F1 Talk: Five championships for Hamilton; five wins for Verstappen

Max Verstappen made it five wins in his Formula One career on Sunday, whilst Lewis Hamilton became a 5-time world champion.

It would be slightly rude if I didn’t talk about the champion first so I shall do so.

2018 has by far been Lewis Hamilton’s best season in his F1 career. Since the French Grand Prix in June, he’s been on incredible form. I can only think of one mistake that he’s made when it matters most (i.e in qualifying and the race) and that was in Baku when he went deep into turn one during the race, but even then he managed to win the race.

You could argue in Germany during qualifying he may have played his part to get the hydraulics failure which he suffered but he remarkably recovered from that as well.

What could have been a turning point against Hamilton, became a turning point against Sebastian Vettel when the German went off the road at the Sachs Curve whilst in the lead resulting in a DNF. Some of Hamilton’s pole position laps have been simply sublime: Melbourne, Silverstone and Singapore were some of the laps of his career. Hamilton has also seemed to mastered how to get the best out of a tyre and how to maintain good pace over a stint which is vital in modernday F1. Singapore is a fine example where he measured the pace perfectly and knew that he could dictate the speed his rivals could go at.

When having to race wheel to wheel, he’s been smart and calculated. Aside from Silverstone, he hasn’t been spun round and has played the risk vs. reward game very well. He (arguably) hasn’t been at fault for any on track incidents and remains a force to be reckoned with when in fight for position.

Hamilton is now joint 2nd on the all-time list of F1 champions with Juan Manuel Fangio and is now just two championships away from Michael Schumacher. Very few people would have thought it was possible that Hamilton could match or even break Schumacher’s record but it now looks like it could happen. Schumacher won his first title in 1994 and his last in 2004 – 10 years apart, Hamilton now has 10 years between his first and latest titles. Can he make more history? Time will tell.

For the second successive year though at Mexico, Hamilton couldn’t finish on the podium and Max Verstappen dominated the race.

Driven with anger after failing to become the youngest ever pole sitter in F1 (he now can only do so by taking pole position in Brazil or Abu Dhabi which will take a magical lap) and losing out to teammate, Daniel Ricciardo by just 0.026, the 21-year-old was on fire. His father, Jos Verstappen, said that he was worried Max would do something stupid and Max himself said he only got three hours sleep. He claimed that he had an engine braking issue but as far as I’m aware Christian Horner or Helmut Marko didn’t say that Max had an issue and they would have said so if Verstappen did have an issue

Looking at the comparison between the Verstappen and Ricciardo Q3 laps, it looks like Verstappen loses most of the time by not taking the optimal line in the twist middle sector and missing the apex in the stadium at the turn 13 hairpin. It seems Ricciardo just did a better job on Saturday.

On Sunday though, Ricciardo had an awful start and dropped to 3rd whilst Verstappen held off a fast-starting Hamilton. The anticipation before the start was sky-high because it was the first time Red Bull had locked out the front row since USA 2013 and it was the first time Hamilton or Vettel were NOT on the front row since Singapore 2016. Personally, I thought there was guaranteed to be contact, there wasn’t.

Vettel got boxed in going towards turn one, with Ricciardo to his left, Verstappen in front of him and the grass to his right. The superior Ferrari straight line speed was no use as he had to back out and tuck in behind the first three cars in 4th place.

Early on, it became clear that tyre degradation would be a problem. Pirelli brought the three softest tyre compounds to Mexico (the hypersoft, ultrasoft and supersoft) – stupid names I know. How can the “supersoft” be the hardest tyre? Red Bull had the best tyre wear so Verstappen pulled away, whilst Mercedes had the worst tyre wear.

Hamilton had to make his first stop early on, on lap 11 of the 71 lap race. The Red Bulls followed over the next few laps and the Ferraris went slightly longer than the rest with Vettel pitting on lap 16. I think Ferrari tried to do a one stop race with Vettel but it was too much of a risk at the time and his pace was so slow compared to his rivals.

Everyone was on the supersoft tyres for the second stint and Vettel had good pace but with Ricciardo and Hamilton in the way. He knew that if he was within one second of Ricciardo as they crossed the line, he would be able to overtake him because even though the 2285M of altitude helped the engines with less power (the Honda and Renault engine cars) the Ferrari engine was still a monster.

