Hamilton’s fears as Vettel puts his Ferrari on Singapore pole
HEADS shook in the Mercedes garage and the bosses grimaced as if a bad smell had floated under their nostrils. But their eyes remained glued to the screens, which Sebastian Vettel lit up with a brilliant couple of laps that kept the world championship burning.
The Ferrari man tore around the illuminated track to set pole early on in the final shoot-out and then bettered his own time to finish one-third of a second ahead of all the rest.
What a perfect day for him. What a poor one for Lewis Hamilton, whose Mercedes was only fifth quickest. It looks like the Brit picked the wrong week to turn vegan.
To make matters worse for Mercedes, lying between Vettel and Hamilton on the grid will be the road blocks known as Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciar do and Ki mi Raikkonen.
‘I need to figure out a way of pulling off a miracle,’ said Hamilton.
No wonder his boss, Toto Wolff, wore the eggsniffing expression he did when you consider that starting from pole is a nearguarantee of victory y inn the Singapore Grand Prix: seven seven times in nine editions, the e man who has started first rst has finished there.
And if the two title rivals complete the 61 laps without moving up or down, the swing would be 15 points. That means Vett el would lead the e championship by 1122 points with six rounds nds remaining, r est oringg the advantage he surrendered dered at Monza a fortnight ago.
It was a bravura display from Vet tel,wh oh ad struggled previously this weekend for the sensational form he showed as tension soared in the crescendo of a compelling night — it was 10pm local time as the action drew to a close. His car, he said, ‘came alive… like a switch going from off to on’.
Too right. His final lap was so emphatically on the edge that he thumped the wall at the 19th of 23 mostly slow turns but, despite his
SingaporeSSin ding, he hhe gotgo the red car across the line more than six-tenth sofa second faster than Hamilton.
‘ It was not just a little brush either, it was actually a hit,’ said Vettel. ‘I had huge vibrations but thankfully there was not long left. I really pushed as hard as I could. I was relieved when it was done.’
Vettel let out a shriek of delight so high-pitched he might have shattered the windows of the nearby Raffles Hotel. His series of atavistic noises could easily be deciphered as relief to have pressed his nose cone back into the title contest when he had to, on a circuit where he has won a record four times.
‘I don’t know where I found the time from,’ said Vettel. ‘I’m still full of adrenaline. I love this track. The car was tricky but it got better and better as the night progressed so I’m really happy we got it done. It is a long lap with a lot of corners and a lot of things to get right and a lot you can get wrong. It will be a very close race.’
That is unlikely to be the case, without the intervention of a handy s afety car or t wo. As Vettel conceded: ‘Grid position is crucial here.’ Hamilton had held out little hope for himself in qualifying, though he drove very well in equipment unsuited to the twists and bends before him.
He thought he had extracted everything possible from an unhelpful situation and his seventenths margin over team- mate Valtteri Bottas suggested he had.
Let us hope that Hamilton’s recent switch from meat-eater to vegan — a change of diet brought on by watching a propagandist programme on Netflix — does not leave him undernourished for the trial of a demanding race that lasts two hours in humid conditions.
But it was not practical nutritional matters detaining him in t he paddock yesterday but moral imperatives. Among other things, he deplored cows emitting pollution and the concomitant damage such expulsions wreaked on the world, apparently including hurricanes.
It was a long lecture from the private jet-owning philosopherdriver, whose car-manufacturing team are sponsored by oil and gas producer Petronas.