Vettel’s key weakness in his Hamilton battle

Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton have traded the points lead five times in 12 races so far in 2018. For all the griping about a 'boring' season, only two years have produced more swaps at the top at the same point in the campaign - 1986 (seven) and 2012 (six).

Even with Hamilton carrying a 24-point advantage into the August break, this could be one of the closest world championship battles we've ever seen. And the closer the battle gets, the more significance every little incident and error assumes.

Both drivers have great strengths, but the small weaknesses, the tiny chinks in the armour, are just as likely to decide the destiny of the world championship. Neither is bulletproof, no driver can be, but based on recent evidence Vettel is the championship protagonist with the most clear Achilles' heel.

For the vast majority of the time, Vettel drives beautifully, with a vibrant and attacking style, while off-track he is diligent, with great attention to detail. Where things can change is in times of extreme stress, sometimes leading to errors in critical moments.

In the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, he attempted to pass Valtteri Bottas for the lead at the late restart, locked up over the bump on the inside line and went off. That dropped him down the order, although he recovered to fourth due to Bottas's puncture, which makes it a potential 13 points lost (Vettel would have inherited the win) had the move not ended in an off-track moment. In the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, he misjudged the level of grip into the first corner and hit Bottas's Mercedes. A par finish from where he was would have been was third, but instead he finished fifth. Five points lost. In the German Grand Prix, he made what he rightly characterised as a tiny mistake with a big impact as he slid off while leading the race. That was a mighty 25 points lost.

All told, that adds up perhaps to 43 points squandered, and that's before you factor in the resulting gains for Hamilton, given he was behind Vettel in two of those races at the moment in question.

By contrast, Hamilton has avoided such unforced errors. There have been mistakes he's not been punished for - such as the lock-up in Baku that forced him to compromise his strategy - but a combination of minimising errors and some good luck mean those errors haven't hurt him so much in terms of points.

This is why Vettel's unforced errors, ones that have a decisive impact on his race prospects, could prove to be his key weakness in the fight with Hamilton.

In isolation, all three of those mistakes are perfectly explicable. They are small misjudgements of the kind it's a surprise drivers don't them make more often. But given they've come in relatively quick succession from Vettel, it's fair to draw the conclusion this is his key weakness in the fight with Hamilton.

Vettel's unforced errors could prove to be his key weakness in the fight with Hamilton

The same thing applied last year. Vettel's two big mistakes - swiping Hamilton under the safety car in Baku and then moving over on Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen at the start of the Singapore race - were different, but both showed he can crack even though the Baku clash didn't cost much.

Vettel tends to rapidly box away such errors when he takes responsibility for them (the Singapore start remains a point of disagreement), and he has reacted well to this year's small blunders - in that regard he tends to recover more easily than Hamilton does. But he will know better than anyone how costly they've been.

On the positive side, it's inevitable errors happen in elite sport. What matters is how they are responded to. Although two of Vettel's errors have come in the past five races, there's no sign of him getting into a negative spiral where one blunder follows another.

The great challenge for any athlete in these situations is to understand and learn from the mistake, but not let that influence what they do. If you make a mistake in one corner, you can't make up for it in the next - only ensure you reset and get 100% out of it.

Hamilton, by contrast, has done well to eliminate such blunders from his game. But while he hasn't squandered points with momentary lapses this year, he has given away points through overall pace - or the lack thereof - and there are times when struggles to get the car working seem to have a compound effect on his ability to get the most from the car.

This was particularly the case early in the season in races such as Bahrain and China. More recently, the Canadian Grand Prix - a race Hamilton basically owns - went poorly by his lofty standards.

"There's parts of my performances this year that are not perfect," Hamilton admitted ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix. "Last year, I was great in qualifying, this year it's been an area that I'm constantly trying to work on. The starts were more consistent last year. So, there's always areas.

"I relate it to golf. One day, when the driving is perfect the rest of the game sucks. Then I go and practice the rest of the game and the driving sucks but the rest is good.

"I do take a lot of pride in being a perfectionist and not making mistakes, but nobody's perfect and with the pressures we're under, I really work hard to position myself mentally and physically that I'm the last to crack.

"My dad has always said I'm the latest of the late brakers - if I'm alongside someone I'm going to be the one to brake last. That's how I try and position my mind mentally as well. It's not easy."

The capacity to make countless calculations as the variables change rapidly is arguably the most vital for any racing driver, and this is where Vettel very occasionally struggles with overload, while Hamilton thrives.

It's a similar story in wet conditions, when Hamilton has the advantage not just over Vettel but the whole field. He's won the last nine rain-influenced grands prix, which doesn't include the Hungarian Grand Prix where wet qualifying was critical to his race victory.

