HAMILTON HITS THE HIGHS… HIGHS

…IN FERRARI’S BACKYARD

Monza host Italian to played an Grand Prix for the ages – an unforgettable tussle between two great champions and their teams. It so nearly brought a fairytale for Kimi Raikkonen, but Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes were having none of it…

Qualifying

Not just cheers, but singing – football-style tribal chanting – greeted Raikkonen’s pole position in Monza and where else but the hallowed Autodromo could deliver such a moment of F1 theatre?

Many are those who have written off Raikkonen as “too old” or “not the driver he used to be” (not that he would heed any such insult), so how better to respond than by driving the fastest lap in Formula 1 history?

His 1m19.119s tour for his 18th career pole, at the head of Ferrari’s 60th front-row lock-out, was a highspeed honey that owed as much to the straight-line performance of the SF71H and a slipstream from Sebastian Vettel as it did to the Iceman’s cool, error-free precision.

Speed-trap figures gave a clue as to the performance advantage Ferrari enjoyed here: Kimi and Seb clocked 211mph sector-two top speeds, while Hamilton could manage ‘only’ 210mph en route to third-best time. Such are the tiny margins currently separating F1’s two best teams.

Phlegmatic as ever in calm acknowledgement of the tifosi’s adoring clamour, he quipped “it’s not as if it’s the first time” when quizzed about what emotions attached to setting pole position for The Reds on home turf.

“It’s obviously great for tomorrow,” he said, “but it’s only half a job done. There were a lot of games [about] who was going first and getting tows. But the car is working well even if conditions were a little bit tricky. All seems to be very smooth so far.”

More than a year has passed since Raikkonen’s last pole (Monaco 2017); more than five since his last win (Australia 2013) and if he’s not quite, these days, the electrifying firebrand of the early noughties, his native speed remains intact.

Somewhat predictably, Raikkonen success came at the cost of Vettel joy. Seb might have expected pole here, having been fastest in second and third practice, then in Q1 and Q2.

But running third in a four-car qually train, behind Hamilton, ahead of Kimi, he benefitted less from a ‘tow’ than did his team-mate. His final pole shot was more than two-tenths quicker than his first Q3 run, but that wasn’t enough to quell the Finn, who sliced more than three-and-a-half tenths off his previous best.

Snippy, if not in full pout mode, Vettel bemoaned the “untidiness” of his final lap and hinted at unhappiness at the lead-out running order, which advantaged Raikkonen (though Vettel himself would have benefitted from Hamilton clearing the air ahead).

“It’s great to have the cars 1-2,” he said, teeth barely clenched, “and it’s unbelievable to see the fans going crazy. It says passion on their banners and that’s exactly what they have. There’s a lot of joy, screaming and pushing us forward.”

When pressed, he conceded that Kimi “would be allowed to win”, given his starting position, but only the most blinkered could be immune to the looming prospect of team orders, should Raikkonen find himself leading a Ferrari 1-2 on Sunday.

A valiant Hamilton emerged third from this fabulously tight battle, waged on Pirelli supersofts. His first Q3 run, 1m19.390s, placed him on provisional pole, a tenth ahead of the Ferrari twins. But at the death there just wasn’t enough grunt behind his shoulders to secure P1.

“That was a fantastic session,” he said. “It was amazingly intense, which is as it should be. The car has been feeling really good and I’m putting it on the edge – pushing to limits I didn’t know we could go to. But most of the time was lost on the straight. I don’t think I could have gone any quicker.”

Ferrari’s lockout – its first at Monza since 2000 – underlined the discernible performance advantage the team has enjoyed since mid-season: Valtteri Bottas’s P4 was more than half a second from pole and represented a truer reflection of Mercedes’ deficit to Ferrari than did Hamilton’s stellar time.

