In a complex sport, it doesn’t get much simpler than this: Sebastian Vettel has to do something he has never done before and win this Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix. And even if the Ferrari driver does that, it may still not be enough to keep his hopes of a fifth Formula 1 World Championship alive. In this ultra-competitive world, Vettel and Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton both have four titles, and each is desperate to be next to join F1’s most elite club with title number five. That club currently has only two members: the two greatest names in Formula 1 history, Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher. The peerless Fangio was 46 when he secured his fifth title at the German Grand Prix in 1957 – probably the greatest race he ever drove. A desperately slow pit stop turned Fangio’s half-minute advantage in the Maserati to a 50-second deficit behind the Ferraris of Mike Hawthron and Peter Collins. Breaking the lap record for the daunting 22-km circuit time and time again, Fangio swept home to his 24th and final victory, securing the title at the same time. ‘When it was all over,’ said the Argentine, ‘I was convinced I would never be able to drive like that again, never. I had reached the limit of my concentration and will to win.’ It took 45 years for another driver to match Fangio’s quintet of titles. At Magny-Cours in France in July in 2002 – just the 11th race of the 17-race season – 33-year-old German Schumacher won for the 61st time and took his fifth crown. Unlike Fangio, who would contest only four more Grands Prix after that German epic, Schumacher still had 135 races left in him – plus a further 30 victories and two more titles! Now Hamilton is on the verge of five titles of his own. Even if Vettel wins on Sunday, Hamilton need only finish seventh to claim the crown. He needs a margin of 50 points going into the last two races after Mexico; he arrives at AHR with a 70-point lead. If Vettel wins here and scores 25 points, that cuts the deficit to 45; but if Hamilton is seventh, the six points for that position will take him clear with 51 in hand and only 50 left to play for. That seemed unlikely at the start of the 2018 season. ‘I’m still in a little bit of disbelief as I don’t really understand what happened yet.’ That was Hamilton, speaking after finishing second in the opening race in Australia. He led comfortably until his Mercedes team miscalculated the gap they required to bring him in for a pit stop and get him out on track again ahead of Vettel. Vettel’s Ferrari won – and won again in the second race in Bahrain to suggest that Hamilton might be beaten to that fifth world title by the German. Two races gone, 17 points behind, but better days were to come. Fourth in China, Hamilton cut the deficit to nine because Vettel could finish only eighth. By round four, in Azerbaijan, Hamilton was ahead after winning for the first time in 2018 and the 63rd time in a career that began in 2007. While he went 17 points clear after round five in Spain, Hamilton’s only non-finish of the year so far in Austria gave Vettel the upper hand by a single point; and when he played second fiddle to Vettel at Silverstone in round 10, Lewis was eight points in arrears. But that was the last time Vettel led the title race. Six wins in the next seven rounds put Hamilton in the driver’s seat, so to speak. In 2018 he has nine wins, nine poles and three fastest laps so far, and now the Englishman is a hot favorite to join that club of two by wrapping up title number five in Mexico this weekend. Schumacher’s was 33%, Fangio’s a staggering 47% in an era where there were far fewer races in each season. Fangio shared out his 24 wins amongst four marques: Alfa-Romeo (10), Mercedes (8), Maserati and Ferrari (3 apiece). Michael won for two teams: Benetton (19) and Ferrari (72). Lewis has only ever won with Mercedes power: for McLaren (21) and the full-blown Mercedes works team which, coincidentally, withdrew from F1 in the year Fangio drove for them, 1955. Hamilton, also just 33 years old, has 51 wins for Mercedes already: how far might he go? Back in March, when he took pole position in Melbourne, Hamilton said: ‘It’s still just as intense – my heart’s racing. I’m always striving for perfection and that was as close as I could get.’ That inner drive may well see Lewis Hamilton end up as the most successful F1 driver of all time – if he still has the desire.