F1 in 2016: A big year for… Lewis Hamilton v Sebastian Vettel
Despite winning all of the last six championships, Hamilton and Vettel have never gone head-to-head for a title. Until, surely, 2016...
Tuesday 15 March 2016 08:34, UK
Could 2016 be the year of the champion of champions?
Fernando Alonso has the status, in many eyes, as the sport's number one driver but it is Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton who have had the recent monopoly on the more valuable commodity of titles.
Between them, Vettel and Hamilton have won seven of the last eight Drivers' Championships and all six since 2009. In that context, it's a remarkable statistical quirk that 2016 is set to feature the first bona fide head-to-head battle for the championship between F1's lead double act.
Although both Vettel and Hamilton entered the final race of 2010 as championship contenders, the then-McLaren driver's participation was more theoretical than realistic. Nevertheless, that is as close as Vettel and Hamilton have come to stepping on each other's title-chasing patch. Not once has one been runner-up to the other. Last season Vettel was third to Hamilton's first but was outscored by in excess of 100 points. These are two stars who, through various vicissitudes of alignment, are yet to encroach on each other's orbit.
Their F1 careers, both of which began in 2007, have ran in parallel over the last decade; in 2016, long-awaited collision finally looks inevitable.
The best of sceptical enemies
The backdrop to this looming rivalry is the curious relationship between Hamilton and Vettel. While the pair are not friends, they were overtly friendly to each other throughout 2015, culminating in Vettel defending Hamilton after his Italian GP victory was investigated. But Hamilton and Vettel have not always been so friendly.
At the height of the German's dominant era, Hamilton was outspokenly sceptical of his rival's right to be the sport's new number one. "Sebastian misses four apexes on a single lap and still goes quickest," Hamilton quibbled in 2011 as Vettel closed in on his second title.
Two years later, Hamilton again felt moved to question the worth of Vettel's victories in a Red Bull car considered to be a class apart. "I tried to imagine what it would be like if I was winning races the way he is winning races. Me, I don't want to be able to be that far ahead, I want to be able to fight with him or whoever," said Hamilton.
That opinion has presumably been revised in the wake of Mercedes' even more dominant form through 2014 and 2015 when the team won 32 of the 38 races.
But does Hamilton sufficiently respect Vettel's talents to regard him as part of F1's absolute elite?
"For Fernando's sake, I hope he is back battling at the front where he belongs as soon as possible," said Hamilton four months ago. "I've said many times that I regard him as my fastest and most talented rival - I think he is one of the best drivers F1 has ever seen."
But not, it must be assumed from the telling admission, Vettel.
Winner takes all
So who will prosper if and when Vettel and Hamilton finally go head-to-head on the track? Such is the way of F1 that the winner will almost certainly be the driver armed with the superior machinery.
It's arguable that not since 1986, when McLaren's Alain Prost won an unlikely title, has the Drivers' Championship been won by a driver benefiting from the best car in the field. Yet the word in the paddock after winter testing is that the competitiveness of both the Mercedes and Ferrari cars should be, if not near parity, sufficiently robust to give both Hamilton and Vettel a fair crack at the championship whip.
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If so, Nico Rosberg will surely come into the mix as well, even if Vettel's increasingly-subservient Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen does not. Rosberg is a doughty and largely under-estimated competitor who has proven his worth over the last two years. He finished 2015 with three successive victories, suggesting that he could yet prosper over his Mercedes team-mate. Few, however, believe Hamilton won't be back in front when battle is resumed in earnest this year. And it's the prospect of the world champion finally having Vettel for title-contending company which is the firmest foundation for hopes that 2016 will be a vintage year for F1.
"I saw a photo the other day where Nigel and Ayrton were wheel to wheel down the straight with sparks coming out," said Hamilton. "I picture that, I can't wait for that to be me and Sebastian."
"It would be fun," concurred Vettel. "And the fans would love it too."
They certainly would. Hamilton v Vettel, Mercedes v Ferrari, Englishman v German.
It's the fight the F1 world is waiting for.
