Rain and reality

You can only ride your luck for so long. Luck has a nasty way of running out when you need it most. Years ago, I was joining a motorway in Johannesburg at a speed that was downright absurd. Realising there was a heavy, articulated lorry coming up the lane I was joining - itself at a speed guaranteed to ensure curtains for Gitau - I yanked the steering wheel to the left and screamed out for Lady Luck not to desert me. She did not - at least not entirely. I found myself powerless as the car flipped over and began cartwheeling across the motorway. Next thing I knew a minibus taxi filled with Soweto natives had drawn up alongside me and people were shovelling dirt on the flames at the front of my stricken car. Someone undid my seat belt and dragged me to safety. I sat dazed and bleeding in the taxi for a little while and then saw a policeman pull up and inspect the wrecked vehicle. He then came up to the taxi, stared hard at me and declared "you must be dead!" I think this is when I passed out.

I had an eerie recollection of this horrible incident while watching qualifying on Saturday. Lewis Hamilton, on a blinder of a lap, suddenly suffered a front right tyre blow-out and found himself a mere passenger as his car flew off the track and crashed head-on into a tyre wall at 175 mph. The last time we saw this happen was at Silverstone in 1999 in a nearly identical incident involving Michael Schumacher. Hamilton was a lot luckier than Schumacher because all he suffered was a heavy pounding and lots of bruising while the German ended up in hospital with a badly broken leg. The impact was such that I was prepared to bet good money on Hamilton not being permitted to race on Sunday; but race he certainly did.

At the start, Hamilton made up six places from tenth place but got involved in the collateral damage which inevitably follows first corner crashes and suffered a punctured rear left wheel. This should have been the point at which the lad said, "okay, this is not my weekend and I am going home now to have a nice hot shower and some cocoa". But Hamilton is made of sterner stuff than that. Then, in what would define Nurburgring 2007, the heavens unleashed a downpour of monsoon proportions. Within seconds, there was so much standing water on the circuit that the cars had no grip at all. One after the other, cars (more like canoes really) aquaplaned off the circuit, through the gravel trap and onto the tyre barriers. Lewis Hamilton was one of the many who landed in the gravel but he managed to avoid the tyre wall and, crucially, kept his engine running. He was thus able to enlist assistance from the crane and rejoin the circuit. The lad fought valiantly and would have made it to a points scoring position but he chose to change from wet weather tyres to dry weather tyres way too early - youthful exuberance, you see - and thereby compromised his race. A fight to the end produced no better ranking than ninth place, so for the first time Hamilton walked away from a Formula One circuit without scoring any points at all. With a twelve point lead, Hamilton had one such disaster in his back pocket but his team-mate has now whittled the lead down to two points. The fairy tale had to end at some point with a good, hard dose of reality.

Fernando Alonso drove one of his best ever races. Timing his pit stops and tyre changes to perfection, Alonso only had to get past race leader Felipe Massa to clinch yet another race victory. With only four laps to go, Alonso aggressively went for Massa on the outside. A bit of wheel-banging resulted but it was Massa, not the world champion, who came off second best. The two Latinos exchanged words before the podium because Massa clearly felt hard done by but I think he was crying over spilled milk - Alonso definitely had the edge. For me Alonso's performance affirms his championship credentials and indicates to everyone, particularly young Hamilton, that he will be no push-over. Alonso's luck could just have turned. We shall soon find out.

Luck was also heavily ingrained on the mind of Kimi Raikkonen. The Nurburgring does not like him it seems. Getting to finish a race there seems like an impossible task. What had looked like another Ferrari one-two at the start ended midway with Raikkonen's car suffering mechanical failure. If there is ever any luck going for the Finn it is the wrong kind. With more than half the races now raced it will take some doing - and lots of the right sort of luck - for Raikkonen to redeem his championship prospects.

Now that the European Grand Prix is over, attention now turns to the industrial espionage hearings in Paris this week. McLaren have put together an enviably expensive army of lawyers to assist them at the FIA. I remain convinced that the FIA will throw the case out. But then again, I have been wrong in the past…

Gitau
24 July 2007