Lewis Hamilton maintains his top spot on the leaderboard at the halfway point of the season

Amid slip-ups by Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton is in command of the F1 title battle at the half-way point of the season.

Twenty-four points! As this issue goes to print, that’s the difference between Mercedes AMG F1’s Lewis Hamilton who sits atop the Formula 1 drivers’ championship points standings and former four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari. With 25 points counting for a win and nine rounds remaining in the 21-round calendar that will conclude in Abu Dhabi, all eyes are trained on the mighty Spa-Francorchamps circuit where an F1 car’s speed, braking and handling performance are really put on place. 

Germany and Hungary’s Hockenheimring and Hungaroring, respectively, tend to ‘muzzle’ an F1 car in comparison, but both races threw up their fair share of drama and twists in the title battle between Mercedes and Ferrari. 

In front of his home crowd, and despite starting from pole, Vettel seemed to have his Singapore 2017 moment – translation: an ill-timed mistake with possibly huge repercussions – when he crashed out of the lead of the German Grand Prix in wet conditions. 

Wet conditions saw Vettel lose out on pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix and get stuck behind Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas before finally passing him, when Hamilton had rocketed into the distance. 

Bottas made things messy for both Vettel and Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo as they passed him. It was an unfortunate sight as the once title-challenging Finn – who has signed a one-year contract extension with Mercedes – was slapped with a penalty and no longer seems to be a contender for the title. 

In fact, he has now been leapfrogged by the soon-to-be 40-year-old Kimi Raikkonen whose run of five consecutive podium finishes (four third places and a second) since the French Grand Prix has given Ferrari the points needed to be close to Mercedes in the constructors’ championship. Just ten points separate the two mega-teams that rule the roost in F1.

And yet, despite the strides made by Ferrari since a particularly fruitless season in 2014, Hamilton has rarely put a foot wrong, as he pushes to become only the third driver in F1 history to win at least five world championships. 

That’s a pretty exclusive list, if you consider that there’ve been a total of 849 entrants in F1 since it started in 1950. This includes the Indy 500 until 1960, as it used to be a part of the world championship till then.

Out of these 849 drivers, 107 have won at least one race, and just 33 have been lucky enough to call themselves a world champion at least once. 

You can imagine what manner of talent backed by a racing infrastructure that includes family support (even if they are not wealthy), sponsors, local tracks and just downright willpower goes into winning on multiple occasions. 

Hamilton and Vettel’s race to five titles is comparable to when Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher – racing for McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari, respectively – were tied on two championships before the 2000 season and were pushing for a third to join Ayrton Senna, Jackie Stewart, Nelson Piquet, Jack Brabham and Niki Lauda. 

No doubt Vettel would love to emulate his compatriot whom he grew up idolizing, but there is another hall-of-fame driver who wants to create history of his own.