Vettel’s Sepang pace no surprise to Hamilton, Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton was not surprised by Formula 1 title rival Sebastian Vettel’s fight up the order during the Malaysian Grand Prix, saying Mercedes’ pre-race simulations predicted he would finish fourth.

Hamilton slipped back from pole to finish the race second behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, while Vettel recovered to P4 from last on the grid after an issue stopped him from setting a lap time in qualifying.

Hamilton extended his lead to 34 points in the drivers’ championship over Vettel, but was not disheartened to not add a greater margin in Malaysia.

“I didn’t approach the race thinking ‘he’s last, I’m going to get a free race’. They showed me on the simulations that he was going to finish fifth or fourth, so we already knew that and it wasn’t a surprise to see where he was,” Hamilton said.

“We also knew from his long run pace that he had around 0.8s to 1.0s, which is rare. Most races it’s 0.1s or 0.2s faster for race pace, but 0.8s up we knew was going to happen.

“Obviously Kimi [Raikkonen] going out was a big advantage for the Red Bulls and for us because they would have had more pace and I would have been maybe third. But that’s the best I could really do.

“Even if I had closed the door and held Verstappen back on that one lap then he would have got me because they had over 0.5s in pace and some laps it was 0.8s.

“When he passed me he was pulling away at 0.8s per lap and there was nothing I could do about it.

“That’s really down to some issues we have with the car that they don’t fully understand.”

When asked what he expected at the next race in Japan, Hamilton said: “I think Suzuka is a much cooler circuit generally and the corners are a little bit different to what we experienced here, and we’ll be on a different aero package as well so we should be better there.

“But Mexico where it’s full downforce will be a place of concern and we will probably struggle there, but there’s not a massive amount of corners so maybe we will be OK.

“I think they are the only ones – this one and Mexico – that has the high downforce and the others I’m hoping will be more similar to Spa and Silverstone. But it’s difficult to say until we get there.”