Lights Out: Vettel vetoes Hamilton

After the jokes and the smiles came the clues, the gritted teeth and the truth outed. Sebastian Vettel would rather chew his arm off than race alongside world title rival Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari next season, or any season in the future.

Sat alongside each other at Thursday's press conference, Hamilton and Vettel gave "why not" responses to fanciful talk that they could be team-mates as the Briton's Mercedes future continues to cloud over.

Hamilton also spoke of the difficulty of having two "alphas" in the same team.

Think Hamilton and Alonso, Hamilton and Rosberg. Dreary drudges of constant bickering and backstabbing.

Vettel has perhaps never had to deal with quite a relationship. He was the golden boy at Red Bull who could stomp all over Mark Webber's hopes and ambitions, and Daniel Ricciardo was the young gun who beat him, but not in a car that could do anything meaningful.

Vettel clearly values his partnership with Kimi Raikkonen. While the Iceman might still have ambitions to win races and titles, he has not done the former in 100 grands prix and hasn't come close to the latter in a decade.

So it was no surprise to see Vettel come out and say that he would rather be in a team with Kimi. Challenged just enough to keep his competitive edge, but an apolitical atmosphere and a probably acceptance that Vettel is the title challenger in the team.

It was also a pretty savage dagger to Hamilton's claim that he and Vettel enjoyed a "better relationship" than the German and Raikkonen.

Lewy no mates? It's not quite that bad. Valtteri Bottas is the Raikkonen to Hamilton's Vettel. It gave us a brilliant title race last year, which was a breath of fresh air after three years of one team battling amongst themselves.

Let's not even try and think of going back to that...

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