McLaren hand it to the Rake

One Sunday afternoon when I was a boy, a bedraggled fellow in threadbare clothes and flip flops turned up at my parents’ house. He said his name was Sunday and he had walked, hitch-hiked and stowed away on goods lorries to get from his little village in the east of Uganda to Nairobi. There was money in Nairobi, he was told. People were rich there, he believed. His life would be saved if only he could find someone in Nairobi to look after him. My father was touched by Sunday’s story and agreed to employ him as “an extra pair of hands.” If the cook needed help washing up or chopping vegetables, he would be free to enlist Sunday’s assistance. If Wilson, the gardener, needed help weeding his vegetable patch, all he had to do was yell “Sunday!” and Sunday would be there to help. What troubled me, a young impressionable boy, was Sunday’s inability or unwillingness to smile. Sullen and taciturn, Sunday went about his chores like the proverbial bear with a headache. I tried engaging him. I wanted him to smile at least a little. I even offered to play with my Action Man with him, but Sunday resolutely refused to smile.

When he got paid at the end of the first month, Sunday drew in his breath and ventured out into the big, scary city of Nairobi with unfamiliar bright lights and huge buildings. He had a mission. Once accomplished, he ran the five or six miles to my parents’ house without stopping for a breather. He asked at the door if he could see my father and was shown into the living room where my brother and sister and I were playing with my father. I had never seen anyone look so happy in my short life. Sunday was beaming with joyous contentment. He had a bundle under his arm which he insisted on showing to my father. Inside the bundle was a brand new suit, shirt, tie and a pair of black shoes. His hands were shaking as he carefully showed off each item, tears rolling down his face. He was so happy he could not help kissing my fathers feet repeatedly (much to my father’s embarrassment). Sunday then went off, had a shower and stepped into his new clothes. I remember watching him as he strutted his stuff towards the gate grinning more widely than the Cheshire Cat which so disturbed Alice. Sunday was delivered by the local constabulary to my parents’ house in the early hours of the next morning. The police had found him penniless, drunk and slumped in a ditch, but nevertheless, very happy.

I thought of Sunday yesterday as I observed Kimi Raikkonen ascend the top step on the Interlagos podium as the new Formula One World Champion. Raikkonen does not do emotion. At least on normal days he doesn’t. Whereas Lewis Hamilton’s gappy smile is now as familiar as daffodils in the spring, Raikkonen’s teeth are seldom seen. Not yesterday. Against all the odds, he, Kimi Raikkonen, not anyone else, was the world champion. THE WORLD CHAMPION! Even he, the ice man, had, like Sunday, to let the world know that nothing mattered, nothing at all, save that he was the world champion. Raikkonen got to the podium and stared at the sea of red flags saluting him – HIM! – the new world champion. Then he thought “fuck it, I am, the world champion!” cocked his right foot, leant forward and seized the magnum of champagne intended for the post anthem spraying session. Never mind that not even the first bar of the Finnish national anthem had been played, he raised the magnum to his smiling face and took a healthy swig. Attaboy, Raikkonen! Not since the days of real rakes like James Hunt - men who drank hard, shagged a lot and drove fast – have we seen a champion of this ilk. I can but imagine what the partying in Sao Paulo was like yesterday evening. The Brazilian girls are probably cowering in fear as I write this. Congratulations, Raikkonen the Rake, you are a worthy champion.

I can see the e-mail one or two of you will send me upon reading that last paragraph. “You bastard!” it will say, “what about our boy Hamilton?” I went to bed yesterday angrier than I have in a very long time. How could McLaren snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory like that? The title was Hamilton’s for the taking. How could he possibly fluff it? Well, Hamilton made an ill-judged, impetuous start to the race and allowed himself to be overtaken by both Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso . He then suffered the first mechanical trouble McLaren have had all season and lost bucket-loads of time. But McLaren could have sorted this out. With as many laps as they had before the end of the race, they could have been more efficient in their refuelling and tyre changing strategy. They were not and we are where we are. Still, I am happy.

First, I am happy that it is Raikkonen and not that vile snake Alonso who won it. He won six races while the other two won four each. Until 2002 the gap between winning and coming second was twice as large as it is now. Raikkonen has been a victim of the stop-Schumacher-getting–it–too-early points system. On this basis alone, Raikkonen should be world champion. It has taken him a while but victory tastes all the sweeter after frustration and disappointment.

