This was a dramatic route to an expected result, as Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel traded places early on before the championship leader took charge for yet another victory at the United States Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s sixth win in the past eight races extended his virtually unassailable advantage over Vettel, though the German’s second-place finish means the title fight is still alive for at least another few days. Such is the gap in the standings as the season edges towards its end that this was surely nothing more than destiny deferred in the Texas sunshine.
Pre-race, Hamilton indicated that the fierce competitor in him would relish a battle with Vettel even on the verge of confirming the championship. For a while he got a tussle before normal service resumed on a circuit that Hamilton routinely rules.
“I love this track. I think this track is now my favourite track, to be honest,” he told the crowd from the podium afterwards. “Still three to go, so three more to win.”
Hamilton was on pole and Vettel second, but in the thrilling opening exchanges Vettel surged ahead at the start, only for the Briton to reclaim the lead with a sharp attack on lap six. Vettel had no answer; in the end, the top two on the starting grid were the top two on the podium.
Hamilton went into the race with a 59-point lead, knowing that a victory combined with Vettel finishing outside the top five would bring his fourth world title, drawing him level with Vettel and one ahead of Sir Jackie Stewart’s record tally for a British driver. That lead is now 66 points, meaning the title should be settled in Mexico City this weekend.
Start aside, so accomplished was Hamilton in Austin that the question seemed less whether he would win than whether Vettel’s Ferrari would avoid the mechanical problems that plagued him in recent races and here on Friday, thereby handing the Briton the title through a failure to finish rather than a compelling contest.
Repeatedly breaking the track record, fastest in every practice session and throughout qualifying, Hamilton had secured his eleventh pole of the season, and 72nd of his career, on Saturday with a time of 1.33.108. He was first on the grid last year, too.
This sense of the routine and predictable contrasted with two weeks ago in Japan, where Hamilton savoured the novelty of the first Suzuka pole of his career before going on to win, enhancing his commanding lead over Vettel, who retired with engine trouble after four laps. That followed a first-lap crash in Singapore and more mechanical woes in Malaysia, where he was fourth.
A shaky practice session on Friday that prompted a chassis change and mediocre times in the first two rounds of qualifying raised the question of how competitive Vettel might be here, but he pulled off an exceptional last lap of 1.33.347 to slide past Hamilton’s team-mate, Valtteri Bottas, into second place on the grid, setting up an intriguing battle at the start between the season’s two leading drivers.
Hamilton’s qualifying performance saw him secure his 117th front row start, surpassing Michael Schumacher’s previous Formula One record. Schumacher bought a ranch in Texas in 2012, the year that Austin staged its first Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas. Hamilton won that race and, now, has won four of the next five - the exception coming in 2013, when Vettel took the checkered flag.
Hamilton has always seemed comfortable in Texas both at the wheel and away from his car. A fan of American culture and lifestyle as well as the racetrack, even a yell of “yee-haw!” as he exited his vehicle on Saturday after securing pole was fairly convincing, though no one would mistake this son of Stevenage for a native of San Antonio.
Two hours before the race, he took Usain Bolt for a spin – literally, with Hamilton having fun throwing the car around – in a Mercedes. Bolt, imperturbable when on the starting blocks of an Olympic 100 metres final, looked shaken when he got out of the car after this meeting of the world’s fastest men on two feet and on four wheels.
After a rainstorm about five hours earlier, conditions were warm and dry for the race, though the start was enveloped by a cloud of hype.
Evidently deciding that to grow in the US the sport requires more razzmatazz and pop concerts, Formula One’s new American owners, Liberty Media, delayed qualifying by two hours on Saturday so spectators had less of a wait for a Justin Timberlake gig, while before Sunday’s race the drivers were introduced by a boxing announcer as they emerged from a tunnel along a red carpet lined by cheerleaders in cowboy boots shaking pom-poms.
“Start your engines and let’s get ready to rumbleeeeee!” bellowed the announcer, Michael Buffer. Vettel came out swinging, immediately overtaking Hamilton, who dived to his left but was unable to block a red flash from surging past his left shoulder before the first corner.
Behind, the sparring between Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas provided some of the most engaging moments of the opening laps, but Ricciardo’s Red Bull pulled off the track in lap 16; “engine’s gone,” he said.
His team-mate, Max Verstappen, meanwhile – sixth-fastest in qualifying but 16th on the grid because of a penalty for an engine change – wasted no time progressing towards the leaders and into first, albeit before a pit-stop. He finished fourth behind Kimi Raikkonen after receiving a five-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. Bottas was fifth.
Vettel had a chance when Hamilton made a pit-stop before the midway stage, but after 20 laps, Hamilton came out ahead - narrowly. “Why did you let him get so close?” Hamilton asked his team over the radio.
Vettel would not threaten again, though he rose to second by going past Bottas on lap 51 – then, inevitably, his team-mate, Raikkonen, soon afterwards.
Three races remain: Mexico on 29 October, Brazil on 12 November and Abu Dhabi two weeks later. Results in Austin mean that Mercedes have secured the constructors’ championship for the fourth time in a row; their star driver will surely soon be celebrating another title, too.