In the end Ricciardo didn’t defend hard (or not as hard as I expected him to) so Vettel breezed past and Hamilton was next. Lewis was seriously struggling with his tyres, despite having clean air. Hamilton didn’t have the grip to defend too hard but had one eye on securing the championship at Mexico so Vettel was now in 2nd position.

Hamilton was then overtaken by Ricciardo and pitted for a second time. Vettel responded by pitting as well and then Verstappen responded to Vettel. Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen stayed out to try the one stop so we got a good mix of strategies which was nice to see. Hamilton came emerged in 4th place and for some reason he didn’t have the pace to chase down Raikkonen who was in 3rd, the Brit coasted home for the remainder of the race.

Vettel, now on ultrasoft tyres, was out to prevent a Red Bull 1-2 with Verstappen leading and Ricciardo in 2nd. Ricciardo was on 40+ lap supersoft tyres and it looked like he was able to hold Vettel off. But disaster struck with just 10 laps to go. A hydraulics failure saw his podium chance go up in smoke (quite literally). People are saying “Red Bull are sabotaging his car” but an F1 team wouldn’t spend millions of pounds and work for hours, days and weeks to sabotage one of their cars. Why would they stop a potential 1-2?

Ricciardo has just genuinely been unbelievably unlucky. You have to feel his pain and I hope he can end his Red Bull career on a high. With his risky move to Renault, he may not get many more chances of being on the podium or winning a race.

It meant that the top five cars were set in position with massive gaps between them. Verstappen-Vettel-Raikkonen was the podium.

I seem to always say that the midfield is manic but it really is! What’s frustrating is that everyone outside the top five cars got lapped not once, but twice! It just shows the difference between Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari and everybody else. Over a 71 lap race which takes around 80 seconds per lap, the midfield runners were going on average nearly three seconds slower than the frontrunners. It’s ridiculous but that’s a story for another day.

McLaren had a much better weekend of late. Fernando Alonso somehow getting his car into 12th before hitting some debris on the opening lap (from Esteban Ocon’s Force India) which cut a water line, which caused a water leak, causing the water pressure to drop and the temperatures went to soar. A potential double points finish for McLaren was missed.

I say that because Stoffel Vandoorne had a really good race. He was down on 19th at the end of lap one, but finished 8th. The midfield was very hard to read with drivers on different strategies and 3-4 car trains going around the 4.3KM circuit. Nico Hulkenberg was “best of the rest” and he had a pretty lonely race after teammate, Carlos Sainz, retired with a battery problem.

Charles Leclerc had a good race as well finishing 7th but was helped by his teammate, Marcus Ericsson, who wasn’t given the optimal strategy yet still finished 9th. A great job by Ericsson, not often someone a get to praise.

Home hero, Sergio Perez was running strongly into he ran into brake troubles on lap 38. 100,000 Mexican hearts sank as Perez had to park his car in the garage. Perez is massive in Mexico and he’s not even in a top car. It’s always a shame to see a driver not do well at their home Grand Prix, more so for Perez because if it wasn’t for him, we probably wouldn’t have a Mexican GP.

Tyres were a major story coming out of the race. There seems to be a clear divide between fans. Some fans want hard tyres so the drivers can push hard all race, but then we get a very simple one stop race with no strategy. Others want multiple pitstops (2-3 pitstops) so there’s a strategy element but the negative of this is that the drivers can’t push as hard.

Pirelli can’t win, they will always be upsetting some fans and in a way I do feel a bit sorry for them.

Personally, I’m a fan of the 2-3 pitstops. I don’t like one stop races at all. The drivers wouldn’t push anyway these days even if there was no tyre degradation because they would have to manage their fuel and brakes – this comes as a result of the 2014 regulation changes. In 2018, it’s not just tyres that the drivers have to manage unfortunately. The way an F1 race is won is very different to even 10 years ago.

That’s why I’d rather see a strategy element because we won’t see drivers doing qualifying laps in races anymore due to the fuel, brakes and engine – not just the tyres. It’s a shame but other rules have to changes first if F1 wants to see drivers pushing at their maximum all the time during the race.

With the drivers’ championship wrapped up, Mercedes will now turn their focus onto winning the constructors’ championship in Brazil. Stay tuned for a preview of that race and all of the other talking points next week!