Vettel isn't bad in the wet, far from it, but either the Ferrari is a worse car in the wet or he isn't quite as remarkable in those conditions as Hamilton.

There's no disgrace in that given Hamilton is unquestionably one of the best of all time in such conditions. Doubly so given Vettel won his first two grands prix in rain-affected races, the first his legendary win for Toro Rosso at Monza in 2008.

If the pattern continues, it will be a fascinating battle to the end of the year. One of these traits will likely be the overwhelming reason for one driver or the other winning, or rather losing, the world championship.

One of these traits will likely be the overwhelming reason for one driver winning or losing the title

If we set aside errors and look at who most consistently extracts the most out of the machinery, then the balance swings from Hamilton back to Vettel.

But comparing relative performance of drivers in different cars is fraught with risks. Firstly, you have to judge the overall pace of the car - and on average Mercedes and Ferrari are within 0.022% of each other on average performance. That's two hundredths of a second on a 90-second lap.

Then you have to decide where you place the team-mate performance. Vettel is bossing it at Ferrari, outqualifying Kimi Raikkonen on all but one occasion and, on average, is three-tenths of a second faster. At Mercedes, Hamilton is only 7-5 ahead of Bottas and is 0.275s clear on average.

Is Vettel being supreme because he's bossing Raikkonen, or does Hamilton have a stronger team-mate? It's probably a bit of both, but it's much easier to point to weekends where Hamilton has struggled to get the maximum potential out of the car than Vettel.

In keeping with the longstanding private criticisms from those who have worked with Hamilton, he does have occasional off days when things don't quite come together. But when everything is right, which is very often, he will get everything possible from the package.

It is much more difficult to quantify a points loss to being a bit below par than it is to a specific incident. But Bottas has finished ahead of Hamilton three times, which is conclusive proof the result was not maximised.

Vettel tends not to have weekends where he gets too lost with the car. Where he has the advantage is that he's an outstandingly good driver at working progressively through the weekend and hitting the mark when he really needs to.

That's played a key role in the tendency of Ferrari to make a bigger step than its rivals from Friday to Saturday. It also reflects the strength of the team as a whole - a Ferrari team that, arguably, has probably been the most impressive this season.

It can also be argued that the Ferrari is an easier car to get working. So, the question then is how much of that weakness is down to Hamilton? He's more accomplished technically than the unfair caricature, but Vettel does have an edge there.

And while Hamilton goes into the summer break on a high, it might only take one difficult weekend where Mercedes has difficulties to put him back into a spiral of struggle - although he did point out after Hungary that Mercedes tends to get stronger as the year goes on and it's not impossible he will take the championship out of Vettel and Ferrari's reach in the second half of the year, just as he did in 2017.

But given things are so close, there's even the possibility 2018 could claim the outright record for number of changes in championship lead in a season. The record was set in 2010, when Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, Vettel, Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Hamilton exchanged first position nine times.

Most changes of lead in a championship season

1 9 - 2010
2 8 - 1986
3 7 - 2012
= 7 - 1997
5 6 - 1999
= 6 - 1983
7 5 - 2018
= 5 - 2008
= 5 - 2007
= 5 - 1980
= 5 - 1974

Ferrari has had the faster car on seven occasions this year, with Mercedes quicker five times. One of Ferrari's races was Monaco, where Red Bull set the pace. But that does suggest that Ferrari should continue to have a qualifying, and therefore track position, advantage.

Once Vettel is up front, he's a master of controlling a race. And there's every chance he could get himself back into the points lead early in the second stage of the season. Then it will be back to small margins. There are wildcards - such as the weather and questions over reliability at Ferrari, which let it down last year.

There is also a potential Hamilton weakness that has not been exploited properly since the days when he was paired with Nico Rosberg, who was able to get under Hamilton's skin in a way Vettel has yet to do.

While there is some aggro between Mercedes and Ferrari related to suspicions about the latter's battery configuration, and Hamilton has occasionally let slip that he buys into those concerns, Vettel has yet to attempt to mine this seam as he searches for a way to even up the fight.

What we are seeing is a potential battle for the ages between two brilliant drivers

He's a clean racer, but anything you can do to impact your rival's mindset negatively - provided it's within the rules - is part of the game and perfectly legitimate. Something to think about over the break.

This is what could make the second half of the season so thrilling - with every race, the stakes and the pressure rise.

What we are seeing is a potential battle of the ages between two brilliant drivers. And when that happens, who really cares who wins? It's all about enjoying an epic contest between two all-time greats.