Formula 1: How Sebastian Vettel can rally to win the 2018 championship

By Asher Fair | Oct 24, 2018

AUSTIN, TX - OCTOBER 20: Sebastian Vettel of Germany driving the (5) Scuderia Ferrari SF71H on track during qualifying for the United States Formula One Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas on October 20, 2018 in Austin, United States. (Photo by Charles Coates/Getty Images) /

Sebastian Vettel is still not mathematically eliminated from winning the 2018 Formula 1 championship. Here is how he can pull it off.

By being outscored by Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton in the 18th race of the 21-race 2018 Formula 1 season, the United States Grand Prix, by only three points, Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel remained mathematically eligible to win this year’s championship, which would be the fifth of his Formula 1 career. Here is how he can do it.

Vettel entered the 56-lap race around the 20-turn, 3.427-mile (5.513-kilometer) Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas trailing Hamilton, who is also a four-time Formula 1 champion, by 67 points in the driver standings (331 to 264). To remain eligible to win this year’s championship, he needed to avoid being outscored by Hamilton by more than seven points in this race.

Vettel finished this race in fourth place while Hamilton finished in third. Vettel scored 12 points while Hamilton scored 15 points, so Hamilton now leads Vettel by 70 points in the driver standings. However, this lead is not big enough to mathematically eliminate Vettel from championship contention quite yet.

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With a maximum of 25 points on the table in each race and three races remaining on the 2018 schedule, Vettel still has a chance to outscore Hamilton by as many as 75 points before the season ends.

Because Vettel trails Hamilton by 70 points, he must outscore him by 71 points to win this year’s championship. He must outscore him by 71 points as opposed to 70 points as a result of the fact that he cannot win a tiebreaker over Hamilton.

The tiebreaker would be based on each driver’s win total, and Hamilton has won nine races so far this season while Vettel has won five. This means that with three races remaining on the 2018 schedule, Vettel cannot possibly match, much less pass, Hamilton’s win total.

Therefore, if Hamilton scores five points over the course of the final three races of the season, which are the Mexican Grand Prix, the Brazilian Grand Prix and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, he will win the 2018 championship.

Because wins are worth 25 points and second place finishes are worth 18 points, Vettel must win each of the three races remaining on the schedule to even have a chance to win the championship. Even if he wins two of these three races and finishes in second in the other and Hamilton fails to score in all three of them, Vettel will only score 68 points, which would allow Hamilton to win the championship.

Here are the possible scenarios by which Vettel can still win the 2018 Formula 1 championship.

WIN ALL THREE REMAINING RACES (75 POINTS) WHILE LEWIS HAMILTON…

…finishes in eighth place (four points) in one race and fails to score in the other two
…finished in ninth place in two races (four points) and fails to score in the other one
…finishes in ninth place in one race (two points) and finishes in 10th in the other two (two points)
…finishes in 10th place in all three remaining races (three points)

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To put it bluntly, it really is only a matter of time before Lewis Hamilton clinches his fifth career Formula 1 championship. Will he do it in the next race, the Mexican Grand Prix? Tune in to ABC at 3:10 p.m. ET on Sunday, October 28 for the live broadcast of this race from Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, Mexico to find out.

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