The Jaws of Victory

A particularly inept military general, who managed to lose several battles even with greater numbers, positional superiority and other advantages in his favour, was caustically described by historians as having the remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

It's a capsule summary that may well be applied to Lewis Hamilton's race effort in Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix. However, it would be an unfair conclusion.

Hamilton arrived in China needing only a fifth place finish to eliminate Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen from the championship chase.

Finishing no more than one point behind McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso would have put the title beyond the reigning champion's reach, and seen Hamilton crowned in China as the sport's youngest ever world champion.

So how, then, did it all go so wrong, leaving Hamilton beached helplessly in the F1 world's smallest gravel trap, a veritable postage stamp that seemed to have been placed more for its Zen garden appeal than any practical functionality?

Did he give in to blind ambition, greedily wanting to wrap up a title that should have waited until Brazil? Why did he not adopt a 'bend but don't break' approach, putting the need to finish above every other consideration?

The most readily apparent answer is that it's not in his nature, nor in any other F1 driver's.

Certainly, he could have turned down the wick, spared the engine and tyres, and trundled around to a lonely and distant fourth place in both qualifying and the race. However, there was no need for such defeatism.

All season long, Hamilton has raced aggressively, and the McLaren has taken everything he could throw at it without giving up on him. There was no reason to believe that it would fail in China.

Additionally, there is the inherent risk of a driver deliberately slowing his pace. We have seen it many times in GP history, when a driver eases off with the GP seemingly won - only to lose control of the car.

Hamilton is all too aware of that risk. During the previous race in the wet conditions in Japan, the team had urged him to slow down during the closing stages. He had replied that he was already going as slowly as he dared. Easing off further, shedding downforce and heat from the tyres, was inviting disaster.

When Hamilton went for broke in qualifying, snatched yet another excellent pole position and made clear his intentions to control the Chinese GP from the front, he wasn't taking undue risks or trying to do more than was necessary in the championship context. He was merely electing not to fix what wasn't broken.

Exactly midway through the race, with his intermediate tyres worn to the canvas and his early lead evaporated, Hamilton again eschewed the conservative approach. He chose to battle on rather than to accept his medicine, duck into the pits and take on fresh rubber.

Initially, it seemed like a dire and inexplicable miscalculation, again driven by his ambition to wrap up the title early. Yet, in both race and championship terms, it was a defendable decision.

Until lap 25, Hamilton looked indomitable. With a healthy lead over second-placed Raikkonen, and able to match Raikkonen's times, he was almost half-way home to the title. The light shower that started on lap 26 was the catalyst that would change the championship picture entirely.

Kimi Raikkonen closes on Lewis Hamilton © XPB/LAT

As the rain started, Hamilton's pace dropped off. However, he was not alone in feeling the effects of the sudden shower. On lap 27, both he and team-mate Alonso slowed by four seconds relative to their times from the previous lap. Raikkonen fared slightly better, losing just three seconds.

Tellingly, Honda's Jenson Button, way behind the leaders but on dry grooved tyres, lost a whopping nine seconds. Even with the leading three cars on bald intermediates, they were still suffering less than those who had pitted early for grooved tyres on the drying track.

A lap later, Raikkonen was past as Hamilton ran wide, and again the safety-first option beckoned. However, earlier on that same lap, the two leaders had passed Williams' Nico Rosberg who, along with Renault's Heikki Kovalainen (both on grooved tyres), had run off the circuit at turn one.

Even if Hamilton had decided to pit for safety's sake as soon as Raikkonen passed him, there was no clear indication of which tyres would work under the prevailing conditions.

Alonso had experienced, exactly a year ago, how devastating the wrong tyre choice can be in the damp at Shanghai. Hamilton faced the same dilemma now. At that point (as confirmed by team chief Ron Dennis after the race), Hamilton was not concerned about Raikkonen, but was effectively racing only against Alonso.

