Lewis Hamilton delivered a victory on Ferrari's home ground to open a sizeable advantage in the Formula 1 standings. Motorsport Week presents its conclusions from an enthralling Italian Grand Prix weekend.
Ferrari’s own goal on home ground
It is impossible to confidently ascertain exactly which team held the fastest package in race trim at Monza. But that Ferrari locked out the front row of the grid and headed back to Maranello without another victory flag to place at its entrance was a damning indictment of how its weekend unfolded. How did it end up that way?
Vettel’s qualifying malaise
The SF71Hs were quick over one lap, but Lewis Hamilton remained a lingering threat, once again demonstrating how his driving style is conducive to Monza’s layout. Kimi Raikkonen’s pole position was earned while running in the slipstream of Sebastian Vettel, who in turn had slotted behind Hamilton, the Briton lapping behind his team-mate Valtteri Bottas.
Vettel initially celebrated to the extent that he believed pole was his, only to reply “we speak later” when informed he had dropped to second. He refused to expand on his comment, though the order of the slipstream raised eyebrows among many – why not give your overwhelming favourite as many tools as possible? That said, Vettel conceded several mistakes on his final Q3 effort wrecked his changes, ultimately suggesting the slipstream impact had minimal difference. He should have been more than 0.017s clear of Hamilton.
Vettel insisted that Raikkonen still had chances to win the race – amid questions over potential team orders – but any notion of a swap unravelled at the start.
Vettel used the slipstream from his team-mate to run side-by-side into the Rettifilo Chicane. Raikkonen’s preservation of the inside line was entirely logical but a lock-up sent him marginally deep, an outcome that also slightly hindered Vettel, allowing Hamilton to draw closer as they passed through the narrow complex.
Vettel once more reeled in Raikkonen on the charge through Curva Grande, but as the Finn held the middle ground the other Ferrari briefly dithered, chose the inside.
“I was in a position for Turn 4 where I wanted to get down the inside, I think I had the space, and Kimi opened the brakes, which again is absolutely fine for him, but I could have done the same but I think then the apex is coming very rapidly and it would have been a nasty one, so I tried to get out of there
This presented Hamilton with a gilt-edged opportunity and he perfectly placed his W09 on the outside of the first apex with the intention of netting the inside for the right-hander. Vettel held the inside line but took too much kerb, clouted Hamilton’s sidepod, and spun, leaving him to agonisingly watch the rest of the field pass by.
“He didn’t give me any room, turned in, and at that point his car obviously felt a lot better than mine with nobody in front and I had nowhere to go,” said Vettel.
Hamilton escaped scot-free and stewards rightly took no further action for what was a superbly opportunistic overtake, with Hamilton noting that an incident eight years ago played on his mind.
“I was a bit surprised Sebastian chose the inside and not go through the outside of Kimi – that was my opportunity,” he said. “I stuck it down the outside and had to make sure I was far enough alongside and I had an experience a few years ago where I was on the inside back in 2012 or something like that [2010] and it didn’t come off very well.”
With a car that had sustained substantially more damage than initially expected Vettel did well to recover to fourth, but it marked another mistake in a season where there have been too many setbacks. These errors have varied in their level and dramatic nature – his off in Germany being towards the top end, the grid penalty for inadvertently impeding Carlos Sainz Jr. during Austrian qualifying at the other end – but they all add up. A 30-point gap is not insurmountable (he has overhauled such a deficit before) but on the basis of 2018 so far you’d have to be a gambler to put money on Vettel and/or Ferrari getting through the next seven Grands Prix without making a handful more mistakes.
All eyes on Kimi
Vettel’s spin left Raikkonen flying solo – Hamilton pounced at the restart but Raikkonen immediately fought back to reclaim the advantage.
“I managed to get past him and he had a massive tow into Turn 4 and still it’s not being great being overtaken on the outside but again it’s about that risk, how much risk do I want to take into this corner and collide with Kimi for the win,” said Hamilton. “I was like I’d rather wait for another moment so that’s what I did.”
