F1 Talk: Hamilton and Mercedes turn up the heat in Singapore

Nobody saw it coming. Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes taking pole position then dominating the race on what should have been their weakest track of the year. Coming into the weekend the consensus was that Ferrari and Vettel were the team to beat. The track layout should have suited the car and Vettel is excellent around the Marina Bay.

It became clear that it wasn’t going to be straightforward as Vettel nudged the wall at the exit of turn 21 in FP2, into what I like to call the modern-day Wall of Champions, which caused something to break in the rear of the car. As a result Vettel didn’t get any long run data in the most crucial practice session of the weekend – emphasised because it’s the only proper night running the drivers get all weekend prior to qualifying and the race – so finding a nice setup for those particular conditions was key.

That said, Vettel was still favourite to take pole position as qualifying progressed, but from out of nowhere a time of a 1:36.015 from Hamilton. A third of a second quicker than his nearest challenger, Max Verstappen, 0.6 ahead of Sebastian Vettel and 0.7 ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas. I remember watching his onboard lap on Saturday night and I was trying to spot any errors.

I really couldn’t spot any mistakes when I normally do. There were no steering wheel corrections at all, he nailed every apex and was nice and close to the wall. The steering was smooth, the throttle application out of the medium and slow speed corners was all done in one transition (no off and on the throttle moments). The car didn’t slide and the change of direction was as good as I have ever seen for the Mercedes.

It really was a special lap. There’s no doubt we will look back at Lewis Hamilton’s Singapore 2018 Pole Position lap was something unreal and something magical. People have compared it to Ayrton Senna’s iconic Monaco 1988 qualifying lap, which was 1.5 seconds quicker than Alain Prost. Those margins are almost impossible to match nowadays but what made Hamilton’s lap so surprising is that he shouldn’t have even been on pole, never mind on pole by such a margin. You will struggle to find a better qualifying lap this year than that.

Max Verstappen’s lap was equally as impressive. With software engine issues and a lack of power compared to the Mercedes, his lap was pretty mega. The Red Bull chassis is excellent and Verstappen surprised many by getting onto the front row when they were expected to drop away. He was so close to the walls throughout his lap and just millimetres separated him from a crash, which would have caused outrage and allowed his critics to step in. Verstappen was on the edge like he always is and could only be bettered by something just as spectacular.

With his engine issue, he wasn’t able to short shift or else the car would bog down; so he had to rev all the way to the lights which isn’t ideal as you want to short shift sometimes to find some traction out of a corner. The young Dutchman probably wouldn’t have taken pole but he would have been closer.

So what went wrong with Vettel and Ferrari? They put themselves on the backfoot from Q2 onwards. Ferrari tried to get into Q3 on the ultrasoft tyres but surely they should have seen that Mercedes only just scraped through Q1 on the same set of tyres. It was always going to be touch and go. Neither driver was given an ideal preparation lap though so Ferrari played it safe to qualify on the hypersoft tyres.

Onto the final part of qualifying and Ferrari still haven’t learnt how to prepare the tyres. Bottas and Hamilton cruise around, treating their tyres like it’s the last set of tyres they will ever have in their career whilst we see pictures of Raikkonen flying around doing the complete opposite thing. Vettel doesn’t have the best out lap as well and realises that he is going significantly faster than the Mercedes on the out lap, noting it on the radio.

Why isn’t it Ferrari that realise this? Surely they should have noticed for Q3 but they didn’t and it ended being Vettel who had to observe and notice. His job should have been to drive the car as hard as he could but it looked like he was thinking about Mercedes when you really need to be focusing on yourself. Raikkonen clearly isn’t told for the second and final runs in Q3 and speeds round the 5.063KM track like it was the race.

Vettel’s lap wasn’t clean and therefore could only settle for third position. A disaster for Ferrari but it wouldn’t stop there.

The anticipation for the race was high and the tension rose as we awaited a potentially dramatic start. Memories of last year flooded back and a Hamilton-Verstappen-Vettel top three would surely create fireworks. It didn’t, and it was a pretty boring race at the front.

A very even start for the front three meant the order didn’t change. Vettel had other ideas and got a nice run out of turn five and with a superior Ferrari engine the German breezed past Verstappen going into turn seven. We then saw Hamilton control the race by going very slow to back the pack up.

