“Even if he’s made the odd mistake in the past, I don’t think they have been borne out of malice.
“We can say Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher both had this malicious streak and that there were some premeditated actions.
“You can certainly say there was
en enough evidence in Suzuka when Sen Senna crashed into Alain Prost because he said he was going to do it before the race.
“With Michael, you couldn’t prove it was premeditated with Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez or at Monacoe.
“But the governing body considered there was enough evidence to consider he had done something unsporting. I don’t remember Lewis ever doing anything t hat premeditated or as if unsportsmanlike behaviour.
“Has he made mistakes? Yes. Has he crashed into other drivers? Yes.
“But I don’t think his DNA is to be like that.
“Lewis will feel vindicated by the FIA position to at least have looked further at it and he will have noticed the media support is more in support of his l ooked i t was actions. Seb has nine points on his license, more than anyone else, and the facts don’t lie.
“So he has to play it cool for the next few races and Lewis can keep doing what he has been doing.”
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo won in Azerbaijan with Vettel fifth and Hamilton sixth but the race was overshadowed by the incident.
So, too, has been the build- up to today’s race in Spielberg, although Coulthard insists it’s now time to accept the ruling and move on.
Innocent
The Scot added: “If the referee makes a decision on the day and then it gets referred to the governing body and they make a decision, at what point do we say that’s enough and deal with it?
“Whether we like or not, information has been looked at and data taken on board.
“If you’ve gone as high as you can and they have taken a decision should we not accept that’s sufficient?
“Seb has definitely come out of it as the perpetrator, the baddie, and Lewis as the innocent.
“So going into Silverstone next weekend it’s the perfect storm, like when Damon Hill and Michael were going at it head- to- head, sort of a re-enacting of the great battles that have gone before.”
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