Hamilton stalked Raikkonen throughout the first stint, using a combination of DRS and slipstream in the first and third sectors to maintain a gap of around a second, while limiting the damage in the second sector. To overcut or undercut? Ferrari and Mercedes both had their mechanics in the pit lane on lap 20 and on this occasion Mercedes held the advantage, being able to respond to whatever Ferrari did.
“We didn’t know if Kimi was coming in so the message was to do the opposite,” confirmed Toto Wolff.
Hamilton admitted he was “a little bit surprised” at not using the undercut but immediately switched attention to the overcut, and unleashed the race’s fastest lap. At this stage it was thought that Hamilton would be coming in – but instead stayed out. Raikkonen, meanwhile, used his fresher tyres to good effect, posting rapid sector times, but in doing so had gone too hard, too soon.
Daniel Ricciardo’s clutch failure raised the prospect of a Safety Car – real or Virtual – a development that would have undoubtedly aided Hamilton’s prospects. Marshals were able to clear the stricken RB14 under double waved yellows and Mercedes called in Hamilton shortly after, by which time Raikkonen had extended his net advantage from one to five seconds. That, it turned out, was as unnecessary as it was costly.
Wingman
Hamilton emerged five seconds behind Raikkonen but had a helping hand through virtue of Valtteri Bottas running long. Such a strategy was always the intention at a venue where the pit window is wide and it was merely fortuitous circumstances that Bottas, having lost ground to Max Verstappen at the start, was assisting Hamilton’s victory charge.
“We knew that we had to keep him out long because we lost a position already to Verstappen and we need to keep him out long to create the largest possible tyre offset at the end of the race,” confirmed Bottas.
The subject of support roles remains a delicate one – no driver wants to be consigned to a back-up position, but is equally aware that the interests of the team take priority. Neither Raikkonen nor Bottas are likely going to win this year’s World Championship, but the latter has regularly stressed that he wants his position clarified rather than merely exist as back-up to Hamilton.
“I think honestly myself, I took the word ‘wingman’ a bit wrong,” said Bottas. “You’ve seen in Top Gun what wingman actually means. We’re both each other’s wingman, so that’s all good. But I think it was a bit different. That really compromised my race big time, and now it really didn’t. My result was still the same as it would have been stopping a bit earlier.”
Silver bullet
The circumstances worked perfectly for Mercedes – it ensured Bottas backed Raikkonen into Hamilton, while giving the #77 a fresh tyre advantage with which to attack Verstappen late on. Bottas’ eventual pit stop unleashed Raikkonen and Hamilton, by which time the Ferrari driver was being urged to manage his blistered left-rear tyre: easier said than done with a hungry Hamilton loitering in the mirrors. Raikkonen kept his track position but on lap 45 the pair crossed the line split by just half a second. Hamilton sensed his moment and darted to the outside line as Raikkonen defended the inside, and the Mercedes driver superbly judged the move, while Raikkonen was fair in defence when it would have been so easy to have edged his rival wide.
“He moved to the right and then I thought a little bit to the left but didn’t cause me any problems,” said Hamilton. “It was then just about late braking into Turn 1 and trying to… It was very close. Kimi was very fair, gave me space. It was tooth and nail, as racing should be.”
It was the hammer blow in a disappointing race for Ferrari: the ‘wrong’ qualifying outcome, the messy start and Raikkonen’s blistering all combined, though they had been put under that pressure throughout Saturday and Sunday by Hamilton. Without that pressure Ferrari may not have cracked. But they did. Hamilton judged his race perfectly, managed his tyres wisely, attacked when he needed to and was mature enough to back off when discretion was the better part of valour. Hamilton has maximised his opportunities this season. Vettel has not. And in the midst of a tightly-contested title fight in which small margins add up that is proving crucial to the 30-point gap.
How to lose friends and alienate people
Several of Fernando Alonso’s proclamations this year have raised eyebrows among the media contingent, an element of his character that is gradually grating, but it was still a surprise to see a driver come out so strongly against the Spaniard. Alonso was warming his tyres at the end of Q2 when the pursuing Magnussen overtook along the straight between Ascari and Parabolica. Alonso latched onto the rear of the Haas and tried to pass into Rettifilo as they began their final hot laps, but both efforts were wrecked. It was bizarre behaviour from Alonso, who then tried to put a slightly ‘alternative facts’ spin onto the matter. Magnussen, a blunt individual who has rarely shied away from confrontation, delivered a handful of astonishing comments in response to various lines of questioning:
“It is disrespectful."
