Hamilton swears his feud with Verstappen is over

A year ago, Lewis Hamilton held off Sebastian Vettel in a thrilling finish to prevail at Shanghai, in what was the second race of the 2017 season. “However, you definitely don’t want to fall any further behind than we have”.

The Shanghai International Circuit is a favourite of the reigning world champion, having secured pole six times and claimed victory five times.

That will not be the immediate goal for Hamilton this weekend. The German is marginally back at 9/4 while there’s plenty of value to be had by backing either Red Bull for the win at 9/1. Well at least not yet, as events conspired to deny him in the first two races.

Germany’s Vettel and Ferrari stole a march on the Silver Arrows with victory in Australia to open the Formula One season and followed up with a tense triumph last weekend in Bahrain.

Hamilton is probably the favorite to win on Sunday in China.

“Being that I am the older driver I thought it important that I went to him”, the four-time world champion said.

This time around, having won both opening races, one by cunning use of the rules and a software glitch for the Silver Arrows, the other by masterful tyre management and a courageous strategy, Vettel leads his foe by 17 points.

Verstappen ended Friday practice in Shanghai 0.341s off Hamilton’s fastest time.

They [Ferrari] are going to be hard to beat.

He lost a tenth of a second to Raikkonen and two-tenths of a second to Bottas in the final sector, which comprises both corners, suggesting he had more pace in hand.

“I am thinking and wondering”, said Hamilton. The Mercedes is still an extremely quick package and could, and maybe should have, won both the opening two races.

“Ferrari are still quite quick”.

“We got through all the laps that we needed”.

His auto is definitely quick enough to challenge both Mercedes and Ferrari on a good track like China where overtaking is possible, and the very least he should be looking for to make up for his Bahrain errors is a podium finish. You can’t believe that Hamilton, in the same circumstances, wouldn’t have attempted the last lap overtake and risked losing everything in pursuit of the win.

The outcomes of those races can not be unchanged but it does highlight one thing for Mercedes.

Both sides of the equation will need to be ideal this weekend.

“It’s racing, it’s very simple, and I don’t understand why everyone is so on top of the topic because those things happen in racing”.