LEWIS HAMILTON
● Mercedes driver has to settle for second in Australia as Vettel storms to impressive victory in season opener
“This shows we’ve got a real race on our hands this season...
it’s a challenge we will relish”
pays tribute to Australian Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel, right, after finishing second to the German in the season’s opening race.
Well, well, well, we have a contest after all. The stunning pace shown by Lewis Hamilton in qualifying trim at the Australian Grand Prix proved a flattering cameo when set against the speed of Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari with a tank full of fuel.
In race conditions the Ferrari was easier on the softer tyres (ultra softs) and when Hamilton got stuck in traffic after his one pit stop, Vettel was able to forge ahead in clean air to build the 23-second advantage required to execute the leapfrog after he pitted five laps later.
From there, with Hamilton flailing in the wake of the turbulent air kicked up by Max Verstappen’s Red Bull for four fruitless laps, Vettel managed the race from the front. Mercedes turned down the wick on Hamilton’s Mercedes so pointless was the pursuit.
So Hamilton’s 62nd pole was not the platform it might have been. Though he got the start he wanted he couldn’t even meet the pit stop target and came in a lap earlier than scheduled having squeezed the life out of the rubber over 17 laps.
Only towards the end of the race did Hamilton’s harder tyres (softs) optimise to give him the necessary pace, but with overtaking a remote possibility, there was never going to be an ontrack arm wrestle that Formula 1 so desires.
Hamilton was fairly sanguine afterwards, with experience enough to recognise the importance of perspective so early in proceedings. Second won’t seem so bad should Mercedes gain a quick understanding of the tyre windows and scheme the inevitable upgrades accordingly.
“A big congratulations to Sebastian and Ferrari,” Hamilton said. “This shows we’ve got a real race on our hands this season and it’s a challenge we will relish. It’s going to be great for the fans.
“We had a really good start which is fantastic. It was nice to get a good getaway. But I was struggling with grip from the get-go.
“Sebastian was able to always answer me in terms of lap time and just go quicker. Towards the end of the first stint I got stuck in traffic and that overheated the tyres.
“I struggled for grip to the point where I needed to come in, plus the gap was closing up and I was sliding around a lot. We made the call to pit, because otherwise I think Sebastian would have come past me anyway.”
This was Ferrari’s first win since Vettel scored at the 2015 Singapore Grand Prix 23 races ago. It was delivered with the kind of calm assurance and precision we last saw when Michael Schumacher was behind the wheel of a Prancing Horse.
The key to victory was the floor-to-metal lapping that was once Schumacher’s hallmark. The moment the call came to put his foot down, Vettel answered with five consistently rapid laps.
The page ant moves to shanghai next where track temperatures are likely to be closer to Barcelona’s testing values than Melbourne’s asphalt. And since Ferrari were unassailable there, it might be that another bloody nose is the fate of Mercedes in China.