Lewis Hamilton won sixth F1 world title at a canter... but Ferrari are catching up

Five races into this season, there was a real belief that Mercedes could eclipse McLaren’s 1988 campaign when Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost won all but one grand prix between them.

One-twos for Mercedes in Australia, Bahrain, China, Azerbaijan and Spain — Lewis Hamilton winning three races to team-mate Valtteri Bottas’s two — suggested a procession to a sixth world title looked inevitable.

In the end, Hamilton may have won the title at a canter — wrapped up yesterday in Austin with two races remaining — but the race weekends have been anything but processional.

In doing so, the Briton was quick to point out that he has a fight on his hands to achieve a record-equalling seventh title. Ferrari had a weekend to forget, car reliability costing Sebastian Vettel for the second time in four races, and they never really had the pace to aspire for a fourth race win in 2019.

But going into the winter break, there are reasons for optimism from the ‘Prancing Horse’. In signing Charles Leclerc, they have been rewarded for defying their usual conservatism over going for young drivers, while Vettel, previously written off, has finally got the Ferrari set up to his liking.

In Pictures | Lewis Hamilton

Formula 1 Testing in Bahrain - Day 1
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As a result, in the past three races he has finished, the German has beaten Leclerc and, with that, talk of him walking away at the season’s end and being a spent force have dissipated.

In addition, Red Bull are optimistic about their chances in 2020 and finally nullifying the lack of horsepower in their engines, which has thwarted their title challenge during the years of dominance by Mercedes.

In the first year of their Honda partnership, the Japanese power supplier has exceeded expectations to the extent that the team’s puppet master, Helmut Marko, said ahead of the United States Grand Prix: “We’ve learned from our mistakes and are optimistic about being able to fight for the championship.”

For the 2009 world champion Jenson Button, next season has the makings of being one of the best.

“It’s funny as after a few races this season people were saying how dull it was,” he told Standard Sport. “And then we’ve had some fantastic races.

In Pictures | F1 United States Grand Prix 2019

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“Much depends on the winter, but here are three teams [Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull] now capable of winning races and the championship.”

Hamilton, though, insists he would relish a tighter scrap. And Button believes the Hamilton of 2019 is his best incarnation yet, best indicated by the lack of drama in wrapping up the title.

As Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’s chief engineer and Button’s title-winning race engineer, put it: “It has not been his most spectacular season but, in many ways, it’s been his most impressive.

“Making mistakes, I can’t really think of any things he’s done wrong.”

Hamilton came home in second at the United States Grand Prix  Photo: Getty Images
Getty Images

There is an argument that the lack of sustained pressure on Hamilton at the top of the standings — unlike his last defeat in 2016 when former team-mate Nico Rosberg seemed to break into his psyche — has helped him limit the number of mistakes this campaign.

He will be 35 when next season begins and there is now a maturity in Hamilton, which was lacking at McLaren and early on with Mercedes, and the team’s hierarchy have done well to nurture this. Fittingly, Schumacher was 35 when he sealed his seventh drivers’ crown.

At the time, many people, including Hamilton, felt that total would never be bettered. Now, the Briton has a realistic shot at it.

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