Even if Alonso closed down Hamilton's lead at half a dozen seconds per lap, it was worth it for the Englishman to stay out for as long as possible, in order to get a clearer picture of whether the rain would persist or not.

The key for Hamilton, in championship terms, was to ensure that his next stop would be his last. If he could achieve that, with Alonso scheduled to make his final stop just one lap later, Hamilton would be guaranteed to finish no more than one place behind the Spaniard.

However, if Hamilton chose the wrong tyre and needed to stop again, there was the risk that he'd be swallowed up by the chasing pack, and would sacrifice far more than just one or two points to Alonso.

Under the circumstances, it was a brave but defensible decision to back his own car control skills, even with the rear tyres worn down to the canvas.

McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh stated after the race that the team should perhaps have called Hamilton in a lap earlier. That is the benefit of hindsight. To coin a Ron Dennis saying, they'd have looked pretty silly if they'd stopped Hamilton early, switched him to grooved tyres - and it had started raining again on his out-lap.

Having to make the call under the pressure and uncertainty of the changing weather conditions, it seemed that the decision had paid off right up to the moment that Hamilton pulled off the circuit and into the pitlane.

He still had a narrow lead over Alonso and, if his out-lap could match Alonso's in-lap, the championship was still his for the taking.

Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen © LAT

Even if Alonso leapfrogged him during the pit stops, Hamilton would only surrender two points of his twelve point championship lead.

The one factor that nobody considered was that the pitlane had become the most treacherous part of the circuit. And the only section of track with an adjoining gravel trap...

It was a race-ending, championship-turning mistake, and Hamilton will be haunted by it. However, his decision to stay out was reasonable - not least because Raikkonen and Alonso both emulated it.

Admittedly, Hamilton's tyres were in worse shape than either Raikkonen's and Alonso's, and he was losing more time for it. However, the key is not the lap times that the leaders were recording, but the lap times that they could have been recording.

Like Hamilton, Alonso and Raikkonen waited until their final pit stops were forced by fuel load rather than tyre wear, with both pitting on lap 32.

In the four laps prior to the stops, Raikkonen lost 22 seconds to the flying Button on grooved tyres. Alonso eventually finished less than ten seconds behind the Finn.

If Alonso had stopped three laps earlier than scheduled, and gambled on grooved tyres, how different the race (and its effect on the championship) may have been. Alonso would now be heading to Brazil just two points behind the championship leader.

As tempting and intriguing as it is to speculate on the possibilities, Alonso was in the same position as Hamilton. The primary consideration for all the leading drivers was not to match the times of the gamblers on grooved tyres further down the field, but rather to give themselves the best chance of avoiding a third and ruinous pit-stop.

That meant accepting that they'd be slower prior to the stop, but more likely to make the right tyre call for the remainder of the race.

Hamilton snatching defeat from the jaws of victory has, however, set up the season for the first three-way championship decider since Australia 1986.

Alonso will take little consolation from the historical trivia that, in 1986, the driver who was second going into the final race (Alain Prost) eventually triumphed.

F1 was a different beast back then, with fortunes swinging wildly due to unreliability. The Williams pair of Mansell and Piquet recorded nine non-scoring races between them over the course of the 1986 season.

These days, it's about consistency and reliability. Alonso cannot count on Hamilton's car failing. Instead, the reigning champion must not only beat his team-mate, but somehow contrive to have at least one car finish between them as well.

Hamilton, in turn, faces a very difficult race. If faced again with a knife-edge decision between being his normal aggressive self or backing off and playing it conservatively, will the lessons of China hold sway over his instincts?

One thing is for certain - Hamilton will not want another wet race. A return to the stability of dry conditions, where the four leading cars are separated by perhaps a tenth of a second per lap, will suit him very nicely indeed.

If the rain clouds gather again, and changeable conditions open up the possibility of ten seconds per lap difference in pace, Alonso and even Raikkonen must still fancy their chances.