Hamilton cruises to victory in Japan putting Championship within reach; Bottas a hard fought P2 over Verstappen’s incident-filled P3 run; error-prone Vettel sinks to P6

It was a tale of two championships going in dramatically different directions at the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday. For points leader and Mercedes ace Lewis Hamilton the weekend culminated in a flawless run from the 80th pole of his career, pure domination for the entire race and a relatively easy victory at the tricky figure-8 Suzuka circuit. It was Hamilton’s fourth win on the trot, sixth out of the last seven contests and his remarkable fifth career win in Japan.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com

For his nearest pursuer, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, the team’s recent missteps, highlighted by Saturday’s inexplicable decision to go out on wet tires in the decisive qualifying session on a drying track, seemed to result in the German 4-time World Champion trying far too hard far too early instead of biding his time to maximize his result and his points. Vettel was in the unenviable position of starting in P9 on the grid after his team’s tire miscalculation and drove well and with the proper amount of aggression at the start of the race to pass a passel of slower cars in quick order. By Lap 3 he was already up to P4, having gotten by his teammate Kimi Raikkonen. That put him directly behind the third place Red Bull of Max Verstappen when a Safety Car came out caused by Haas’s Kevin Magnussen’s prolonged puncture spewing copious debris all over on the track. In his typically aggressive fashion, Verstappen had already had a scrap with Raikkonen, going off the track and rejoining in an unsafe manner while trying to hold off the Finn’s Ferrari. And during the Safety Car period Verstappen was handed a 5-second time penalty by the stewards for that infraction.

But whether Vettel did not get that information from his team or chose to ignore it the Ferrari man decided to battle Verstappen for the position on track in a seemingly desperate attempt to get closer to the two front running Mercedes rather than be patient, stay close to the Dutchman and let the eventual penalty take care of the overtake for him. Sure enough, on Lap 8 Vettel forced the issue against a recalcitrant Verstappen, diving down the inside at Spoon in a move that seemed destined to fail. Fail it did and the two collided side-to-side. While Verstappen was able to continue on relatively unscathed, Vettel spun off into the runoff and had to watch as the entire field roared past him. He rejoined in P19 and had effectively ruined his race. While his machine was only slightly damaged and he would again muster his superior passing skills against the back markers en route to a P6 finish there was no doubt that through his impatience Vettel had thrown away a significant chunk of points and a possible podium finish. Vettel now trails Hamilton by a whopping 67 points with just 4 GP remaining. While Hamilton cannot quite take his foot off the gas yet, and certainly won’t until he’s wrapped up another title, it seems all but certain that the Mercedes man will be the one hoisting his impressive fifth Drivers’ Championship and not Ferrari’s flawed ace.

It was even sweeter for Mercedes when their number two man, Valtteri Bottas, was able to hold off the hard charging Verstappen in the closing laps to finish P2 despite the Finn’s older and slower Medium Pirelli’s vs. the Dutch wunderkind’s faster, fresher Softs. Verstappen did secure the last step on the podium after his incident-filled run and his teammate Daniel Ricciardo made it all the way up to P4 after starting way back in P15, making it a very good day for team Red Bull and for the Aussie after a string of recent DNFs. Raikkonen finished ahead of his stablemate Vettel in P5 but it was nothing like the day Ferrari had in mind. The great team from Maranello saw their German arch-rivals Mercedes pull out their lead in the all important Constructors’ Championship to an essentially insurmountable 78 points.

Rounding out the Top 10 in Japan, Force India had a very good team effort that saw Sergio Perez finish P7 and Esteban Ocon on P9. Romain Grosjean carried the torch for Haas after Magnussen had to retire and finished a decent P8. Renault’s Carlos Sainz took the last points-paying position with a hard-earned P10.

Top 10 finishers for the Japanese GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in two weeks time, the United States Grand Prix from the very cool COTA track in hip happening Austin, Texas. Hope to see you then to find out if Hamilton wrap it all up there or if Vettel can fight to live another day!