Which neatly brings me to my second reason. As Bernie Ecclestone said before the start of yesterday’s race, Hamilton is easily the best driver out there but it was far too early for him. Achieving a world championship so easily and so quickly would in all probability have made him value it less than he ought and caused him to lose interest sooner than would be healthy for us, the fans. Never fear, Hamilton will be back next year, stronger and more mature.

I will write my thoughts about the season a little later but for today let us revel in The Rake’s Progress.

Gitau
22 October 2007

A three way shoot-out at Interlagos

"I am the king of the world," said Muhammad Ali in his famously modest style. The Louisville Lip knew what he was talking about. Any sportsman only ever reaches the pinnacle of his sport when he has become world champion. To be world champion is to demonstrate to the world that no other mortal is superior to you in your sport. To be world champion is to stand alone at the very top. World championship changes many things. Dominique Moisi, writing in the Financial Times this week, accused the English rugby team of not having the interests of the collective prosperity of Europe's economy at heart; if they had, they would have conceded the semi-final victory to France. In sharp contrast to the massively buoyant effect the 1998 football world cup victory had on France's economic prospects, the country is now in a deep funk. People behave strangely when they contemplate world championships. Even countries crave world champions of any kind - witness the recent purchases of Kenyan world champion athletes by the USA and rich Arab states.

Two world championships will be settled this weekend. The rugby world championship in Paris on Saturday and the Formula One world championship in Sao Paulo on Sunday. One of three men will leave Brazil as the king of his world. Fernando Alonso knows what it is like to have been world champion twice before but this world championship matters more to him than any before because it will imbue him with the gratification of having taken on the English and defeated them. Kimi Raikkonen has come close to being world champion before and has had his skin thickened by the experience. Lewis Hamilton, uniquely in the history of Formula One, knows nothing about what it means to be world champion, or to have nearly been world champion, and yet he is standing on the threshold of championship.

It is this near certainty that has produced an almost visceral loathing of the innocent young lad by the rest of the drivers in the Formula One paddock to a man. When he started out achieving podiums this season, Hamilton was viewed as the charming, young rookie who was working very hard while being terribly nice about it. "Ah, isn't he sweet" was the near universal sentiment, "let him bed down a little and he will suffer some hard knocks, but the lad is doing so well!" As the season wore on and Hamilton's points tally began to mount up, people became a little wary, guarded even. "He will make a mistake soon, just you wait," they said. Then, by the final quarter of the season, when Hamilton was leading the world championship by a comfortable margin, people's private fears erupted. Hamilton ceased to be sweet and was now "cocky". All the certainties and self-beliefs flew out the window. He was not talented but "lucky" and "favoured". When supposedly level-headed chaps like Mark Webber began issuing profanity-infused statements about Hamilton's behaviour behind the safety car in Japan - statements which had wise old experts like Jackie Stewart scratching their heads in bemusement - one knew that things had now entered a different league. Hamilton was simply too new and too good for comfort. "How dare this Johnny-come-lately Englishman turn up and rip up the form book?" is now the feeling up and down the starting grid. Rather than celebrate greatness, the human instinct is to envy and berate. It does not at all help that Hamilton is English. Shockingly, in the Shanghai circuit press room, the non-British press pack broke out in a spontaneous cheer when Hamilton slid into the gravel trap at the pit entry. Nor does it help that he is black. I wondered when, if ever, the race card would be played. It was played this week by Carlos Gracia, head of the Spanish motor sport federation, when he suggested to a Spanish newspaper that it was ironic that a racist country such as Britain should be relying on a black driver to win the world championship. Motherfucker.

It is all this extraneous bollocks which strengthens my firm conviction that, more than anyone else this year, Lewis Hamilton deserves to be world champion. Apart from the team misunderstanding in Hungary - which Alonso reacted to in a most crass manner - Hamilton has conducted himself with grace, charm and decorum throughout the season. While doing so he has produced spectacle after spectacle of superlative driving which has kept us all enthralled. We do not watch races to witness squabbling schoolboys; we do so for the sheer thrill of wheel to wheel motor racing action. If Lewis Hamilton has not delivered this in 2007, my name is Salvador Dali.

To my mind the man who least deserves the championship is Spanish whinger Fernando Alonso. He has not conducted himself like a world champion this season. Imagine, if you will, what conspiracy theories would have been splashed across the front page of every newspaper in Spain if the colossal team error by McLaren over Hamilton's tyres had been made for Alonso. As a result of the man's carping and moaning about "bias" and "foul-play", the FIA are taking the unprecedented step of sending an observer to Interlagos to ensure nothing untoward is done by the McLaren team to Alonso's car. Why would they sabotage his car? Why stoop so low? Why not simply sack the bastard? Severance lawsuits? Pah! McLaren has far deeper pockets than Alonso and can afford expensive lawyers any day. Whatever happens on Sunday, the feeling across the McLaren pit wall will be "goodbye Alonso and never darken our door again, you bastard."

