Monday 3 November 2014

Hamilton beats Rosberg for win in USA


Lewis Hamilton won an action packed thriller in front of 100,000 people attending the third American Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. A wonderful scrap for the lead and battles all the way down the field made for a brilliant spectacle.

Hamilton had lost pole position to his Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg in qualifying, a glazed brake to blame although he did admit he didn’t think he could have beaten a superb lap from Nico. When the lights went out both Mercedes cars got a good start, and at first it looked like Rosberg had the race under control.

Hamilton got to within a second during the opening stint but by the first round of pit stops the gap had opened to over two seconds. Once both were back on track, the change to medium compound tyres from the softs seemed to suit Hamilton a lot more. He let his tyres settle before hammering home his advantage and taking chunks out of Rosberg’s lead. He got to within a second and wasted no time in making a move.

On lap 24 of 56 the silver cars were close and down the back straight Hamilton closed up in the DRS zone, but he didn’t look quite close enough. As they approached the braking zone to turn 12, Hamilton pulled to the left in what can only be described as a lunge. It was from quite a distance back, but for a lunge it was perfectly controlled.  There was no lock up, but he seemed to catch Rosberg by surprise, the Mercedes just millimetres apart. Rosberg had to give way, he was given no choice.

Lewis immediately pulled a gap but Rosberg wasn’t letting this go without a fight and despite falling back a bit he settled into a rhythm and didn’t let Hamilton get more than a few seconds in front. But there was never an opportunity for Rosberg to have a go despite him keeping Lewis in sight. Hamilton, as he has been almost since the summer break ended was in control and won his fifth straight race, his tenth in total this season, also becoming the most successful British driver ever with his 32nd win.

He is now 24 points ahead of Rosberg with just two races left. That would normally mean he would have an opportunity to wrap up the title in Brazil next weekend but sadly Formula 1 likes to fix problems that don’t exist rather than ones which patently do and have installed a double points round in Abu Dhabi. It now means the title is assured of going to the last race, but if Nico were to win it because of double points then it would be a travesty.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that because with Hamilton holding a ten wins to four advantage over Rosberg I’m not sure how anyone would be able to claim that justice was served. However if Rosberg wins without the help of double points then whatever the win count it’ll show that consistency can pay out too. Both will be deserving champions even if one on paper at least looks far more deserving.

Of course there is the situation right now where Rosberg, despite saying he’s still in the fight, knows the reality is he has been soundly beaten at every race since his last win all the way back in July at the German Grand Prix. Despite his surprising qualifying advantage over Lewis, Rosberg has not kept it in the races and has been almost too easily dismissed in the wheel to wheel battles. If this were a normal season without double points, it would be quite right that Lewis would have potentially clinched the title one race from home. There’s going to be such huge tension that the right result plays out in this contest when we get to Abu Dhabi.

Behind the Mercedes battle for the win there was a brief safety car period after Sergio Perez torpedoed his Force India into the back of Kimi Raikkonen and then in to Adrian Sutil’s Sauber. Amazingly Kimi survived to race on, although could only finish 13th while Perez and Sutil were both out. Sutil was particularly disappointed after making a good start from his first top ten grid slot of the year. Perez has been given a seven place grid penalty.

Daniel Ricciardo got another podium for Red Bull and sported some interesting facial hair. He held off the Williams’ of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas. Ricciardo got a terrible start but made some great moves to haul himself back up particularly after the safety car on Fernando Alonso who he hung out to dry in turn two. He undercut both Williams during the pit stops and despite Massa getting close towards the end had a relatively untroubled drive to third.

Massa and Bottas stayed out of trouble but one of them should have been on the podium but they increased their advantage over Ferrari in the constructors championship with fourth and fifth. Alonso brought home his Ferrari sixth despite suffering huge vibrations in the closing stages, crossing the line just half a second ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

Vettel had a great last part of the race after looking like he had no pace at all in the opening laps. Starting from the pit lane due to taking a sixth power unit, one more than is permitted for the season, he could barely get ahead of anyone, but through strategy he was up into seventh when he made a final pit stop with just eight laps to go.

He dropped to 13th but charged and passed people with ease on his fresher tyres. It was a great last few laps, helped by Jenson Button fading with dying rubber and other set up issues that meant he held up a lot of cars while he was lying in eighth.

But as Vettel rose up, Button dropped down to an eventual 12th. His McLaren 
team mate Kevin Magnussen finished eighth while Jean-Eric Vergne came home ninth after a few brilliantly banzai moves. One was pretty close to the edge as he dived on Romain Grosjean into turn one using him as a bit of an extra brake. The stewards are looking into that but I think he should keep his result. It sent Grosjean down the field and out of the points after a nicely competitive race from the Lotus team.

It was nice to see Pastor Maldonado finally score a point this year despite trying to make it as hard as ever by incurring two five second penalties. Luckily for him Hamilton had lapped everyone up to 10th, so Maldonado’s extra five seconds dropped him below no one. Edit: Vergne got given a five second penalty for his move on Grosjean so he drops to 10th meaning Maldonado has not one but two whole points to call his own.

Of course we were running with only 18 cars, Marussia and Caterham both in administration there was no real missing of them in race terms as there was so much going on but small teams are an essential part of the sport where many future stars gained experience before emerging as stars. Bernie Ecclestone realises that the way money is divided between the teams is unfair but said he doesn’t know how to fix it. Perhaps it should be him who gives up some of his money to help out, after all it was he who made the unfair deals in the first place.

Marussia say they are hopeful they’ll be back in Abu Dhabi as they seek extra finance, as for Caterham it doesn’t look good.  

Brazil is just one week away, it cannot come soon enough in this great duel to be crowned champion of the world. #ForzaJules

all photos taken from autosport.com

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