Hamilton’s fresh hope of avoiding worst season after Verstappen battle

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Lewis Hamilton has struggled to find the positives in 2022 after a wretched season for Mercedes, but the seven-time world champion finally has something to fight for after coming ever closer to ending his winless run at the United States Grand Prix. The 37-year-old finished second behind Max Verstappen, having lost the lead only six laps from the finish line, to underline a huge improvement in his pace on track.

And he will need every ounce of determination and talent left in him if he is to avoid making this season one to forget. As it stands, Hamilton remains sixth in the Drivers’ standings behind Carlos Sainz and George Russell and, if he fails to gather five points more than Sainz in the final three races in Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi, Hamilton will post his worst-ever finish in F1.

The 37-year-old has never completed a campaign in lower than fifth in the Drivers’ Championship in his 15 seasons as an F1 driver, having finished there twice in 2009 and 2011 at McLaren. At Mercedes, he posted a fourth-placed finish in 2013, his first season with the German team.

But there is hope after Sainz suffered yet another DNF (Did Not Finish) in Texas. The 27-year-old has failed to finish in six of the 19 races this season, the most DNFs of any driver on the 2022 grid. In four of those races, Sainz has been the first driver to retire, highlighting a worrying combination of Ferrari’s power failures and his own first-lap incidents.

It was the latter that unfortunately cost Sainz some precious points at the Circuit of the Americas, with Hamilton’s team-mate George Russell collecting a five-second penalty for crashing into the side of his Ferrari. Sainz suffered a tyre puncture and damage to his chassis as the Spaniard was forced to bow out of the race in the United States.

Hamilton, meanwhile, managed to equal his best performance of the season by finishing in second place behind Verstappen, who won his 32nd race in F1. In doing so, he picked up 18 points to close the gap on Sainz to just four points with three races to go.

The seven-time world champion has experienced a difficult campaign on the track and is yet to win a race, his longest run without a race victory since joining the Silver Arrows in 2013. However, he came within six laps of ending that run in Austin after taking the lead following a nightmare 11-second pit stop for Verstappen, which eventually saw him come back out in fifth place.

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The Red Bull star was determined to fight back through the field and quickly passed Sebastian Vettel, George Russell and Charles Leclerc before setting his sights on Hamilton, who was only 3.5 seconds up the road.

And the pure pace of the RB18 was enough to catch the struggling W13 of Hamilton as the Dutchman took the lead with a pass down the back straight under DRS on lap 50. Hamilton tried to fight back in the remaining laps before his hard tyres lost grip and he eventually finished five seconds adrift of the two-time world champion.

But that performance is as close as Hamilton has come to a race victory this season – and it will give him renewed hope of catching Sainz before the curtain closes on 2022.

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