Hamilton and Vettel a class apart as hostilities resume
Who has shone and who needs to up their game – starting in today’s Belgium Grand Prix?
The standouts
Lewis Hamilton has returned from a summer of luxuriating in Cuba and Barbados with one unambiguous message: “I’m here for blood.” Expansive and at ease ahead of tomorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix, the triple world champion ranged across subjects as diverse as his love of salsa music and his joy at becoming a godfather to a friend’s child, but the force of his ambition to thwart Sebastian Vettel in the title race was unmistakable. “I’m here to win, I’m here to stay,” he said, dispelling any suspicions that he might be tempted to walk away from Formula One after 10 years. “You would think, after 200 races, that your passion or desire to win might fade, but it’s stronger than ever.”
The manic run-in to the F1 campaign, featuring nine races in 13 weeks across 14 time-zones, is traditionally where Hamilton comes into his own.
In 2016 he won each of the last four, from Austin to Abu Dhabi, but still lost out to former Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg due to careless early-season errors. In Vettel, he confronts an adversary of remarkable mental resilience. For all that the German let his temper flare in Baku, bumping wheels with Hamilton in a fit of pique, his greatest strength lies in his consistency. In only three of 11 grands prix so far has he finished worse than fourth. With Mercedes appearing fractionally slower in practice at Spa yesterday, Ferrari’s Vettel has the ice in his veins to venture where only Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio have gone before, in securing a fifth world title.
The unfortunates
So many Max Verstappen fans have poured into the Ardennes this week, painting the forest orange, that it is surely just a matter of time before F1 owners Liberty Media reinstate the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. Alas, their man, the sport’s finest prodigy in years, has not quite come of age in 2017 as they envisaged.
After a run of five retirements in seven races between Bahrain and Austria, the 19-year-old made a callow misjudgement in pranging team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in Budapest. Mark Webber, a predecessor at Red Bull, has even accused him of being “flaky” on race weekends.
At least Verstappen can take solace from the forecast of rain for tomorrow’s race. A wet Spa has yielded some of F1’s most chaotic spectacles – think of how Damon Hill weathered the storm in his Jordan in 1998 – and the Dutchman proved at a sodden Interlagos last year, weaving from 15th place to third, that there is no one better when it pours.
Lance Stroll, who at 18 is the one driver in the paddock younger than Verstappen, could also be forgiven for cursing his ill-fortune. At Sakhir, he was taken out by Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz Jnr, who had made what stewards deemed a “very optimistic” attempt to pass him, while in Monaco his Williams was bedevilled by brake issues. In Belgium, the Canadian derives a certain comfort from what he calls his “second home race”. His mother, Claire-anne, a fashion designer, was born here.
The overachievers
Even in a Mclaren that has looked fit for the nearest scrap-metal merchant, Fernando Alonso has provided glimpses of other-worldly gifts. With a Honda power unit that looked shot to pieces in Spain, he still qualified seventh, while at Silverstone he was fleetingly fastest, until he received a 30-place grid penalty for changing too many engine components.
Alonso expects to make a decision on his future by next month, but at 36 and having endured an 11-year drought in
terms of the championship, it is unlikely he will stay at Mclaren without a guarantee of a significant performance increase that his team is in no place to give. In Spa, he has made no secret of the stoicism he has displayed under mounting strain. “Rosberg has said, ‘I could not do what Fernando is doing,’ Webber is ‘surprised that Fernando has not exploded’, but I always try to stay calm and believe in everyone’s job,” he said.
Equally serene is Valtteri Bottas, who has been a revelation since moving to Mercedes to fill the void left by Rosberg’s abrupt retirement. He has accrued more points than either Hamilton or Vettel over the past six races, comfortably justifying his graduation from Williams, where he did not win a race in 77 starts. Resolutely unflashy but fearsomely quick after all his years of driving on frozen lakes in Finland, Bottas could yet be the third man to gatecrash the simmering duel for the championship.
The fearful
Jolyon Palmer is a man under siege. With over half the season gone, the Renault driver, F1’s only other British driver besides Hamilton, has yet to claim a single point, while team-mate Nico Hulkenberg has amassed 26.
Palmer has grown increasingly sensitive to criticism, too. When asked recently how he managed to remain upbeat despite such an arid spell, he snapped: “By avoiding these little interviews, probably.”
He can be in no doubt as to the precariousness of his position. Cyril Abiteboul, Renault’s team principal, has offered a blunt verdict on Palmer’s displays: “Jo has to deliver. Full stop. He has a car that is a points-scoring car, and he has to enter the points.”
Over at Toro Rosso, Daniil Kvyat is another in clear danger of losing his seat for next year. It is not so much that the Russian lacks talent as that he is unusually hapless, his clumsy blocking move on Stroll during qualifying in Hungary being just the latest case in point. He has received penalty points on his racing licence at three successive grands prix, taking his tally to 10. Helmut Marko, the motorsport director both for Red Bull and the junior team, could yet be tempted to make an example of him.
Kvyat was demoted last season, amid much ignominy, to make way for Verstappen and at this rate his employers’ patience might soon snap altogether.