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
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
posted by Gitau at 5:25 pm
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