As Valtteri Bottas climbed onto the top step of a Formula 1 podium for the first time following Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had witnessed the reason why Mercedes will triumph in its titanic duel with Ferrari.
Before the race, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen had taken just four points fewer than Bottas and Ferrari led the constructors’ championship by three points. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel had little to chose between them and although Hamilton lost ground in Sochi, he will undoubtedly claw those points back over the next few races.
In fact, Hamilton’s fight with Vettel could very well go down to the very last race and be decided by an extremely fine margin. Consequently, their team-mates will decide who collects the teams’ title at the end of the year.
In Sochi, we witnessed a dominating drive from Bottas on Sunday. Almost Rosberg-esque in the way he controlled the race when Hamilton was having one of his off weekends. He faced a tough challenge from Vettel after the pitstops but showed little sign of cracking under the pressure barring his lock-up into Turn 13.
While it’s fair to say along with Austria, Russia is one of Bottas’ favourite tracks it certainly wasn’t a fluke but a sign of things to come. A sign that Bottas can consistently challenge both Hamilton and Vettel for race wins.
Furthermore, like they could with Rosberg, Mercedes can rely on its Finnish driver to scoop up a victory when Hamilton is having one of his, twice in a season, poor races. However over at Ferrari, if Vettel is having a disaster of a race, Mercedes are almost guaranteed the top step of the podium with Raikkonen challenging only one of them at best.
Therefore, Ferrari is always going to be back on the back foot in the constructors’ championship, they engineer their races around pushing Vettel for the victory and Raikkonen is arguably just a tool to get the German to finish first.
Ironically when Raikkonen won his championship in 2007, Ferrari had an extremely different mentality of having two ‘number one’ drivers in the team and deciding on who would go for the drivers’ championship after Monza. It gave both drivers equal chance to pick up victories in the first half of the year before they put all efforts behind one driver for the final handful of races.
Instead, Ferrari is fully backing Vettel, it was before the season has even started and Raikkonen doesn’t have a hope in hell of making it a four-way fight for the title this season. Juxtaposing this method is Mercedes who are providing both its drivers with equal opportunity but after China, they have and will instruct team orders not to favour one driver but to further the interests of the team and make sure they win as many races as possible.
Many will correctly say Raikkonen is in the twilight of his career and is in no shape to challenge for the title, however, if Ferrari really wanted two drivers to fight for the title in 2017, it wouldn’t have re-signed the 37-year-old, it’s not like they were short of options.
Ultimately Ferrari seems to have its eyes firmly set on the drivers’ title, it’s what the Tifosi desperately desire and there is no doubting it’s a marketing dream going forward to have Vettel triumph over Hamilton even if Ferrari lose out to Mercedes.
Comments.
Loading comments…