F1 Fans Spot Lewis Hamilton Snooping: "Channeling His Inner Sebastian Vettel"

Lewis Hamilton was spotted taking a long look at Ferrari's pole-sitting SF-23 after this chaos-filled Friday at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Now, after seeing the strong gaze from the 7-time world champion, F1 fans are comparing him to the gone but not forgotten F1 driver Sebastian Vettel, who retired from the sport at the end of last season.

The Brackley camp had a difficult Friday with their W14 being the slowest car on the track today in a straight line. In fact, it's a miracle that Hamilton got into Q3 and qualified P5, with his teammate George Russell not even getting through Q2.

After the dramatic qualifying session, the British driver was spotted taking a closer look at Ferrari after Charles Leclerc, the apparent master of Baku, put his Scuderia car in pole position with Carlos Sainz sitting in P4, creating a Red Bull sandwich.

"Hamilton taking a hard look at Ferrari’s car after qualifying in Azerbaijan," a caption read on Reddit alongside a photo of the driver analysing the Ferrari in pure Sebastian Vettel behaviour.

"Lewis is channeling his Inner Seb," a comment read, with another adding: "Someone has to replace Inspector Seb."

Vettel was given the nickname "Inspector Seb" after he became known for taking a close look at rivals' cars during race weekends.

Ooh, hello... Inspector Seb returns! 🕵️‍♂️🔎😀#F1Testing pic.twitter.com/sbaJ7D7kr0
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 16, 2021

“I would be happy if I was allowed to touch other people’s cars and not get fined a massive amount of money,” Vettel once told WTF1's Matt Gallagher, joking about the resulting punishments he'd get for touching a raval's car.

With Hamilton currently unhappy with the W14 - a fact he isn't keen on keeping to himself despite Mercedes' legendary technical director James Allison returning to fix it - he's not shying away from taking a look at the faster cars.

"It does look like he's looking at the side pods, I can almost see like a longing expression on his face," one fan said in reference to the fact the W14 is using the failing 'zero-pod' design. "Still time to replace Sainz," another added, joking about the rumours surrounding Leclerc and the Mercedes driver.

Tomorrow brings yet another qualifying session at the Azerbaijan weekend, but this time the results of which will define the starting positions for the sprint race held later the same day. With Mercedes continuing to struggle, who can say where both drivers will qualify.