He is the master at doing this, it’s becoming a trait and he’s redefining what a modern day F1 driver should do. By doing this, nobody could undercut him because they would just rejoin in the midfield, unable to go fast and make the most of their tyres. It also meant the Hamilton could save his sensitive hypersoft tyres whilst the cars behind were in the turbulent air of the car in front and hurting their tyres. A win-win situation for Hamilton. Also, with the cars the way they are, Hamilton knew that Vettel wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near him. A really clever opening stint.

Hamilton did start to push the pace and got faster and faster, opening the gap between himself and Vettel. Ferrari surprised everyone by pitting Vettel and then going onto ultrasofts. I didn’t get it at the time and I still don’t. He wasn’t anywhere near close enough to Hamilton for an undercut, it was too early and he was asking a lot of the ultrasoft tyres to do the rest of the race without dropping a lot of pace.

Hamilton responded on the next lap and was easily ahead. Frighteningly, Ferrari told Vettel that “it would be close with Hamilton” on the merge but it wasn’t close at all. What does this tell us about the Ferrari management and strategists, I wonder?

To make matters worse, Vettel got stuck behind Sergio Perez for a lap or so and thus lost a lot of time. Verstappen and Red Bull pitted at the perfect opportunity and even with a poor getaway from Verstappen coming out of his pit box, he managed to jump Vettel in the pitstop phase. From then on in, it was a very lonely race for Vettel and he somehow made the tyres last without getting threatened by Bottas behind.

Ferrari may have the fastest car this season but the way the team operate at the track is poor.

Verstappen had one small chance to take the lead when Hamilton was severely hampered by Romain Grosjean and Sergey Sirotkin who were having their own battle. The door was closed straight away and Verstappen didn’t get close again. The incident does bring up a discussion for whether we should have blue flags in F1. I think we should and there’s no need for a change.

If we don’t have blue flags, we will get situations were the B-teams (Haas or Force India perhaps) would help Ferrari and Mercedes to either hold drivers up or make things easier for their respective “A-team.” This would not go down well with the fans at all and there’s no problems with the way it is now. As shown on Sunday, a backmarker nearly caused a lead change when there really shouldn’t have been one. Grosjean got a deserved five second time penalty.

Elsewhere, Sergio Perez had the worst race of his F1 career. He was at fault (in my opinion) of putting teammate, Esteban Ocon, in the wall. It’s not the first time the Force India drivers have clashed. The Mexican said he didn’t know Ocon was there but I find that hard to believe. Ocon was more than alongside and the move around the outside was definitely on.

Then, Perez had a frustrating (for him) but engaging (for us) battle with Sirotkin. He was put into that situation after being given a silly strategy, putting him in the “angry pack.” He found himself behind the Williams driver lap after lap and when he had a chance, he got alongside but swerved into Sirotkin, deliberately it looked like to me, at high racing speeds. For me, it should have at least been a black flag if not a race ban.

You can’t do that on a race track. It was intentional and stupid. Vettel did a similar thing to Hamilton at Baku last year and got a 10 second stop and go penalty so for Perez to do the same thing but during green flag conditions at a much higher speed, is simply unacceptable. He was only given a drive though penalty and the stewards need to change the way they hand out penalties. In other series, you are given a drive through penalty for accidently turning another car around but in F1, you can drive into the side of someone else and receive the same punishment. Utterly stupid – end of rant.

Sirotkin probably created the most drama of the race because he was so slow (mainly due to the car which was 1.4 seconds behind the next slowest car in qualifying) that he created a train of cars behind him and he defended very hard and did very well with his racecraft. I loved seeing him fight so hard, even though if it was for lowly positions.

Fernando Alonso was on fire yet again as he managed a seventh place with a good strategy from McLaren and excellent pace from Alonso. The difference between him and Vandoorne was shown up and Vandoorne has not outqualified Alonso once this season. He might be up against one of the best drivers on the grid, and he might not have the best car but he hasn’t been close enough and hasn’t shown the talent he showed prior to F1.

McLaren will likely struggle in the next round in Sochi but I expect Ferrari to be strong in Russia. That said, they should have dominated in Singapore so who knows what will happen. If Vettel doesn’t finish ahead of Hamilton, it might as well be game over. Ferrari must operate at their best because they may have the best car but they have not shown the same wisdom as Mercedes and that, coupled with mistakes from Vettel himself will likely cost them both championships.