HAS VETTEL BLOWN IT ALREADY?
“Own goal.” That was the verdict of three of Italy’s major newspapers following the Italian Grand Prix, which Lewis Hamilton won with one of his greatest drives, but which Ferrari lost with the latest in what can be argued as a series of errors or misjudgements by the team and their lead driver, Sebastian Vettel.
Starting with a Ferrari front-row lock-out, the race ended with Hamilton extending his championship lead to 30 points when Ferrari should be heading to Singapore with the very real possibility of Vettel re-taking the lead.
The battle between Mercedes and Ferrari has been close and intense all year, but the Italian team have had the fastest car for much of the season, apart, perhaps, from a period comprising the French, Austrian and British GPS.
Yet Hamilton won three of the last four races of the European season – all against the run of form and following misjudgements or mistakes from Ferrari.
In Germany, Vettel crashed out of the lead in a laterace rain shower, as Hamilton was catching him handover-fist. Then in Hungary, Ferrari had the faster car but could not get it to work as well in the wet qualifying as Mercedes, who locked out the front row and organised the race for Hamilton to win. Ferrari threw away a chance for Vettel to pressure Hamilton in the lead by delaying a stop long enough to surrender a position back to his team-mate Valtteri Bottas and force Vettel to pass the Finn on track.
In Italy, Vettel slid into Hamilton and spun as the world champion was passing him around the outside of the second chicane on the first lap of the race.
There were also questions over Ferrari’s management of qualifying, when Kimi Räikkönen ended up on pole after running last in a train of cars and behind Vettel, thereby benefiting from a tow from his team-mate.
Vettel, who also admitted to making mistakes on his lap, was unhappy about something after qualifying but would not say what it was. The presumption is that it was the team’s failure to alter its strategy of alternating who runs last in qualifying on the basis of fairness.
Equally, it appears there was no instruction from the management at Ferrari as to how Vettel and Räikkönen should handle the first lap. “We have pilots, not butlers,” team boss Maurizio Arrivabene said afterwards.
Nor are these the only mis-steps from Ferrari and Vettel. There was also the error at the Safety Car restart in Baku, when Vettel overshot a passing attempt on Bottas and slipped from what would have been first or
second to fourth, and Hamilton won. And the penalty he earned for blocking Carlos Sainz in Austria qualifying, which earned a grid penalty without which he would probably have won. And the crash with Bottas at the start in France. Individually, the misjudgements and mis-steps are small. But the cumulative effect is large. Vettel should be leading the championship comfortably.
“I’m not too worried,” he said after Italy. “I think we have the pace. The points sound a lot but actually it doesn’t take a lot to get them back.”
He’s done it before, for Red Bull against Ferrari in 2010 and 2012. But in each case he had a much larger performance advantage than he does now, and relied on Fernando Alonso’s bad luck. If Vettel and Ferrari don’t want 2018’s history to be written as ‘how they threw the championship away’, they need to sharpen up. Fast.
INDIVIDUALLY, THE MISJUDGEMENTS AND MIS-STEPS ARE SMALL. BUT THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT IS LARGE. VETTEL SHOULD BE LEADING THE CHAMPIONSHIP COMFORTABLY