F1 2018: Hamilton cruises to victory as Vettel falters at Suzuka

After winning the Japanese Grand Prix, Hamilton now leads the championship from Vettel by 67 points. 

Lewis Hamilton looks all set to take his fifth championship title as he stretched his lead to 67 points by winning the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. Teammate Valtteri Bottos finished second, making it yet another Mercedes-AMG F1 1-2 this season. Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen took the third spot on the podium after ruffling feathers with Scuderia Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel in the initial laps.

Hamilton started the Japanese GP from pole, ahead of Bottas. His arch-rival Vettel was down in 9^th position after yet another strategy debacle during qualifying. Knowing this, Hamilton took full advantage of this on the race day and cruised to victory without any challenge. Behind him, Bottas also ran a flawless race to finish second, and he only momentarily came under pressure from Verstappen in the closing laps.

Verstappen, who started third, had an eventful race though. In the beginning, he made a small mistake and ran out of the track. But while joining back, he ran Raikkonen wide. This earned him a 5-second penalty. At the same time when Raikkonen was forced to run out by Verstappen, his teammate Vettel took this opportunity to slot his car ahead of him and started chasing the Red Bull car to take the third spot. Vettel then made an overzealous and miscalculated move on Verstappen which ended in contact and a spin for Vettel – he dropped down to 18^th.

In the meantime, Raikkonen couldn’t benefit from Verstappen’s time penalty as he was caught in traffic after the pit stop. In fact, owing to that, he also lost a position to Daniel Ricciardo, who was charging through the field from 15^th at the start. Ricciardo finished the race in fourth, while Raikkonen was fifth. Vettel did all the hard work of overtaking all the mid-field cars to finish in a distant sixth.

The best of the rest was Racing Point Force India’s Sergio Perez in seventh place, ahead of Haas driver Romain Grosjean in eighth. Perez’s teammate Esteban Ocon finished ninth, while Renault’s Carlos Sainz rounded out the top ten.