Hamilton vs Vettel: Formula One fans are gearing up for a fierce battle

Hamilton's twin wins in the last two races put him at the top of standings for the first time this year

As Formula One went into its customary summer break, after the 11th race of the season in Hungary, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel (202) led the drivers’ championship from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton (188) by 14 points. This was a peculiar juncture for two reasons. 

One, it was the first time in four years that a non-Mercedes driver led the title-race going into the second half of an F1 season. And two, it was the first time since 2013, when Vettel won the last of his four successive drivers’ championships with Red Bull Racing, that he was once again in a straight fight for the title. 

“It’s what I dream about, to be honest. I want to win, so that’s where you want to be. It could be worse,” said Vettel, in the Hungarian Grand Prix post-race conference. That last word was perhaps in reference to how the 2015 and 2016 seasons had gone for him and Ferrari. Having moved on from Red Bull at the end of 2014, Vettel had settled at the Scuderia quickly with two wins the following season. Last year was when their combination was really expected to challenge Mercedes’ supremacy, but Vettel-Ferrari didn’t win a single race. 

Year 2017 brought about rule changes, particularly with broader tyres and more downforce, both helping F1 move back to aerodynamically superior cars as compared to an engine-dominated formula since 2014. This changeover has helped in the turnaround in Ferrari’s fortunes, which threw everything it had at developing the car for this season. In fact, owing to this unpredictability in rules, Vettel shot to an early championship lead, winning three races in the first half of the 20-race season. 

Now, here is an important point in context of the championship. Vettel has never lost an F1 championship that he has led at any point in the season. It was a unique characteristic of his four consecutive titles from 2010 onwards. “Sebastian is a very focussed individual so he handles pressure extremely well. Particularly when you got to the business end of a championship, he was remarkably strong in his head and in his approach,” said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, about his former driver, in the build-up to the Belgian Grand Prix. 

That race marked the end of summer break for F1, and kick-started the second half of the 2017 season that will see nine races in 12 weeks. At the time of writing, the Belgian and the Italian Grand Prix had already transpired, with the Singapore Grand Prix keenly on the horizon. Hamilton — and Mercedes — responded in style, winning both at Spa-Francorchamps and then at Monza, Ferrari’s home circuit as the British driver reversed the standings and shot into a three-point lead. 

It was the first instance this season of a driver winning consecutive races, and this alone underlines how competitive 2017 has been thus far. And there is no reason to wonder if anything will be different in the next three months, for Mercedes and Ferrari will be going hammer and tongs at developing their cars in quest of landing the drivers’ and constructors’ titles. And the gauntlet has already been thrown down. 

Hamilton and Vettel battling it out on the Barcelona-Catalunya racetrack. Photo: Reuters

“For me, Ferrari has somehow made a step back,” said Mercedes’ team principal Toto Wolff after the Italian Grand Prix, wherein Vettel and teammate Kimi Raikkonen finished third and fifth, respectively. “We have been very solid (after the summer break), but they have not performed (in Belgium and Italy) in the way everybody had expected.”

Hamilton’s twin wins in the last two races also put him at the top of standings for the first time this year, and he has never lost a drivers’ championship when he has gained the lead after summer break. It adds a stunning twist when considering Vettel’s aforementioned factoid. As such, it puts the spotlight on what has been a rivalry simmering for quite some time. 

And it is what the fans world over want to see. Since the 1970s, every F1 era has been highlighted by some or the other rivalry playing out fiercely on track — James Hunt versus Niki Lauda reached a crescendo in 1976, Nigel Mansell versus Nelson Piquet in the mid-’80s, Alain Prost versus Ayrton Senna in the late ’80s lending into the next decade, and Michael Schumacher versus Mika Hakkinen in the mid-to-late ’90s before the German started dominating everyone in sight at the turn of the millennium. 

Since then, there has been a sort of lull even if the likes of Fernando Alonso (2005-06) and Kimi Raikkonen (2007) won close-fought championships. Even Hamilton’s first title-win in 2008 went down to the wire, but thereafter, starting from 2009 when Jenson Button dominated for the erstwhile Brawn Grand Prix team, through Vettel’s dominant run for Red Bull, and now Mercedes’ ascension via Hamilton and Nico Rosberg (2016), Formula One has been crying out for competitiveness at the head of the grid. 

After a long time then, Hamilton and Vettel are putting on a show this year. Their rivalry is already fiery enough as they have clashed on-track at the incident-marred Azerbaijan Grand Prix in June. Mind you, it hasn’t spoiled their mutually respectable relationship though, like Vettel’s with Mark Webber and Hamilton’s with Nico Rosberg, their respective former teammates at Red Bull and Mercedes. Because the duo know that it is not just another one-off closely fought season, for both racers have a greater drive within them, not often seen on track, not in every racer. 

The German is already a four-time champion, and his move to Ferrari three years ago was the onset of a new challenge. He has just renewed his contract for another three years, and made it apparent that he is fully invested in this project to bring glory back to the Scuderia, à la compatriot Schumacher in the early 2000s. Talking of whom, the British driver equalled Schumacher’s record of 68 poles in Belgium and then went past the mark a week later in Italy, re-affirming his status as one of the all-time racing greats.

This 2017 title-fight between Vettel and Hamilton is finally giving F1 what it has missed out for over two decades.