Morning After: Shot to the foot

Anyone know how to say “shot themselves in the foot” in Italian?

How else can you describe what has turned into a nightmare fortnight for Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari? Twice a golden opportunity to strike back at Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton has arisen, and twice they’ve screwed the pooch.

What else is there to take away from a Malaysian GP qualifying where Vettel had to watch on as Kimi Raikkonen came within 0.045s of Hamilton’s pole time? The German could almost certainly have done better, instead his turbo failure means he starts nineteen places down the road.

Realistically, whatever slim chance Vettel had of fighting for the title just went up in smoke. Yes, it’s still possible he makes something happen on Sunday, but it’s going to require multiple instances of divine intervention. Time to break out the rosary beads.

He may not have had much go his way so far in 2017, but Saturday represented a major victory for Max Verstappen.

In besting Daniel Ricciardo by a mere 0.054s, Verstappen sealed their 2017 qualifying head-to-head with his 11th victory of the season. Ricciardo has four wins with five races remaining.

No, it might not count for much this year given their deficit to Ferrari and Mercedes, but under the expectation that Red Bull will be competing for next year’s title, the importance of such a battle can’t be discounted.

Direct comparisons have been hard to make this year with Verstappen’s DNFs, but overall, Ricciardo’s outstanding Sundays have most putting the two neck-and-neck. Perhaps now that changes, but at the very least, it whets the appetite for what looks like the most intriguing teammate battle of 2018.

Vettel’s misfortune aside, Hamilton’s lap deserves a ton of credit. It’s easy to say “well, this is what Mercedes do on Saturdays”, but as Valtteri Bottas showed being P5 and 0.682s down on his teammate, their struggles this weekend were real – Hamilton’s just that good.

Daniel Ricciardo joked to Sky Sports his deficit to Verstappen was a “present” for the birthday boy, but that wasn’t the only gift he received. The Dutchman was very lucky not to receive a penalty for his incident in FP3, where he turned-in on Jolyon Palmer.

Well done to Stoffel Vandoorne on not just the P7, but finishing three spots and 0.122s ahead of Fernando Alonso. No better confidence boost than besting a double world champion.

On the other side, Pierre Gasly may not have been able to get ahead of Carlos Sainz, but a 0.156s gap is more than respectable in his first career qualifying.

The theoretical quickest pit-stop strategies predicted by Pirelli are as follows:

With higher degradation on supersoft (> 0.10 sec/lap, possibly caused by hotter track conditions)

Different permutations of compound usage within each strategy are possible.