Lewis no pussycat in battle for pole
LEWIS Hamilton delivered the perfect lap at exactly the right time to leave his championship rival Sebastian Vettel firmly in the shade ahead of today’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Just as in Canada a fortnight previously, Hamilton made it count when it mattered the most to finish nearly half a second clear of his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas in qualifying, with Vettel a distant fourth.
American pop group Black Eyed Peas and singer Nicole Scherzinger both perform here last night. And unsurprisingly, it was the former who Hamilton enjoyed a lunch date with in the moments before his extraordinary lap.
There were rumblings in the paddock that the mere presence of Hamilton’s former long-term girlfriend may ruffle his feathers. Indeed, he reacted in a prickly fashion when a German journalist asked if he planned to see her this weekend.
“There are concerts at every race,” Hamilton said. “I am focussed on winning the race.” His crushing performance in qualifying has now provided him with the chance to do just that.
“I am so pumped with that pole, and that is how qualifying should be,” a jubilant Hamilton continued. “It will be a hard race, but we are in the best position to start.”
The narrow confines of the picturesque Baku City Circuit have caused a number of problems for drivers here with Turn Eight – a strip of tarmac which measures just 7.8 metres in width – already the scene of two crashes and a number of near misses.
But it was the right-handed Turn Six that caught Daniel Ricciardo on the hop as he lost the rear of his Red Bull, thudded into the wall and stopped on track. The red flags were immediately deployed and the countdown clock stopped with three minutes and 33 seconds remaining.
Bottas held the advantage over Hamilton after the Briton made a mistake during his first shot at pole in the top-10 shootout. But with the odds, and time heavily stacked against him, Hamilton did what only he can do, by responding in the most emphatic of fashions to clinch his second pole in as many races.
“It was do-or-die and if there was ever a time of needing to be perfect that was the time,” Hamilton added. “Every now and then you call upon it and you don’t actually extract it, but it was a perfect lap. I am ecstatic.”
The 66th pole of Hamilton’s career has moved him above Ayton Senna and into a standalone second in the record books. Indeed, the 32-year-old Briton could match Michael Schumacher’s pole haul, of which he is now just two short, in front of a capacity crowd at Silverstone in next month’s British Grand Prix.
“It is already an amazing thing to have matched Senna, but the crazy thing is the hunger that I had for another pole,” Hamilton added. “I thought once I matched him maybe it would fade, but I was hungrier than ever.
“That is what drives me. I hope to continue to grow as a driver and grow as a human being.”
For Hamilton’s chief title protagonist Vettel it has been a difficult weekend. The German, who heads Hamilton by 12 points, failed to trouble the time sheets on Friday before missing most of final practice with a hydraulic issue.
Although his Ferrari team managed to resolve the failure in time for qualifying, Vettel was only fourth and an eye-watering 1.3 seconds slower than Hamilton. His Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was third.
Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso did little to dampen mounting speculation that he will leave McLaren by declaring his weekend in Azerbaijan has been “very positive” despite being on the back of the grid.
Alonso, the 35-year-old Spaniard who is out of contract with the British team at the end of the year, will start today’s race in Baku from last following a 40-place penalty after a series of changes to his Honda engine.
The double world champion also failed to progress from Q1 – the first knockout phase of qualifying – for the first time this season with Honda down on speed.
Alonso’s manager Flavio Briatore tweeted a picture following a dinner he had with Mercedes bosses Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda on Friday night before Luis Garcia, another of Alonso’s management team, enjoyed lunch with Renault chiefs Alain Prost and Cyril Abiteboul outside the team’s hospitality suite ahead of qualifying.
The very public dates will heighten the British team’s concern that their star man will leave come the end of the year and a mischievous Alonso only added fuel to the fire last night.
“It has been a very positive weekend for me,” said Alonso with a telling grin.
In contrast, McLaren’s racing director Eric Boullier, sitting alongside Alonso, expressed his disappointment of witnessing both McLaren cars prop up the grid.