Picture perfect
Hamilton leads title race for first time after triumph at Monza
For Lewis Hamilton, this felt like the moment that everything changed. Here at Monza, the temple of speed that represents consecrated ground for the teeming swarms of Ferrari tifosi, he achieved a victory so crushing that it turned this season’s world championship fight on its head. In arrears to Sebastian Vettel all year, he vanquished his arch-rival by over 36 seconds to surge three points clear. As plumes of lurid red smoke engulfed the back straight, he offered the broad smile of a man quite happy, for once, to play the pantomime villain.
“Beast mode all the way,” Hamilton said, after becoming the first driver in 2017 to record back-toback wins. After dominating on a circuit where almost 80 per cent of race distance is taken at full throttle, he intends, to use one of his favourite expressions, to keep the hammer down. Even from pole, he had expected Vettel’s Ferrari to be swarming in his rear-view mirrors, but he turned on the afterburners to stunning effect in this reassertion of Mercedes supremacy.
From a rain-lashed qualifying to a race staged in the seductive glow of late summer in Lombardy, Hamilton stood supreme all weekend, irrespective of conditions. Having enjoyed three weeks of down-time in Cuba and Barbados, he has returned to the Formula One grindstone revitalised, determined to give no quarter. His stated mission to turn Vettel’s smile upside down has worked. The German, for all the love that washes over Ferrari’s No1 driver at the Italian Grand Prix, appeared chastened by the scale of his eclipse in third.
Hamilton, whose artistic impulses led him last week to compose a poem in Princess Diana’s memory, claimed that he had “Still I Rise” – the title of a book by Maya Angelou, and the same words tattooed across the top of his back – in his head as he screened out the boos from Ferrari disciples after the race. Every aspect of his demeanour screamed defiance. It has been a year since he last led the championship outright, and he acknowledged it was an “empowering feeling”.
Valtteri Bottas, as ever, provided the ablest supporting role, cruising to a ninth podium finish that cemented a Mercedes one-two. It was all eerily reminiscent of 2015 and 2016, when this silver bullet of a car beat the field by yawning margins. The outstanding racer of the day, though, was Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, who propelled himself from 16th on the grid to finish fourth, thanks to a series of sumptuous overtakes. There were none better than the Australian’s audacious lunge on Kimi Raikkonen into the Rettifilo chicane, which he timed to perfection.
It was all a lonely affair for Vettel, who never looked like mustering the pace to reel in the Mercedes pair. Ferrari’s resurgence has been curiously quelled here, although their cars’ superiority on higherdownforce circuits offers the chance of a riposte in Singapore in a fortnight. Vettel, always the perfectionist, did not seek to play down the challenge ahead.
“The spirit is there, we just need to keep it up,” he said. “It’s a journey, so we’ll see where it takes us. The team has come a long way from where it was three years ago, but we are nowhere near satisfied. At Ferrari, we need to be at the front.”
Usually an emotional flat-liner, Vettel was visibly moved by the ecstatic Monza reception he received. “I’m still fairly overwhelmed by the lap back to the pits,” he said, as the back straight was flooded with fans, unfurling giant red flags and streamers in the green, red and white of Italy’s Il Tricolore. “It’s just amazing, the power of the people here.”
And yet the deeper satisfaction was Hamilton’s. From the moment he surged off the line, streaking clear of Williams’ Lance Stroll, his unexpected companion on the front row, he made this a warpspeed procession. There was a brief wobble on lap 19, when he skimmed the edge of the gravel at Roggia, but otherwise he described this performance as “98 per cent perfect”.
In the circumstances, he could tolerate the Italian jeers. “Some days, I am really happy to be the villain,” Hamilton said. “I just try to remain respectful and admire the passion. They seem a little bit more like football fans but it is all in the name of love for the red car.”
Whether it was the exotic foray last month to Cuba and Barbados, or the down-time he spent recently with his mother and sister, Hamilton exuded a sense of rejuvenation. He is at his best at his calmest, and it is not to shake the sense, ahead of the final seven grands prix, that the stars are aligning in his favour. There is, for example, none of the psychological needling that defined his dynamic with Nico Rosberg. In Bottas, he has a team-mate who is a willing understudy, and in Toto Wolff a team principal who heralds him, justly, as the finest driver in modern F1.
At last, that edge is mirrored in the numbers. As the European campaign ends, ready for the glittering night lights of Singapore, the tale of the tape reads: Hamilton 238, Vettel 235. It’s an advantage Hamilton will obsessively refuse to relinquish.