Hamilton: I will wipe the smile off Seb’s face!
LEWIS HAMILTON has started his title defence by sparking a war of words with his chief rival, Sebastian Vettel.
The two men are trying to emulate Juan Manuel Fangio by winning their fifth F1 championship. On track, Hamilton struck the first blow of a 21-round season by claiming an emphatic pole position during a crash-delayed Australian Grand Prix, with Ferrari pair Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel 0.7secs behind him in second and third places respectively.
Afterwards the tension between Hamilton and Vettel bubbled to the surface when the Briton answered a question about his Mercedes team’s so-called ‘party mode’ — supposedly a gizmo that can be flicked on to provide an extra injection of power during qualifying.
‘I can assure you we don’t have a party mode,’ said Hamilton. ‘I use the same mode from Q2 [the second part of qualifying] to the end of Q3 [the third and final par t ] . There was no e xt r a button.’
Vettel, wondering why Hamilton had found significant additional speed compared to his early runs, interjected, saying: ‘What were you doing before?’
‘I was waiting to put in a good lap,’ responded Hamilton. ‘ To wipe the smile off your face.’
Vettel claimed not to have heard the comment because Hamilton ‘said it so quickly first time, but now I get it’, before adding: ‘What goes around, comes around.
‘ He is free to have a party tonight and hopefully Kimi and I will have a party tomorrow.’
Hamilton, who said his pole lap was one of his best ever, denied he had ever used the phrase ‘ party mode’, though he did. According to the driver himself at a recent Petronas sponsor event, Mercedes would hit the new season with a ‘race mode’ and a ‘qualifying mode’.
Two weeks ago he said: ‘ Our quali mode is the most fun mode. It should be the party mode. It has the most juice, and it’s when we hit the highest speed.’
Hamilton claimed his ‘wipe the smile off your face’ remarks were a ‘joke’. It was too late for that and did not ring true, for he and Vettel had several strained moments last season.
There is not expected to be any news on Hamilton’s new Mercedes contract until today’s race is well out of the way. A source close to the negotiations has indicated that everything remains on course and that Hamilton will sign the £40million-a-year deal.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is conducting the talks and keeping the board of Mercedes’ parent company Daimler informed of developments.
Hamilton’s 73rd career pole, and a record seventh here in Australia, was in marked contrast to his team-mate Valtteri Bottas’ afternoon.
The Finn lost control while travelling at 120mph, spinning into the advertising hoardings. ‘I was just pushing a bit too hard,’ said Bottas, who qualified 10th but then got a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change as a result of the accident. ‘Anything is still possible,’ he said, despite starting from 15th on the grid.