Lewis Hamilton won an action packed thriller in front of
100,000 people attending the third American Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. A
wonderful scrap for the lead and battles all the way down the field made for a
brilliant spectacle.
Hamilton had lost pole position to his Mercedes team mate
Nico Rosberg in qualifying, a glazed brake to blame although he did admit he
didn’t think he could have beaten a superb lap from Nico. When the lights went
out both Mercedes cars got a good start, and at first it looked like Rosberg
had the race under control.
Hamilton got to within a second during the opening stint but
by the first round of pit stops the gap had opened to over two seconds. Once
both were back on track, the change to medium compound tyres from the softs
seemed to suit Hamilton a lot more. He let his tyres settle before hammering
home his advantage and taking chunks out of Rosberg’s lead. He got to within a
second and wasted no time in making a move.
On lap 24 of 56 the silver cars were close and down the back
straight Hamilton closed up in the DRS zone, but he didn’t look quite close
enough. As they approached the braking zone to turn 12, Hamilton pulled to the
left in what can only be described as a lunge. It was from quite a distance
back, but for a lunge it was perfectly controlled. There was no lock up, but he seemed to catch
Rosberg by surprise, the Mercedes just millimetres apart. Rosberg had to give
way, he was given no choice.
Lewis immediately pulled a gap but Rosberg wasn’t letting
this go without a fight and despite falling back a bit he settled into a rhythm
and didn’t let Hamilton get more than a few seconds in front. But there was
never an opportunity for Rosberg to have a go despite him keeping Lewis in
sight. Hamilton, as he has been almost since the summer break ended was in
control and won his fifth straight race, his tenth in total this season, also
becoming the most successful British driver ever with his 32nd win.
He is now 24 points ahead of Rosberg with just two races
left. That would normally mean he would have an opportunity to wrap up the
title in Brazil next weekend but sadly Formula 1 likes to fix problems that don’t
exist rather than ones which patently do and have installed a double points
round in Abu Dhabi. It now means the title is assured of going to the last
race, but if Nico were to win it because of double points then it would be a
travesty.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that because with Hamilton
holding a ten wins to four advantage over Rosberg I’m not sure how anyone would
be able to claim that justice was served. However if Rosberg wins without the
help of double points then whatever the win count it’ll show that consistency
can pay out too. Both will be deserving champions even if one on paper at least
looks far more deserving.
Of course there is the situation right now where Rosberg,
despite saying he’s still in the fight, knows the reality is he has been
soundly beaten at every race since his last win all the way back in July at the
German Grand Prix. Despite his surprising qualifying advantage over Lewis,
Rosberg has not kept it in the races and has been almost too easily dismissed
in the wheel to wheel battles. If this were a normal season without double
points, it would be quite right that Lewis would have potentially clinched the
title one race from home. There’s going to be such huge tension that the right
result plays out in this contest when we get to Abu Dhabi.
Behind the Mercedes battle for the win there was a brief
safety car period after Sergio Perez torpedoed his Force India into the back of
Kimi Raikkonen and then in to Adrian Sutil’s Sauber. Amazingly Kimi survived to
race on, although could only finish 13th while Perez and Sutil were
both out. Sutil was particularly disappointed after making a good start from
his first top ten grid slot of the year. Perez has been given a seven place grid penalty.
Daniel Ricciardo got another podium for Red Bull and sported some interesting facial hair. He held off the Williams’ of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas. Ricciardo got a terrible
start but made some great moves to haul himself back up particularly after the
safety car on Fernando Alonso who he hung out to dry in turn two. He undercut
both Williams during the pit stops and despite Massa getting close towards the
end had a relatively untroubled drive to third.
Massa and Bottas stayed out of trouble but one of them
should have been on the podium but they increased their advantage over Ferrari
in the constructors championship with fourth and fifth. Alonso brought home his
Ferrari sixth despite suffering huge vibrations in the closing stages, crossing
the line just half a second ahead of Sebastian Vettel.
Vettel had a great last part of the race after looking like
he had no pace at all in the opening laps. Starting from the pit lane due to
taking a sixth power unit, one more than is permitted for the season, he could
barely get ahead of anyone, but through strategy he was up into seventh when he
made a final pit stop with just eight laps to go.
He dropped to 13th but charged and passed people
with ease on his fresher tyres. It was a great last few laps, helped by Jenson
Button fading with dying rubber and other set up issues that meant he held up a
lot of cars while he was lying in eighth.
But as Vettel rose up, Button dropped down to an eventual 12th.
His McLaren
team mate Kevin Magnussen finished eighth while Jean-Eric Vergne
came home ninth after a few brilliantly banzai moves. One was pretty close to
the edge as he dived on Romain Grosjean into turn one using him as a bit of an
extra brake. The stewards are looking into that but I think he should keep his
result. It sent Grosjean down the field and out of the points after a nicely
competitive race from the Lotus team.
It was nice to see Pastor Maldonado finally score a point
this year despite trying to make it as hard as ever by incurring two five
second penalties. Luckily for him Hamilton had lapped everyone up to 10th,
so Maldonado’s extra five seconds dropped him below no one. Edit: Vergne got given a five second penalty for his move on Grosjean so he drops to 10th meaning Maldonado has not one but two whole points to call his own.
Of course we were running with only 18 cars, Marussia and
Caterham both in administration there was no real missing of them in race terms
as there was so much going on but small teams are an essential part of the
sport where many future stars gained experience before emerging as stars.
Bernie Ecclestone realises that the way money is divided between the teams is
unfair but said he doesn’t know how to fix it. Perhaps it should be him who
gives up some of his money to help out, after all it was he who made the unfair
deals in the first place.
Marussia say they are hopeful they’ll be back in Abu Dhabi
as they seek extra finance, as for Caterham it doesn’t look good.
Brazil is just one week away, it cannot come soon enough in
this great duel to be crowned champion of the world. #ForzaJules
all photos taken from autosport.com
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