Vettel-Hamilton title fight may be the best ever: Coulthard

Former McLaren and Red Bull driver, David Coulthard, who works as an F1 pundit nowadays, has termed the title fight this year between Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton as possibly the ‘best ever’.

“This season we have one of the best title bouts in a long time and possibly the best ever. It will go down in history,” said Coulthard. “Lewis and Sebastian are not just extremely fast and focused but completely different characters.”

“And in Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen they have two good teammates who do not necessarily play the water carrier.”

This year indeed has been a crazy run-in. Vettel and Hamilton have constantly exchanged places on top of the F1 drivers’ standing. However, the latter leads it during the summer break.

Hamilton has five victories to Vettel’s four this season. However, in the races that they have not won, both have struggled equally to garner a good number of points.

Hamilton retired in Austria with a water pressure issue while Vettel retired at his home race in Germany and ended up off the podium in China, where he was bumped into by Verstappen.

He also threw some new light on the character of the two title rivals. “He (Hamilton) does not like trouble, actually,” Coulthard said. “After Baku last year, for example, he wanted talks between men to clear things up with Vettel.

“Sebastian is similar, but he’s a family man and very mature. I think they respect each other on a sporting level, although they’re too different to be friends.”

The Brit had earlier claimed that the title may be decided by the small factors but Coulthard feels otherwise. “In the end it will be the strengths that are the decisive factor, not the weaknesses,” stated Coulthard.

“It’s because of their strengths that they’re in the lead. Only after Abu Dhabi should we tally up who made the most mistakes and how many points he lost. Not before.”