In fact, it sometimes felt as if Hamilton had switched places with the
watching Rowan Atkinson, a guest of Mercedes for the weekend, for all the
hapless incidents that befell him on Sunday.
After a pre-race featuring intermittent showers, giving succour to those
hoping for a bit of unpredictability, the heavens dried up.
The 28-year-old got away well enough and was busy trying to make up ground
from 12th, having driven “like an idiot” in qualifying on Saturday, only to
get a slow puncture.
Hamilton’s race engineer tried to call him into the pits but it turned out his
radio was not working. Then they tried to grab his attention by using a pit
board, but he did not see it.
“I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Hamilton admitted afterwards. “I
missed my pit stop by quite a few laps.”
The British driver enlivened the latter stages of the race with a succession
of passes, but he was essentially battling for pride.
Way up ahead of him, Vettel was sailing serenely on. Having started from pole,
the German made one mistake, locking up on the approach to the very first
corner as he tried to fend off Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, and developing a flat
spot on his right-front tyre.
However, such is the triple champion’s composure, and such is the speed of his
Red Bull, he still managed to open up a six-second lead by the time he came
in for his only stop of the race after 23 laps. From then on, Vettel was
never in any trouble.
Alonso, who had started fifth, managed to recover to second, passing first
Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg, then Vettel’s Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber in a
brilliant move on the third lap, and finally his own team-mate Massa – the
Brazilian later admitting he had been ordered aside – but he could not close
the gap to Vettel who extended his lead over the Spaniard to 53 points.
It was simply left for the by-now traditional booing of a non-Ferrari race
winner – given extra spice this year by the fact that Vettel has been booed
at many tracks this year and it is starting to feel nastier and more
personal – and that was that.
Alonso admitted that he would now need Vettel to have a few non-finishes if he
was to have any chance of overhauling his young rival.
“I think for the championship, we need to be realistic,” he said. “It’s still
a very big gap and we don’t have enough races and probably do not have the
speed right now to win some consecutive races.
“We need to be lucky and we need to have some DNFs from Seb or something to
win the championship. With the races left and the points disadvantage it is
hard.”
In truth, it was not the most exciting race. Hamilton’s pet bulldog Roscoe was
so bored by the time his master returned to Mercedes’ motorhome that he lay
on the floor snoring while Hamilton tried to convince himself, and us, that
he could still perform a miracle.
“When I got out of the car I was angry and definitely thought that could be
it,” Hamilton said of his decision to go back on what he told the television
cameras.
“But I’ve been back with my engineers and I’m not going to give up. I’ve got
to win every race basically. It is the tallest order.”
How tall, he was asked. Hamilton smiled. “It will be like climbing Mount
Everest, without oxygen, running up it, in swimming trunks. That’s how
tough.” In other words?