Lewis Hamilton Tag

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Sebastian Vettel is in a class of his own in 2017. The Ferrari driver just picked up his third win and sixth podium of the season in spectacular fashion by overhauling team mate Kimi Raikkonen with a strategy that recalls memories of his friend and mentor Michael Schumacher. He is calm, he is confident, he is excited, and it shows. He is relishing the budding rivalry with Lewis Hamilton and the challenge of beating Mercedes, but he is already a step ahead of them. In anotherRead More

Kimi Räikkönen took his first pole position in nine years with super final lap in Monaco that saw him finish just four hundredths of a second ahead of championship leader Sebastian Vettel as Ferrari locked out the front row. Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas was third but team-mate Lewis Hamilton was eliminated in Q2 in 14th place. Ferrari were quickest out of the blocks in Q1 with Raikkonen on track first, the Finn quickly followed by team-mate Vettel. It was the German who set the early pace and though he was brieflyRead More

Lewis Hamilton set the quickest time of opening practice in Monaco, beating Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel by almost two tenths of a second. The Mercedes driver also eclipsed last year’s pole position time by a similar margin and beat his own lap record in the principality by 4.5s. Hamilton recorded a time of 1:13.425 on Pirelli’s ultrasoft tyres to finish 0.196 seconds clear of Vettel, with Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen third, 0.15s adrift of the Drivers’ Championship-leading German. The opening 90-minute session saw a number of drivers quickly try outRead More

Mercedes Lewis Hamilton took his second career Spanish Grand Prix victory after winning a thrilling, tight strategic battle with Sebastian Vettel after the Ferrari driver led for the first half of the race. Third place went to Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo, the Australian inheriting the podium spot after an engine failure ruled Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas out midway through the grand prix. When the lights went out, it was Vettel who made the best start. The German powered away from P2 on the grid and grabbed the lead as heRead More

Lewis Hamilton edged Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel by just five hundredths of a second to claim the 64th pole position of his career at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas will start tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix third ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari. FP1 saw Hamilton go quickest with a lap of 1:20.511, two tenths of a second ahead of Raikkonen and Vettel. There was a scare for Vettel, however. After detecting a potential problem during FP3, Ferrari opted to change the German’s power unit aheadRead More

After a Friday dominated by Mercedes, Ferrari fought back in final practice with Kimi Räikkönen heading a one-two for the Scuderia ahead of team-mate Sebastian Vettel. After leading the way during the medium-tyre shod opening half of the session with a time of 1:22.409, Raikkonen bolted on soft tyres shortly after the halfway point in the one-hour final practice session and immediately lowered the benchmark by more than two seconds, logging a best time of 1:21.214 that stood until the end of the session. He was quickly joined at theRead More

Lewis Hamilton went quickest in Friday’s afternoon practice session in Barcelona with the Briton finishing just under a tenth of a second ahead of team-mate Valtteri Bottas to hand Mercedes its second one-two of the day. In the morning session, the Silver Arrows finished almost a second clear of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen but while Hamilton and Bottas again outpaced their main rivals in the afternoon the gap was much smaller, with Kimi Räikkönen again quickest for the Italian outfit, 0.310s behind Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel a further tenth of aRead More

Mercedes set the pace in the opening session of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, with the three-time champion finishing almost a second clear of third-placed Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari. Defending Constructors’ champions Mercedes have brought a heavily revised car to the first of the 2017 season’s traditional European races and at the end of the first session the gap to the team’s rivals at the end of the first session was significant, with Räikkönen finishing 0.935s adrift of second-placed Valtteri Bottas. Sebastian Vettel was fourth for Ferrari, just overRead More

Just two days after the Bahrain Grand Prix, Formula One teams were back in action at the Sakhir Circuit, with Lewis Hamilton topping the timesheet for Mercedes as F1’s first in-season test of 2017 got underway. The session start was briefly delayed while shopping containers were removed from near to the pit lane exit and Hamilton too suffered an early setback as his Mercedes ground to a halt soon after running began. His car was recovered to the garage and after an electrical fault was identified and rectified last Sunday’sRead More

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel took his second victory of the season in Bahrain as Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton recovered from a poor start and a penalty to finish in second place ahead of team-mate Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton exerted intense pressure in the final stages, chopping deep into a 13-second deficit to Vettel but the German kept a cool head to thread through traffic and take the flag with 6.6 seconds in hand. Had Hamilton not earlier been penalised for holding up Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo during a pit stop, the battle mightRead More