Champion on pole and refuses to go quietly
Champion emulates hero Senna with flying lap Rosberg aims to chase rival down and seal the title
Lewis Hamilton’s inspiration this weekend is writ large in the vivid yellow helmet he has brought to Brazil as a tribute to Ayrton Senna, whose grave lies just a few miles from the fabled, sinuous circuit here at Interlagos.
Once more, he proved yesterday that he had mastered Senna’s gift for producing the perfect flying lap, recording the 60th pole of his career to ensure that his title duel with Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg heads today for a dramatic moment of reckoning.
“I’m ready for whatever,” Hamilton said, brushing aside worries that the rain forecast for this afternoon’s grand prix could create chaos in his efforts to reel in Rosberg’s 19-point champion- ship lead. That much is evident from the formidable resolve he has displayed so far in Sao Paulo, in leading two of the three practice sessions and then unleashing a late burst of brilliance to out-qualify his German rival by one tenth of a second. “I have honestly felt quite comfortable,” he explained. “Nico has been going quicker and quicker, but I have had it covered.”
Prepare, then, for a captivating drag race to the first corner. Rosberg, conscious of Hamilton’s susceptibilities off the start line this season, intends to give ferocious chase, desperate as he is to make the pass that would propel him towards a maiden first world title.
A win, as he is only too well aware, would be enough to claim the prize. Anything less, and he would risk the tussle with Hamilton rolling on to Abu Dhabi in a fortnight.
The worry for Rosberg is that Hamilton is the man with momentum. Buoyed by consecutive victories in the United States and Mexico, the threetime world champion is acting as if he would regard the loss of his status to Rosberg, a demonstrably slower driver, as an affront. His title prospects were damaged by mid-season engineering out of his control, and he is so fixated on making up the lost ground that he appears to believe his legend depends on it.
Rosberg was ebullient enough last night about making the front row, refusing to represent his shading by Hamilton as a setback. “That’s a very grim view of that,” he said. “I am still optimistic for the race. I was missing a little on my last lap, but I’m going to try to get Lewis into Turn One.”
If the facade of friendship between these two has always been paper-thin, the tensions of this year’s compelling back-and-forth at the top of the drivers’ standings have shredded it altogether.
Whether or not Hamilton bridges the gap to Rosberg, with whom he has fought since their karting days, he is inching closer to milestones that would cement his place among Formula One’s immortals. This 60th pole position took him closer to the historic standards set by Senna, who had 65, and Michael Schumacher, with 68.
It was also a further affirmation of Mercedes’ impregnable dominance. In the 20 grands prix of 2016 so far, the Silver Arrows have held pole in 19 of them, an unprecedented level of supremacy. “It is remarkable what we have done with this team,” Hamilton acknowledged. “It is beyond anything we could have hoped for.” One of many imponderables in today’s Brazilian Grand Prix, always a riveting spectacle in light of the short but highly technical Interlagos track, is the role of Max Verstappen. The 19-year-old Dutchman underlined his reputation for aggression at the last race in Mexico with a series of audacious overtaking moves, one of which particularly irked Sebastian Vettel. First, though, Verstappen will need to leapfrog Kimi Raikkonen, Vettel’s Ferrari colleague, who took a surprise third on the grid with a blazing last lap. But even his best could still not thwart the all-conquering duo up front. “If we had produced the perfect lap, it would not have been good enough to catch Mercedes,” the Finn said.
As McLaren suffered familiar travails, with Jenson Button out of qualifying in the first session due to tyre difficulties – “yeah, we really sorted those problems out, didn’t we?” he told his race engineer, sarcastically – there continued to be intense scrutiny over the future of chief executive Ron Dennis.
McLaren are in the grip of a power struggle, after a reported £1.65billion takeover attempt by Chinese investors, and Bernie Ecclestone confirmed yesterday that Dennis had lost a High Court case to prevent him being marginalised. “He wanted to overturn what happened and he lost the case, unfortunately,” Ecclestone said. “It is a pity. We don’t want to lose Ron.”
Dennis, who owns 25 per cent of the McLaren Technology Group he created, has been seeking to buy back control with a Chinese consortium, but the company’s two majority shareholders, Saudi businessman Mansour Ojjeh and the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund, are determined not to sell.
Race 3pm TV Sky Sports F1