LEWIS HAMILTON may have finished top of the timesheet in practice for Sunday's British Grand Prix but he was left to ponder the latest failure of his Mercedes.
Two retirements this season - in the opening race in Australia and again in Canada last month - have cost Hamilton dear in his battle for the Formula One world title with team-mate Nico Rosberg.
The 29-year-old heads into his home race 29 points adrift of Rosberg and in dire need of a result to quell the German's forward momentum after a run of three races in which he has heavily outscored the Briton.
But at a time when Hamilton was beginning to flex his muscles around Silverstone by posting the fastest lap on the quicker of Pirelli's two tyre compounds for this weekend - the medium - his car ground to a halt with 30 of the 90 minutes remaining.
The deep, collective groan could be heard from the majority of the 70,000-strong crowd at the Northamptonshire venue as Hamilton clambered out of the cockpit of a car that had stopped between turns three and four - The Loop and Aintree respectively. It was proof again Mercedes are far from bulletproof in a season they have so far dominated, although Hamilton must be wondering 'why me?' as Rosberg has avoided such issues.
The 29-year-old has so far finished in the top two in all eight races to eke out his margin over Hamilton, although he did suffer the same loss of ERS (energy recovery system) in Montreal.
However, whereas Rosberg managed to nurse his car to the runner-up spot, Hamilton's failure resulted in a loss of the rear brakes, and with it retirement. At least there will be some satisfaction in finishing 0.228 seconds ahead of Rosberg at the end of the two Friday sessions, with his best lap a one minute 34.508secs.
Again, as in FP1, only Fernando Alonso finished within a second of the dominant Mercedes duo, with the Ferrari star 0.736secs adrift of Hamilton. Red Bull pairing Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel were fourth and fifth quickest respectively, just over a second off the pace, with Williams' Valtteri Bottas 1.5secs down in sixth.
Vettel is refusing to get stressed by a campaign that is proving to be one of his most difficult. Renault power unit problems have resulted in three retirements for the reigning four-times world champion this year, as many as he has suffered in the previous three seasons combined.
"Currently we don't have the car to win unless something out of the ordinary happens because at the moment Mercedes are in a position to win every race," he admitted. "That doesn't really matter because you still try to get the maximum out of your package. It's part of the game, You have good times, bad times, but right now I'm not stressing."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article