Vettel drove past me like I was not there, admits Hamilton
As orange flares rose from the forest floor for Dutch wunderkind Max Verstappen, the signs on the track were that act two of this Formula One season would be drenched in red.
Ferrari did not so much beat Mercedes here at Spa as deal out a sound thrashing, with Sebastian Vettel streaking to victory by an ominous 11-second margin.
As a visibly perturbed Lewis Hamilton, who had to settle for second after starting from pole, put it: “He drove past me like I wasn’t even there.”
While the two leading teams both brought significant engine upgrades to Belgium, Ferrari’s were by far the more successful, as Vettel tore past Hamilton on the Kemmel Straight and never looked back.
One has hardly been able to separate the two cars this season, but it seemed in the Ardennes yesterday as if Ferrari had discovered a crucial edge ahead of the championship run-in.
Hamilton still leads Vettel by 17 points, but that advantage could disappear quickly, with Ferrari’s sheer straight-line speed likely to make them superior again at Monza, the self-styled “Temple of Speed”, on Sunday.
“They’ve got a few trick things going on in the car,” Hamilton said. “I did what I could, and we’ve just got to keep working.”
By “trick things”, Hamilton clarified that he was not implying anything untoward.
He became embroiled in controversy after suggesting Ferrari skulduggery at Silverstone last month, an accusation he later retracted, and was keen not to head down the same path again.
“I’m not saying that there’s anything illegal going on,” he said. “A ‘trick’ is just something that helps you bring an extra bit of performance. Ferrari outperformed us, and we have to work harder, because there are things they have on the car that we might not. We have to find out what.”
Although Hamilton narrowly held on to his lead through La Source, he was powerless to resist much longer, as Vettel bolted out of the Eau Rouge compression and completed his pass on the approach to Les Combes.
For one exhilarating moment, the cars were four abreast, as the Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon made use of the front two’s slipstream, but from there Vettel made his dominance tell.
“This is a great win for the whole team and we hope in Monza it will be the same,” said the German, whose 52nd Grand Prix victory took him to third on the all-time list, ahead of Alain Prost.