London: “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake,” says Richard E Grant’s Withnail in that wonderful black comedy Withnail and I, and one senses that Ross Brawn, the Mercedes team principal, feels rather the same way.
While the summer sabbatical feels like a lifesaver for many in the hectically scheduled, vroom-and-bust world of Formula One, its timing was less than ideal for a Mercedes team that appeared to be gathering a menacing momentum in the weeks leading up to the break.
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are the strongest drivers’ pairing in the paddock. And now that they have the quickest car too, at least over one lap, they look the most likely to threaten Red Bull’s hegemony in the second half of the season.
With three wins and four pole positions in the past five races, the Mercedes WO4 is second to Red Bull in the constructors’ championship. And if Hamilton can reproduce the intensity of his weekend at the Hungaroring at the end of July at the very different Spa circuit next Sunday, when F1 racing returns, he will emerge as the most credible challenger for Sebastian Vettel’s individual crown.
In fourth place, 48 points behind Vettel with nine races to go, he may look like an outsider but, at his best and when given the right equipment, Hamilton is too much of a handful for anyone, including the current world champion.
His difficulty will be in matching Vettel’s staggering level of consistency, but the next three tracks glitter with promise for him. The fast Spa-Francorchamps circuit, with some of the best corner sections in the sport, is a drivers’ track, and no one drives quite like Hamilton, who won here in 2010.
Two weeks later comes Monza, the quickest of them all, and Hamilton won here, heroically, last year. That is followed by Singapore, where again Hamilton was in dominant form last season before his McLaren betrayed him.
“I’m really looking forward to the second half; that is usually my favourite part,” he says. “I can honestly say I feel just so invigorated, it’s so refreshing to be somewhere new. I hope there’s a world championship somewhere ahead. That’s what I’m working for every year, that’s why I keep that discipline, that’s why I train so much over the winter, that’s why I wake up every day and train.
“That’s why I put so much effort into travelling and that’s why you sacrifice so many small things, certain things in your life, and so I hope at some stage I get that second world championship.”
Brawn, too, is optimistic about the races ahead. “We’ll have a much more respectable second half,” he says. “We’ve scored more points already than we did last year, and we’re just over halfway through. We’ve got a strong enough organisation to ensure we won’t let it slip. We’re on a journey here with Lewis and we don’t know where the limits are.”
Everyone, including Mercedes, will be taking a long hard look at the tyres at Spa. The new Pirelli tyre, a combination of the 2012 construction and the 2013 compound, uses Kevlar composite instead of steel in its construction. It added up to some cool running in Hungary. But the Hungaroring circuit is not dissimilar to Monaco in some respects. It is certainly not a representative track.
The next few weeks will shape not only the two world championships but also the driver line-ups for next year, with Mark Webber’s approaching retirement opening up a number of possibilities. The Red Bull seat is still likely to go to Daniel Ricciardo or Raikkonen, despite links with Fernando Alonso. But Alonso’s teammate, Felipe Massa, is under familiar pressure.
There will be no changes at Mercedes or McLaren, though Sergio Prez’s recent description of his McLaren car as “complicated, difficult and inconsistent” is not exactly what the team wanted to hear on their 50th anniversary.
