Hamilton on pole for today’s U.S. Grand Prix
AUSTIN, Texas — Lewis Hamilton warned Ferrari and rival driver Sebastian Vettel he would be ready to “punch back” at the U.S. Grand Prix after poor results recently.
He was right. It’s just that Vettel may be too far back to land anything strong enough to deny Hamilton a fifth Formula One championship.
Hamilton drove his Mercedes to the 81st pole position of his F1 career with a blistering track-record lap of 1 minute, 32.237 seconds at the Circuit of the Americas on Saturday. Vettel was just .061 second behind.
But instead of starting today’s race from second with a real chance to make it a fight, Vettel will start fifth because of a threespot grid penalty issued Friday when race officials said the German drove too fast while under a red flag in a practice session.
That gap could be just big enough to guarantee Hamilton wins the season championship. Hamilton leads Vettel by 67 points, and any result today that puts him eight or more points ahead of Vettel clinches the title. If Hamilton wins, Vettel must finish no worse than second to keep the championship battle alive next week at the Mexican Grand Prix.
With a fifth title, the British driver would tie Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio, who won his titles in the 1950s. Germany’s Michael Schumacher holds the international circuit’s record with seven.
A win in Austin would be the 10th this season for Hamilton, who has won on this track five of the past six years, but he refused to get into predictions about today’s outcome.
“We’ve not been getting ahead of ourselves,” Hamilton said. “We have to do the same work as before.”
Vettel criticized the penalty when it was assessed Friday, but he refused to rehash his frustration after qualifying.
“I can’t change that now,” said Vettel, who is also a four-time F1 champion. “It is was it is.”
Vettel began the season with consecutive wins in Australia and Bahrain. The title chase swung to Hamilton when he won six of the past seven races. Vettel has one victory and missed the podium three times in that span.
Vettel won here in 2013 and is the only driver to beat Hamilton at the Circuit of the Americas since it opened in 2012. He at least knows his car has the muscle to compete with Mercedes again.
“It was a bit of a surprise to see how competitive we are today,” Vettel said, “given how far we’ve been the last few events.”
Starting between Hamilton and Vettel will be Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, Mercedes’ Vallteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. Getting around that group and still keeping Hamilton close will be difficult. This past week, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said he could use team orders to help protect Hamilton as he tries to win the title.