Bottas and Hamilton trade wins as Ferrari’s season hangs in the balance.
The Austrian hills were alive with F1 action for the past two weekends, and the contrasts in races for Mercedes and the Ferrari team couldn’t have been more different.
With teammate Valtteri Bottas winning the season opener–and defending champion Lewis Hamilton finishing a disappointing 4th–Hamilton knew he had to bounce back in race 2 to kick-start his 7th world championship bid.
Bounce back he did in emphatic fashion. In a delayed wet qualifying session, Hamilton showed why he is the ‘rain master’ by posting a pole position time 1.2 seconds faster than 2nd placed Max Verstappen, and almost 1.5 seconds faster than teammate Bottas, who could only qualify 4th.
Race day was dry, but that did not stop Hamilton from surging to his 85th career victory. He drove to the finish ten seconds-plus of teammate and second-place finisher Bottas.
Bottas leads the world championship standings after two races, but Hamilton has momentum going into this weekend’s race in Hungary.
Apart from Hamilton needing to bounce back, last Sunday’s pre-race focus was also on Ferrari. Ferrari had a mixed first race. Charles Leclerc took advantage of others’ misfortune and finished second, but Vettel placed 10th out of 11 finishers after colliding with Ferrari-bound Carlos Sainz.
It was a disappointing start for Ferrari, primarily because Leclerc’s 2nd place was attributed more to luck and retirements than pace. But with upgrades being made to the Ferrari car, analysts and fans gave pause, preferring to suspend judgment and look at how the Italian carmaker would do in race two.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, the second race offered more of the same–and even worse. The cars qualified 10th and 11th during the wet qualifying session. Then, on race day, the cars collided with each other during lap one.
Let’s face it: a double-retirement due to a crash between teammates is the ultimate F1 sin.
The question is where Ferrari and, in particular, Vettel go from here? Before Austria, Vettel hinted that he was racing for himself, and his post-race comments last Sunday represented more than a hint of that. It’s unlikely that Vettel will be the team player Ferrari needs.
But Ferrari faces more than a drivers-related situation. An underperforming car and a compressed race schedule mean that the team doesn’t have much time to locate a fix. Race #3 is just a few days away, part of a run of eight races over ten weeks.
This weekend, F1 eyes will be on the Prancing Horse.