(My views are corroborated by no less than treble world champion and former McLaren driver, Niki Lauda. Please click on this link to see his views: http://www.itv-f1.com/Feature.aspx?Type=General&PO_ID=41081)

I am sure we have all done the maths but it is clear that the man with the least difficult job - at least numerically - is Hamilton. Raikkonen must win and hope for some dreadful misfortune to afflict the McLaren pair. This has happened before. In the last three way shoot-out in 1986 between Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Nelson Piquet, the "third" man, Prost, took the honours. As old Murray Walker used to say, anything can happen in Formula One and it usually does! Alonso needs a win ideally but could get away with coming lower done if Hamilton has a very bad day. The nightmare scenario for Hamilton would be a win for Alonso and third place for him. They would end up with an equal number of points but Alonso would take the crown by virtue of having five races to Hamilton's four.

The Formula One summit will be reached at Interlagos on Sunday. It is a famously bumpy circuit which runs anti-clockwise, so the racing action should be superb. I know I'll have an anxiety related knot in my throat but I'll try and get something frothy and Brazilian down it anyway. The edge of your seat may be a little precarious on Sunday, so I recommend the floor - just to be safe. Doubtless, though, you will,

Enjoy Brazil!

Gitau
18 October 2007

Perspective, perspective

Not very long ago I drove a hundred odd miles in the dark through wind, rain and traffic. I suffered no mishaps, though, and longed for my bed as I signalled to turn right into the road where I lived. Then, one turn of the steering wheel from my destination, bang! I was t-boned from the right. My mind went blank for a moment. Then I wanted to throttle someone. The chap who ran into me approached me hesitantly armed with a scruffy looking piece of paper in his right hand and a chewed up biro in his left. From the corner of my eye I could see his wife, covered up in Islamic headgear, sobbing with her head on the dashboard. It was not the right time for conversations – never mind that the man’s car was destined for the scrap heap and mine was not. I told the man to leave me, walked away from him and kicked a wall until my foot hurt.

Formula One drivers are not ordinary mortals. We cannot relate to how a person can maintain control of a moving vehicle at phenomenal speed, cornering, while fighting phenomenal g-forces. We cannot understand how they feel when crucial races end in disaster. We simply do not know. The best we can do is attempt to compare our own experiences to what we see on our screens and try and imagine how a driver must feel when disaster strikes. I can but imperfectly imagine that I have a vague idea how Lewis Hamilton must have felt this morning in China.

I don’t know why, but when I saw Lewis Hamilton beach his car in the gravel trap at the pit-entry my first thought was to remember a full page advert placed by the Central Bank of Nigeria in the Financial Times warning people to be wary of Nigerian 419 “scammers” (the ruse is always the same: chap claims to be connected to prominent former African leader with loads of money, needs access to banking facilities, offers vast sums, ends up fleecing the greedy and gullible). The advert ended with the words “If it seems too good to be true, it is.”

Hamilton arrived in Shanghai buoyed considerably by his imperious win in the rain at the Fuji circuit in Japan last week. After enduring a couple of days of classic Formula One silliness (ridiculous accusations of “erratic” driving behind the safety car), Hamilton approached qualifying yesterday with the knowledge that Ferrari and Alonso had demonstrated superior speed to his all weekend. Once again, Hamilton approached his final qualifying effort with confidence and self-belief. He positively nailed that lap. There was no answer to it: Hamilton, P1. It seemed like an appropriate fulfilment of destiny. Saturday qualifying? Box ticked. Sunday’s Grand Prix and the World Championship? Biensur! But, as old Murray Walker used to say, it is never over until it’s over. I dearly hope that my instincts were wrong. I desperately want it to be true; miraculous, but true. I want to think back to that FT advert and think about it only in its appropriate context (when I next receive a letter saying “Greetings from Christ, your most excellent goodness. May the blessings of God be showered upon you and your family. My father, the late President Sani Abacha, left $400,000,000 and….”)

