When Sebastian Vettel extended his contract with Ferrari during the Belgian GP in August, he led the championship by 14 points. Even though he didn’t win at Spa, the fact that he shadowed Lewis Hamilton to a close second on a track that was widely expected to suit Mercedes suggested the title fight could go till the very end.
Instead, because of a mistake and two costly reliability issues, he is 59 points behind the Brit, who can, mathematically, seal the championship this weekend in Austin.
Ferrari started the year with a winning car, something that has not happened too often over the last decade, as it hoped to end a nine-year title drought.
More importantly, though Mercedes posted wins regularly, Ferrari was uniformly quick across different tracks unlike the former, allowing Vettel to stay in the lead. Over the last decade, Ferrari has been unable to keep up with the developmental race through a season, and, in this light, the Spa performance held out hope.
But after what happened in the last two races, questions will be asked about whether the team has sacrificed reliability chasing performance, with Ferrari boss Sergio Marchionne furious at the lack of quality control.
At Sepang, Vettel had an issue in qualifying but recovered well from last to finish fourth on a day when Hamilton did not win. Kimi Raikkonen’s car, though, failed to start. In Suzuka, Vettel qualified second but had an issue with a spark plug before the start that forced him into retirement.
Marchionne was quoted as saying, “It was a technical nonsense that had an impact on a car that costs millions of Euros. It’s a problem we’ve probably ignored because it was never of much importance. But now we’ve had at least three occasions where we’ve seen [its] devastating impact.”
Ironically, the cost of the spark plug that has made such a huge dent in Vettel’s title challenge is €59.
While reliability played its part, Vettel will also rue his first-corner mistake in Singapore where he took multiple cars, including his teammate’s and his, out of the race, allowing Hamilton a win on a circuit Mercedes struggled the whole weekend.
With only four races left, if Hamilton wins the US GP and Vettel finishes below fifth, the Brit will seal his fourth world title at the same place he secured his last one in 2015.
RACE NOTES
The Circuit of Americas was the first purpose-built facility for F1 in the USA, inspired by some of the classic European tracks
Run anti-clockwise, the circuit's opening sequence features fast corners similar to those found in Silverstone and two long straights that allow for overtaking
It is a medium-downforce circuit with slightly higher lateral loads but degradation tends to be low
Pirelli has nominated its softest compounds: soft, supersoft and ultrasoft
The weather can be tricky and the forecast is for some rain during the weekend. A wet session could make things interesting