“Obviously he got a perfect slipstream and thought he could overtake into Turn 1 but I’d rather hang myself."
“I don’t care to speculate why he did it. I think it was just pretty stupid and not necessary."
“I know he thinks he’s God but no way."
“He came to me after qualifying and laughed to my face. Just outright disrespectful. I can’t wait for him to retire."
“He talks about his laps being divine and what not, he literally thinks he’s a god! It’s quite amusing."
“I think we know that Fernando is a bit of an opportunist. We’ve seen that occurring quite a few times in his career with his teams as well trying different things, didn’t always work out. It didn’t work out today.”
Microphone well and truly dropped.
Alonso then had an incident in the race with Pierre Gasly at the post-Safety Car restart, with the result that Gasly ended up bouncing over the kerbs at Rettifilo, a trip that left his Toro Rosso STR13 “completely broken”.
“I think his approach is a bit different because he knows he is not going to be in Formula 1 next year so it looks like he is behaving more aggressive than we was before,” quipped Gasly. “Today for me what he did was not fair and we know that if you is alongside you need to leave space for one car and today he didn’t.”
Swede escape
When the world feed cut to Marcus Ericsson two minutes into FP2 on Friday afternoon there was a mixture of stunned silence and sheer astonishment at the warzone-like scene being shown. Ericsson’s high-speed accident was one of the most violent and dramatic single-car crashes in recent times, as a DRS reattachment failure (caused by a design flaw) pitched him hard into the barriers, with the trajectory leaving him somersaulting across the grassy run-off, kicking up dirt and dust.
Ericsson, mercifully, was able to extricate himself from the totalled Sauber and was given the all-clear after the mandatory check-up at the Medical Centre.
“It was a strange one because usually in the way you crash you sort of… you know it’s a corner, you carry too much speed or you hit with someone else, so you see sort of see it’s happening before it’s happens you sort of know why it happens usually,” he said. “But this was just so like sudden and unpredictable. I just touched the brakes and suddenly the car just spins in that speed and then it starts rolling and flying around, all while that was happening I had no idea was going on! I was like ‘why is this happening?’ when it stopped… in the end it was good there was nothing worse than that.”
The halo has taken a lot of (deserved) praise in recent weeks after the multi-car pile-up in Belgium and Ericsson quipped it was “definitely not bad it was there” in his acrobatic accident. But just as influential has been the other safety developments that have been undertaken (and are still being undertaken) in order to protect drivers as much as possible. The front impact structure withstood a heavy impact at high-speed, the side-impact structures did likewise, and the wheel tethers ensured there were no flying rubber missiles. “I think it was three impacts that were more than 25Gs,” said Ericsson. The FIA and its safety team deserves enormous credit for its relentless, and at times unheralded, push to improve standards.
No quarters given
Renault, having at one stage been clear of the rest of the midfield points-wise, is in the midst of a tricky spell, while Haas, having at one stage conspired to throw away points, has stopped conspiring to throw away points (mostly). It meant the duo arrived in Italy split by just six points, with Haas expecting a strong weekend at Renault not. It duly panned out that way. Romain Grosjean fended off the spirited Force Indias to register sixth, while Carlos Sainz Jr. probably exceeded expectations in recording ninth. It left Renault and Haas level on points. Renault, though, had an ace up its sleeve and protested the floor of Grosjean’s VF-18. It is not known how Renault was aware that the section was illegal. But it was aware. Clarification came in the form of a lengthy document that effectively explained that Haas had fallen foul of a Technical Directive issued prior to the summer break, outlining the reference plane section on the front area of the floor. Haas suggested that due to the nature of its supply chain it could not ready a new part until Singapore, and the FIA was understanding of its situation, but warned that such an approach left it open to protest. Renault pulled the old ‘hey chaps, you miiiight want to have a look at that bit’. Haas has appealed, Renault is back up to fourth, and this fight is far from over.