Behind the top four was a veritable chasm to Max Verstappen, almost a second slower than Bottas on 1m20.615s. Renault’s motors still can’t hold a candle to Ferrari and Mercedes PUS – despite a ‘C-spec’ upgrade for Monza – and P5 represented a considerable achievement for Red Bull on what is traditionally one of the team’s weakest tracks. Despite running a ‘barely there’ rear wing, the RB14S couldn’t top 209mph and Max would surely be vulnerable to an attack from a Ferrari-powered Romain Grosjean (P6) and a Mercpushed Esteban Ocon (P8) come race day.

“Fifth was the best we could hope for,” noted Verstappen. “Let’s hope for an interesting race tomorrow.”

At the head of a scrabbling midfield he perhaps should have been careful what he wished for, as only 1.1s covered the cars to P12 (Sergey Sirotkin), so tense opening laps seemed a racing certainty.

Carlos Sainz (P7) would be in the thick of it, though team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was condemned to a back-of-the-grid start after changing prescribed engine components. A similar fate befell Dan Ricciardo, who would line up in P19.

Those mechanical travails opened a Q3 door for two of the young guns: Pierre Gasly and Lance Stroll. Gasly’s P9 brought a whoop of elation and confirmed that a Honda PU can no longer be considered the handicap it had seemed for Mclaren.

Meantime Stroll, who has endured a torrid year to date with Williams, managed to nail the team’s first Q3 of 2018. The performance brought some succour to technical chief Paddy Lowe, who has overseen Williams’s thus far desperate season: only four points on the board and a firm last in the constructors’ table. But this was far from a technical breakthrough for the troubled FW41. The car’s aerodynamic behaviour remains an unsolved conundrum: only here, at a circuit where instability is less penalised than on more conventionally demanding tracks, did the ’41 look respectable.

Race

For 45 of 53 laps this was the most mesmerising Italian Grand Prix. Crowd darling Raikkonen seemed to have enough speed in his fleet Ferrari SF71H to keep a pressing Hamilton at bay and had already survived a midrace ‘Hammertime’ period when Lewis went for a bold overcut.

Winless since 2013 and so often seemingly relegated to the ‘stooge’ role for Ferrari, in its quest for a Vettel drivers’ title, could this be his day at last, after his team-mate’s first-lap spin?

Alas, the fairy tale was not to be, and the fizz went from the final eight laps like bubbles from stale champange. This race had been so tense, so poised between Kimi and Lewis, that the final result – brilliant though it was for Hamilton and his own title ambitions (he now leads the drivers’ chase by 30 points, from Vettel) – could only be an anti-climax.

When the silver and red machines pulled into parc ferme, Raikkonen seemed lucky, indeed, even to have scraped home second, 8.7s behind Hamilton, so shot were his rear Pirellis.

And it was this factor, rather than any inherent Raikkonen or Ferrari performance shortfall, that would prove decisive.

Kimi took off from pole, rebuffing a Turn 1 challenge from Vettel, who’d started second, and proceeded to turn 21 laps on supersofts, before his first (and only) stop for softs – this being in accordance with Pirelli guidance for optimum race strategy.

That was the last we’d see of Vettel as a victory contender, for further round the lap, at the second chicane, he was jumped by Hamilton in the sweetest of outside passes, but one which resulted in light contact and a Seb spin. So began a long afternoon’s fightback for Vettel to an eventual P4 – an error having cost him a possible victory for at least the third time this season.

A four-lap safety car period followed, after which a fully-lit Hamilton fancied his chances against the other Ferrari. He slipstream-passed Kimi into T1… only for Raikkonen to return the favour into the second chicane.

Gosh, this was lively, though Kimi, having regained the lead, was able to progress to his lap-21 pitstop, for softs, without further drama.

Thing is, this strategy, while ‘optimal’ according to strategists’ data, now committed Kimi to 32 laps on softs. Had Raikkonen been blessed with a tail-gunner of his own; had Ferrari’s edge over Mercedes been more than the merest tenth per lap, the Iceman might, then, have been able to stroke it home to a famous win in front of the adoring Italian massive.

Unfortunately for him – cue mass tifosi heartbreak – he was engaged in a fight with a masterful and ruthless Hamilton and a Mercedes team able to use both its drivers to the benefit of its title leader.

