2017 Mid-Season Review – An emotive title tussle
A large contributory factor to why Formula 1 is so captivating is the emotion felt by the people involved. The paddock is the setting for a soap opera played out over 20 weekends per year, in which the drivers are the stars.
An intense championship tussle is a fantastic catalyst to enhance the emotions that add colour to the racing. The drivers involved in such a scenario are within touching distance of realising a dream and as a result, the stakes are remarkably high.
Despite already having won seven drivers’ titles between them, it is evident that the 2017 championship protagonists Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are facing that emotional challenge that has to be navigated in order to claim top honours.
It’s not as though fans have not been treated to an intense dice in recent years. Since the dawn of the V6 hybrid era, Mercedes has reigned supreme and carried a substantial car advantage into three consecutive seasons between 2014 and ‘16.
This spawned a bitter rivalry between drivers’ Hamilton and his team-mate Nico Rosberg. Over three years, in which they exclusively contested the world championship, fans were treated to moments of controversy, subsequent fall-outs and a narrative in which some key details still remain a mystery.
Despite this, 2017’s title battle has so far eclipsed the intrigue delivered by the Hamilton and Rosberg duel. In a departure from the formbook of the last three years, 2017’s tussle involves two teams in Mercedes and a resurgent Ferrari – two manufacturers with an enormous global following and a lot to lose should their respective driver come off second best.
The drivers involved are of undisputed quality. During his three-year stint as a title contender, Rosberg was constantly faced with having to prove his credentials. Even upon claiming his maiden crown last season, he still endured a barrage of skepticism from armchair pundits who cited Hamilton’s misfortune as the sole reason for Rosberg’s glory.
Be it misplaced skepticism or otherwise, the doubts surrounding Rosberg served to undermine the gravity of the battle we were witnessing.
In 2017, both Hamilton and Vettel have underlined their quality on more than one occasion. The race-craft displayed has been exceptional.
Vettel’s audacious moves on Kimi Raikkonen and Daniel Ricciardo in China were followed by a bold assault on the Force India duo in the latter stages of the Canadian GP and his uncompromising skirmish with Max Verstappen at Silverstone that brought the British GP crowd to their feet.
On home turf, Hamilton delivered one of the most complete performances of his career to date, seizing pole position by an extraordinary six tenths on Saturday, before winning at a canter on Sunday.
When the two found themselves wheel-to-wheel in the Spanish GP, the stakes were suitably high. With a race victory in the balance the duel was brutal, with Vettel guiding his title rival onto the tarmac runoff at the right-hander of Turn 1. Hamilton used a tyre advantage to good effect, later passing Vettel with the use of DRS and taking a well-deserved victory.
On that weekend, both brought their ‘A-Game’, as they have so often in 2017 thanks, in part, to their experience. They are both aware of the fact that each and every point earned could prove critical in November.
Regardless, experience does not make a driver immune to emotion and that has been poignantly evident at times this year. None more so, than in Azerbaijan.
The Baku bust-up where Vettel – aggravated by a belief that Hamilton had brake-checked him behind the safety car – rammed into the left-hand side of Hamilton’s Mercedes, was nothing short of remarkable.
The incident earned the German a 10 second stop-go penalty. Given that Hamilton himself made an unrelated and unscheduled visit to the pit-lane himself courtesy of a loose headrest, the moment of madness cost Vettel certain victory in Azerbaijan.
What the incident served to highlight is that emotions could define a title fight that is as close as the duel that we are being treated to this season. Vettel demonstrated how much a fifth world championship title means to him, but should he go on to lose the championship by a margin of less than 13 points – the swing that was caused by his penalty – then he would have essentially conceded the championship to Hamilton with one act of petulance.
It will be fascinating to see if Hamilton himself reveals his own emotional weaknesses in the second half of the campaign, as the Englishman has shown fragility when adversity arises in previous seasons.
His dramatic power unit failure in Malaysia last year affected the next race in Japan, where Hamilton angered the media with ‘Snapchat-gate,’ before fluffing his lines on Sunday with a poor start, essentially handing championship point to race winner Rosberg.
The emotion added to the drama here and is doing so again this season. As controversial as the Baku debacle proved to be, it stimulated debate on social media and brought F1 into the spotlight.
Bernie Ecclestone famously operated under the mantra that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and while the theory may be questionable in certain scenarios, an intriguing storyline of any kind that has championship implications is only ever a good thing. The Baku clash was one such incident and given the intensity of the title battle, it is quite possible that another flashpoint is imminent.
Be it Toto Wolff slamming the desk, Vettel shouting on the radio or Maurizio Arrivabene pacing in the garage, fans want to see a titanic title fight in which the protagonists are visibly at their limits. Suitably, Hamilton and Vettel are delivering a spectacle to behold in 2017.