Psychological warfare: Hamilton and his third consecutive win in China

           

Hamilton serenely cruised to victory in total solitude.
Source: motorsport.com

Lewis Hamilton was in a class of his own as he strolled to victory in Shanghai, taking a third consecutive win for the first time in his Formula 1 career. The Mercedes driver was untouchable throughout the afternoon, building on a lightning getaway to establish a cavernous lead and saunter to his 25^th grand prix win. Team-mate and arch-rival Nico Rosberg recovered from a poor start to bring up the rear eighteen seconds adrift, whilst Ferrari wonder-boy Fernando Alonso managed to capitalise on his F14 T’s surprising pace to take a sensational third place finish.

            Hamilton’s afternoon looked effortless as he maintained the lead from start to finish, setting the second fastest lap of the race whilst simultaneously enjoying less tyre wear and better fuel consumption than anyone in the top five. Rosberg, on the other hand, endured a relatively torrid race and had to drive his heart out to catch his team-mate. The German had his work cut out from the start, as a loss of telemetry ruined his start procedure and saw him slide from fourth to sixth on the first lap. He despatched the Williams of Felipe Massa on lap 4 to take fifth, whilst an early pit-stop on lap 14 enabled him to undercut Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo for fourth place. Rosberg’s fresh tyres facilitated a clean pass on Ricciardo’s team-mate Sebastian Vettel on lap 22, which left the door open to hunt down second-placed Alonso, who had leapfrogged the quadruple world champion in the first pit stops. The Spaniard saw off Rosberg’s challenge by undercutting him at the final pit-stops to come back out in second. Nevertheless, the German proceeded to obliterate the five second gap to Alonso in as many laps, passing the latter on lap 42 to consolidate his position.

            Alonso finished third after staving off the threat from Ricciardo, who had secured fourth after he surged past Vettel on lap 23. Despite being on the same tyre strategy, Ricciardo had managed to close the nine-second gap to Vettel by the time Rosberg passed the latter on lap 22. Red Bull ordered Vettel to let the young Aussie past, but Vettel obstinately refused. Ricciardo brushed him aside in turn 1 all the same on lap 26, leaving him for dead and finishing twenty seconds ahead. Vettel managed to defend against Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg for the rest of the race, who had remained a looming threat since the team orders furore on lap 23. Williams’ Valterri Bottas took seventh close behind, with the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, Hulkenberg’s team-mate Sergio Perez, and Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat rounding off the final points positions.

            In terms of sheer drama, the Chinese GP failed to deliver on the same level as that brilliantly berserk race in Bahrain two weeks ago. Tyres were degrading with all too much ease, covering the track in a sea of rubber marbles and preventing a number of good overtaking opportunities up and down the field. To be sure, the fiery, gladiatorial intra-team battles the Formula 1 community relished in the Sakhir desert were snuffed out in the smog of Shanghai. This ostensibly underwhelming grand prix nevertheless strengthened the intra-team battle lines that materialised so spectacularly last time out; this wasn’t the case in the theatre of wheel-to-wheel racing, but it certainly was in the psychological battleground.

Where is Vettel heading this season?
Source: motorsport.com

            Nowhere was this more apparent than at Red Bull, where Ricciardo continued to rattle the cage of his illustrious team-mate. No one was sure how Ricciardo would deal with the branding of ‘Vettel’s team-mate’ when he graduated to Red Bull – especially in the wake of Mark Webber’s protracted relegation – but the figures thus far speak for themselves: Ricciardo has outqualified Vettel in three out of four races, whilst the Aussie ultimately held the upper hand in all the races bar Malaysia. As acknowledged by the quadruple world champion, Ricciardo has beaten him ‘fair and square’, in equal machinery with equal chances. That is emphatic in itself, but he undoubtedly dealt the biggest blow in Shanghai, where he was lapping 1-2 seconds quicker than Vettel in his first stint and 5 tenths to a second in his final two stints. What is crucial here is that they were both on identical strategies, which suggests that Ricciardo was ultimately the quicker man. He managed to enjoy a similar advantage on his second stint in Bahrain, but that was even more impressive, as he was on the slower medium tyre whilst Vettel was on a brand new set of softs.

            Unfortunately for him, Vettel cannot blame the car for failing to deliver; as he said himself, Ricciardo has identical machinery. The problem appears to lie in his driving style, which focuses on using a sliding rear end to facilitate faster direction change into slow corners. This style was perfect for the exhaust-blown diffusers that Red Bull mastered from late 2010 until last year, and explains how he was able to trounce Mark Webber, who used a relatively unfavourable style. Vettel’s style is not suited to his car this year, which lacks these diffusers and thus favours a smoother approach. Luckily for him, Ricciardo has nurtured this kind of style throughout his career, and has therefore slipped comfortably into the shoes so many thought he couldn’t fill. There is no doubt that Vettel is mightily quick – no one wins four world titles on the trot without an element of speed –, but his inability to adapt to a new set of rules and a team-mate capable of challenging him is holding him back – making him increasingly frustrated. He is his own worst enemy, and he cannot expect to challenge his team-mate until he changes his approach to the task in hand.

Nico Rosberg is increasingly struggling to compete with his impressive team-mate.
Source: motorsport.com

A similar situation is developing in the Mercedes camp. Yet another dominant victory by Hamilton cannot have failed to make an impression on Rosberg, and goes some way to suggesting that he cannot hold a candle to his faster team-mate. Admittedly, Rosberg was out of position by starting fourth, which could be explained by an incorrect dashboard read-out in qualifying causing him to push too hard and spin on his final flying lap. However, the brutal reality is that he has been outqualified three times this season, and has been annihilated in three out of four occasions on race day. What’s worse for him is that these defeats appear to be amid increasingly difficult circumstances. Indeed, in Bahrain he was quicker than Hamilton, but superlative driving skill saw the latter come out on top; in Malaysia, Hamilton was steaming out in front, and Rosberg couldn’t keep up; and in China, Hamilton stormed ahead in similar fashion, but Rosberg was out of position and unable to take the fight to him once he secured second. As far as Rosberg sees it, he is fighting a losing war, as his situation appears to be getting worse whilst Hamilton is running away with it unopposed. Of course, Rosberg still leads the championship, but that lead is being whittled away chunk by chunk by the imperious Hamilton, and evidence to suggest that he can do anything to refute him is becoming scantier race by race.

In an astonishingly good car and with the intellect to match, Rosberg will be fully aware that this year is likely to be his best chance at seizing the title. In an era defined by calculative thinking and smooth driving, he must think he stands a good chance, and rightly so. All the factors should be in his favour, but they aren’t – his circumstances appear to be getting worse. Conversely, Hamilton has never been stronger both physically and mentally, and is gaining the most out of every opportunity that comes his way. With the same car and the same opportunities at his disposal, such a dichotomy has clearly hit Rosberg hard and, like Vettel, is affecting his performance every race. He made his frustration clear on the podium in Bahrain, telling himself if not the world that he ‘strongly disliked coming second to Lewis’ and that he would ‘be back in China for the win’. The very fact that he didn’t will only help Hamilton further assert his mastery over him, in many more ways than one.