Horner didn’t complain when Vettel dominated
MELBOURNE: From the moment a star-struck Lewis Hamilton encountered Arnold Schwarzenegger on the podium in Albert Park on Sunday evening it was inevitable that one or both of them would utter the words: “I’ll be back”. And so it came to pass that they did it together, after the Australian Grand Prix winner had suggested that The Terminator was not as tall as he had expected.
But the truth is that the famed expression would have been more apposite 12 months ago for Hamilton, as his teammate Nico Rosberg stood atop the Melbourne podium and the Briton skulked in the garage, an early victim of spark plug failure. That was the beginning of a series of comebacks he had to stage before snatching the crown which, perforce, had once seemed destined for the German’s head.
This year, Hamilton was back, with a vengeance, and together with Rosberg he dominated the race and left Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari more than half a minute adrift, Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull a lap down and Jenson Button’s McLaren-Honda two laps adrift.
Equally predictable was the Red Bull team principal Christian Horner’s suggestion that Mercedes’ dominance was ruining the show and that something should be done about it. What he really meant was that something should be done about Renault’s pathetic performance and an inferior engine that is still developing the same power it had this time last year.
Every time somebody dominates, everyone else whinges; Horner forgets it was the same when Vettel trounced everyone for four years in a row - win-
‘‘ “Every driver who has won a World Championship has had a great car. I can't think of anyone who's won in a bad car. Even Fangio had the best car.” – Lewis Hamilton
ning nine races on the bounce in 2013 - in the days when you never heard Horner suggest that Red Bull’s continuing success was bad for the sport.
If Hamilton continues at this rate there will be suggestions that he owes it all to having the best car, but that is half the job of any self-respecting driver, to get the best equipment he can lay his hands on. Far from being a crime, it’s the name of the game.
Feeling mellow in the Melbourne twilight, and given the manner in which he had coped with attacks from Rosberg that were persistent and much more challenging than the television coverage made them appear, he shrugged off Horner’s carping.
“Seb did this for four years, but he didn’t have a team-mate right behind him. If it was just me 30 seconds ahead and people said I had the best car. It might be different, but I’m not. That’s how F1 is. If you put anyone else in our car, I have no doubt where I’d still be.
“Every driver who has won a World Championship has had a great car. I can’t think of anyone who’s won in a bad car. Even Fangio had the best car.”
Indeed, the five-time cham- pion Argentine had absolutely no qualms about changing teams every season to ensure he was in the best machinery. Hamilton, by contrast, endured years in McLarens that were not quite capable of repeating his 2008 title success, and then played a key role in developing the Mercedes in which he is now reaping his just reward.
Paddock observers believe we are in the new Hamilton Era, and he promises more of the same in Malaysia in a fortnight. He thrashed Rosberg there last year, and is ready to do the same this time.
“I have more to come,” he warned on Sunday evening. “After I retired from the first race here last year I had no real idea about how the tyres behaved in a race, but now that I’ve completed this one I can extract everything from our data so that next time out I’ll be able to see how to do it even better.
“Psychologically, winning here doesn’t mean anything. I won the World Championship last year, after all. But we do have an awesome car with improved reliability and the target is always going to be to win all the races, to make history.” – The Independent