As Kimi emerged for his second stint – soon turning ‘purple’ laps in the mid1m23s – Hamilton and Bottas stayed out and immediately Lewis was informed: “It’s Hammertime” by race engineer Pete Bonnington.

We knew what was afoot. Unleashed at the head of the field, Lewis would go for the ‘overcut’, benefitting from tyres that had worn less by virtue of being mounted on a silver car that had enjoyed a 20-lap tow from the red one ahead.

On these worn supersofts Hamilton was nonetheless a speed match for a fresh-booted Raikkonen and the longer he stayed out, the more life he’d have on his fresh rubber, when fitted. “Stay out, Lewis, you have the pace,” said Merc strategist Tony Ross.

Hamilton had intended to pit earlier, as per Pirelli’s ‘optimum’ (Kimishadowing) strategy, but when he found himself able to maintain a gap of around 0.8s to Raikkonen, without draining too much life from his rubber, running deeper to his stop became the obvious play. So stay out he did, until lap 28, emerging five or so seconds behind Raikkonen, who now began to make serious demands of his softs in an attempt to fend off Hamilton’s counter-strategy. “Kimi we need to push – it is the critical moment now,” intoned race engineer Carlo Santi. Just how hard he’d pushed would soon become apparent…

For it was here that Mercedes played its tactical masterstroke with Bottas, who’d started fourth, but never looked a victory contender. He nonetheless inherited the lead when Hamilton stopped and was perfectly placed to act as a spoiler to Raikkonen’s victory ambitions. “Keep Kimi behind you,” came the instruction from Ross and Bottas succeeded in slowing Kimi down, easing him gently back into Hamilton, just as Raikkonen would have hoped to be controlling the pace from the front.

Bottas ran until lap 37 on supersofts and later admitted Mercedes had explored this option for his strategy before the race. “Actually, this was part of our plan, yes,” he said. “We saw no point in all of us going for the optimal strategy and we saw an opportunity to try to go long. It did help Lewis to win but it didn’t sacrifice my race – there is such a big pit window here.”

Raikkonen had successfully been inserted as the red meat in a Mercedes sandwich and the squeeze the silver cars put on Raikkonen between laps 28 and 37 made for an unbearably tense spectacle. Kimi was enjoying a little tow from his compatriot, but he couldn’t risk trashing his tyres in attempt to pass for the lead, knowing (a) that Bottas would have to pit soon anyway and (b) that Valtteri would be robust in defence of any passing manoeuvre.

All this was to Hamilton’s immediate benefit for by lap 38, post-bottas’s stop, with Raikkonen leading once again, Hamilton was within DRS range of Kimi (now being told “try to keep your tyres alive,” by Santi).

Ferrari’s data was telling a tale already evident to the naked eye, by virtue of a dark black stripe on Kimi’s left rear: his Pirellis were blistering. Hamilton, from the best seat in the house, knew it too: “I could see Kimi starting to show signs of blistering, so I started to take care of my tyres, as I could see his were getting worse and worse and worse. He was under pressure to get past Valtteri.”

Hamilton’s position became stronger by the lap, but Kimi, always an arch tyre-whisperer, would eke this one out for as long as he could. Tense? Excruciating more like: rarely have the tifosi known such agony.

Hamilton’s coup-de-grace came on lap 45, with a deft round-the-outside pass into T1. The remaining laps were mere formalities as Hamilton charged to his 68th victory, with Raikkonen tip-toeing home behind.

“Kimi had a disadvantage,” a gracious Hamilton noted later, “because he was out front on his own. He was pulling me along in dirty air. So for me it was just about positioning in the corners.”

Bottas placed third after T1 fisticuffs with Verstappen for which the Dutchman was penalised five seconds – Vettel getting a leg up to P4.

This had been a mighty motor race – Formula 1 at its epic, stirring best – and it was won by the right man.

But also, for the Raikkonen romantics willing him to win, by the wrong one too.