Attempting a post mortem of what went wrong is not particularly useful. Tyres were the problem for Hamilton. The decision to delay his tyre change did for him. That is all. As Heiman Roth said to Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II “Mo Green ended up with a bullet in his eye. I did not ask who gave the order. I just accepted it. Because this is the business we have chosen.” A wrong tyre-call for Hamilton was made by someone at McLaren. I will not ask who made the decision.

Tyres, as Hamilton has already seen once before this season, are notoriously fickle things. Remember Michael Schumacher’s disastrous puncture at the championship decider in Suzuka in 1999 after he overtook everyone from the back after stalling his Ferrari on the grid? Many tears were shed then.

There was more to the Chinese Grand Prix than Lewis Hamilton’s retirement. We saw some good driving today. Kimi Raikkonen’s tenacity paid off when he eventually caught out Hamilton under braking. Likewise Fernando Alonso overhauled Felipe Massa by having just that little bit more talent. Jenson Button proved that Honda may one day (soon, I hope!) be a force to be reckoned with by salvaging fifth place. And David Coulthard seems only to get better with age. I was terribly impressed by Sebastian Vettel in the Torro Rosso. He redeemed himself from last week by coming fourth for a hopeless team. He, I think, is the hero of the day. So, as races go, this was rather a good one!

There is a risk of losing perspective (some might argue that it is one only I suffer; I urge you to look at any British newspaper site on the internet and see for yourself that I am in very good company!), so let us get back to basics. Why do we switch on our television sets regularly on alternate Sundays for six months of every year? What we are after is motor racing excitement. We like wheel banging overtaking action. We revel in dramatic crashes. We sweat over split-second pit-stop timing. This is what being a Formula One fan is about, isn’t it? If the championship was settled today, can I say, hand on heart, that the last race of the season at Interlagos would have been as exciting for me as any other this season? Would I still have suffered the shortness of breath, the pounding heart, the fevered brow? Would I have spent an entire Saturday night not sleeping? Would I really?

What we have before us at the end of an epic, outstanding Grand Prix season, is a splendid prospect: a genuine 3 way contest. I know I have two weeks of palpitations to suffer, but what a race to look forward to. At the end of Sunday two weeks hence, depending on whom you support, either a Ferrari or a McLaren driver will be Formula One World Champion 2007. There is nothing new about this – remember Schumacher v Hakkinen? – but this time we do not know which McLaren driver. Perversely, ridiculously, if I am honest with myself, I prefer it like this…

Gitau
7 October 2007
PS. This commentary was supposed to begin like this: “Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and now Lewis Hamilton…”

A special prize to the first person who correctly emails me the remainder of that sentence.

Finest pole yet and...

...we're nearly there. I really don't know how he does it. Behind Alonso and the two Ferraris all weekend and then, in the dying moments of qualifying, Lewis Hamilton blitzes Shanghai. I was going to say that this was Senna-esque but this chap is in a class of his own. He defies comparisons. Superlatives are inadequate.

Hamilton is on pole, Alonso is fourth. I have no nails left. I want tomorrow morning to be over now...

Gitau
6 October 2007

Greatness beckons

Something about the English rubs people up the wrong way. I am firmly convinced that most of the negative sentiment voiced this year about Lewis Carl Hamilton has everything to do with the fact that he is English. People ignore important factors like talent when contemplating the achievements of an Englishman. "Lucky" is the word I have most heard used in description of Hamilton. He is "Lucky" to have landed a drive with a top team. "Lucky" that he was nurtured by McLaren from an early age. "Lucky" that Formula One is an English sport and all the levers will therefore be pulled in favour of an English driver if possible. "Lucky" that McLaren is an English team with an army of English employees. "Lucky" that Hamilton's principal rival was Spanish and, ipso facto, incapable of understanding the nuances of Englishness. Put all these facts together and it is no surprise that Hamilton has been leading the 2007 Formula One world championship is it? QED wouldn't you say?

It was sometimes difficult to defend young Hamilton against these charges before this past weekend. Then the God's of Mt Fuji opened up the Japanese skies and poured out buckets and buckets of rain. At the start of the Japanese Grand Prix as the cars snaked their way round the Fuji race track behind the safety car, even experienced drivers were radioing their pits to say that it was "madness" to contemplate a race under such conditions. You could hardly see your hand in front of your face. It was far too dangerous to drive a race car at speed round there, they said. But cometh the hour cometh the man. The true test of greatness; the undisputable measure of a driver's talent, is rain. The best drivers prove their worth in the wet. To keep control on a surface with no grip requires talent. Rain has always been the great leveller. In extreme wet conditions the quality of car a driver is in and the tyre choices his team makes are as nothing. This is the one time when everyone on the circuit is equal. It is why, for example, Mark Webber in a no-hoper Red Bull stood a chance of coming second had his race not been prematurely ended by Sebastian Vettel (who himself was in with a chance of a first Toro Rosso podium!)

