Vettel leaves Hamilton playing catch-up
LEWIS Hamilton will have it all to do to win today’s Russian Grand Prix as he qualified only fourth while title rival Sebastian Vettel secured his first pole position in nearly two years.
Championship leader Vettel, who leads Hamilton by seven points in the title race, ended Mercedes’ streak of 18 consecutive poles with a brilliant final lap following a nail-biting session at the Sochi Autodrom.
Vettel heads an all-Ferrari front row with Kimi Raikkonen second on the grid and Valtteri Bottas third. Hamilton was more than half a second behind Vettel, who celebrated his pole in raucous fashion over the team radio.
The last time Vettel started from pole was at the Singapore Grand Prix in 2015, but his and Ferrari’s pace in Russia point towards a changing of the guard, with Hamilton’s Mercedes team having dominated the sport for the past three seasons.
Hamilton was nearly six-tenths of a second behind Vettel, and almost halfa-second down on Bottas. His sluggish pace was greeted by crossed arms from Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda in the Mercedes garage, with the latter puffing out his cheeks and shaking his head.
“It has just been one of those weekends,” a downbeat Hamilton said. “Not every weekend goes perfectly smoothly. We worked towards improving the car, but generally it got worse and worse.
“We are fourth, it is very hard to overtake as it is, and Ferrari’s race pace yesterday was better than mine. I was more than half-a-second off today, so there does not appear to be too many positives.”
For Vettel he was jubilant to seal his 47th career pole.
“It is a very good result and I am sure everyone is happy and very proud,” he said.
“The car was phenomenal this afternoon and it was a real pleasure to take the car around on low fuel and drive it to the limit.”
Bottas said: “We can clearly see from the result that Ferrari was quicker today. We were close in the end but not quite enough and, to be honest, all weekend they have had the upper hand.”
British driver Jolyon Palmer needs a strong weekend after a troubled start to the new season, but he had another day to forget here.
Palmer’s Renault mechanics worked all night to replace his chassis after an exhaust issue was detected in practice on Friday. He then completed just four laps yesterday morning after an engine failure, before he crashed out of qualifying in a torrid 24 hours.
The 26-year-old from Horsham, bidding to haul his car into Q2, ran over the kerbs on the entry to turn four before he lost control of his car and thudded the tyre barrier on the opposing side of the circuit.
Palmer walked away from the incident and is set to start 16th, but his Renault team face yet another repair job following the damage sustained to the front of his car.