Hamilton vs Vettel |
Lewis Hamilton won his 5th F1 title this year and is considered the best active driver in the grid. He holds several records, that even Michael Schumacher did not achieve, such as having won at least one GP in each season of his career!
Of course, Sebastian Vettel is also a really good driver, but he has a big disadvantage: he has never won a race while having started from the 4th place or lower! It seems that for the German to win, his weekend should be going well enough to qualify 1st, 2nd or 3rd, in order to claim victory. If it happens to start the race from a bad place, he can't fight back...
On the other side, Hamilton has finished 1st, although he started 4th, twice. One victory came after starting 5th and an other one after starting 6th. His best (and a bit lucky) performance, was at this year's German GP, where Hamilton started from just 14th place and managed to finish 1st. That race seemed to be going OK for Vettel, who had started from pole position, but a drizzle forced him to make a mistake and end up at the barriers.
The difference between these two guys' mentality is illustrated in the following table and chart, where the number of victories is accounted for each starting position. Well, Hamilton is not perfect either. He has won 47 races from pole position, which means he was wasted almost half of his 83 pole positions.
Grid | Hamilton | Vettel |
1 | 47 | 31 |
2 | 17 | 16 |
3 | 4 | 5 |
4 | 2 | |
5 | 1 | |
6 | 1 | |
14 | 1 |
At the age of 33, with 5 titles and 73 victories, Hamilton's dominance looks like will continue, depending on Mercedes, of course.
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