Rain may bring out the best in drivers but it is also the ingredient required to bring out true greatness. Every so often - perhaps once every fifteen years or so - a driver comes along who instinctively knows where the grip is on a sodden circuit. With his eyes shut he can feel his way round a gripless track and pick up speed while everyone else aquaplanes off it. I have immersed myself in Formula One trivia for years and can assure you that only three other drivers have been able to perform at Hamilton's level in Japan on Sunday: Jackie Stewart, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher. Each of these men shared Hamilton's almost super-human ability to be at one with his machine in the wet. The hoary question has now been answered once and for all: “is it the car or is it the driver?” Forget all the bollocks about luck; Hamilton does not need any of it. I know a man who might. In the second half of Sunday's race a moody Spaniard found himself contemplating the wreckage of a car he had smacked into a brick wall. I think it is time for us to hear a little less about luck and more about respect from Mr F. Alonso. Especially now that the 2007 season is drawing to a close and two crucial races await us. The first being this weekend in Shanghai: The Chinese Grand Prix.

In 1989 I was one of many angry university students marching in protest at the shocking massacre by the Chinese Government of unarmed, innocent students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square. China was not a country anybody wanted to know about. It was a dark, evil place. We waved placards and wore bandanas round our heads in solidarity with our compatriots in Beijing. All right, I'll admit it, my customary state of torpor was no different then than it is now. I had been jolted out of bed and into action by a kick to the small of my back delivered by May, a Singaporean girl of Cantonese extraction who found my company to be of interest from time to time when I wasn't snoring. May thought it ridiculous that the Chinese government was allowed to get away with its outrageous behaviour. I thought it sufficient to shake my head solemnly at the bizarre pictures being relayed to us via television. This was not good enough for May and she made this abundantly clear. I rather enjoyed having May around, so I agreed to put up with a little shouting and go on the march.

If you had told me or any of my fellow protestors then that 15 years later I would be sitting before my television watching the first ever Chinese Grand Prix and enjoying it, I would have laughed derisively at you. It would have seemed like mockery. But China has come a long way since then. Tiananmen Square has been quietly forgotten about and China is now a major world economy. So much so that the Chinese have been permitted to join the "civilised" world and have hosted their very own Grand Prix since 2004. The Shanghai circuit - like every circuit with a name beginning with an "S" - is very fast. Hermann Tilke, the much derided German race track architect, raised his game in recent years and produced a few surprises. Shanghai has proved to be one such surprise.

What I am not hoping for is a surprise that upsets the mathematics which now point comfortably towards the result I desire. Lewis Hamilton is 12 points clear of Alonso and 17 ahead of Kimi Raikkonen. It is well within the bounds of possibility that he will win the world championship this weekend. That would be a fairy tale result. After all the messy frustration over "Spygate" and Alonso's distasteful part in it, an end in China would be splendid. After that drive in Japan it cannot be said that Hamilton does not deserve the world championship. He could have a "DNF" in China and then it will be all down to the last race in Brazil and at the end of it the world championship crown will be placed atop the head of any one of Hamilton, Alonso or Raikkonen. If Hamilton does it this weekend something in my bones tells me that Raikkonen will beat Alonso into second place.

Whatever happens over the next two races, the team-mate business between the Englishman and the Spanish world champion is definitely history. Some commentators have mentioned Ferrari as a potential home for Alonso but I can't see it. Notwithstanding the scotching of the rumours by Jean Todt, I cannot see it because Alonso has proved that he is not a team player - not ideal for the Ferrari "family". Renault is a more natural home for Alonso. But there is more mileage to be had out of this story. Watch this space.

The race on Sunday is before the crack of dawn (London time). I don't think I'll bother going to bed at all. I remember doing this seven years ago in anticipation of Michael Schumacher winning his first Ferrari world championship in Japan. I was not disappointed then. I hope I won't be this weekend. It will be an anxious, nail-biting experience but I have no doubt you too will,

Enjoy Shanghai!

Gitau
3 October 2007
PS Apologies and thanks to those of you who enquired about the missing three commentaries. I am pleased and flattered by this. No, I had not fallen off the face of the earth. I had simply gone out into the world to stock up on a few more anecdotes!