Hamilton leads the charge in Melbourne; bring on Malaysia

If you were the chief engineer at Ferrari, you probably wouldn't be sleeping terribly well after last weekend. Not only were both Ferraris humiliatingly beaten in both qualifying and the race by a resurgent McLaren with Lewis Hamilton as its principal pilot, they suffered the ignominy of three retirements for mechanical reasons. First, Kimi Raikkonen's car broke down during qualifying on Saturday, then his car and that of his team-mate, Felipe Massa, retired for engine related reasons during the race on Sunday. It would have been a little easier to accept the retirements if both drivers were let down by nothing more than their equipment; but no! Both Ferrari men elevated driving incompetence to an art form. To see the world champion making schoolboy overtaking errors and forcing himself off the circuit made me gulp my tea down the wrong way as I struggled to keep a straight face. I knew the absence of electronic toys and the extreme temperatures were going to cause a few headaches for the drivers but what we witnessed in Melbourne was ridiculous. Sunday's carnage was more akin to a dodgem race at the local fair!

Fully aware of Ferrari's woes and with his mind on next weekend's race in Malaysia, Hamilton tightened the screw in his post race comments: "I had plenty of time in me so I just used that to my advantage and tried to look after the tyres". By that he meant he had plentiful reserves of speed which he could have used but did not need to. Later when asked how he had found the incredibly hot conditions, he said "I felt fantastic. I never thought it would have been as physically a breeze as it was." With drivers making error after error because their brains were slowly being fried in their helmets, this was brazen cockiness. Hamilton was inviting the world to throw anything at him and he would be equal to the challenge. As things turned out, Hamilton walked away from Melbourne having set the pole position and won a very challenging race from the front. Raikkonen and Ferrari received the scant consolation of being awarded a solitary point because, notwithstanding his failure to finish, Raikkonen had managed to retire last in a race which had only seven finishers.

It was an absurdly hot day in Melbourne on Sunday. You could see the heat shimmering over the cars as they lined up at the grid for the start of the race. The thought of the layers of clothing each driver had to wear in such oppressive temperatures reminded one that Formula One is very much a physical sport. These chaps may be paid a shed-load of money but, blimey, they do have to work hard for it!

If fitness was necessary for Melbourne, it will be equally indispensable in hot, sultry Malaysia in a few days time. No time to take stock, assess the events of last week and make adjustments to the cars. The teams - many of which will be rebuilding completely wrecked cars as if from new - have to gird their lions and pray to their Gods. Malaysia with its super-fast circuit and changeable weather conditions - from tropical heat to monsoon rain in the blinking of an eye - is not the simplest of races to prepare yourself for without any rest.

I did not know a great deal about Malaysia until I went to university in the late eighties. At the time Malaysia sent entire villages of students to study at UK universities; but the non-Malaysian students often found we had pretty much no contact with the Malaysians. The Malaysians kept themselves to themselves, huddled together in the same corners at lectures or in the cafeteria and spoke amongst themselves in their local dialects. They were mostly middling students; content to get by and leave England having obtained the qualification they had paid so handsomely for, but not flogging their guts to do so. One girl stood out. She was a tall, elegant, extremely haughty girl of Indian extraction called Gurdeep. Aloof to a fault, Gurdeep neither sought the company of her fellow Malaysians nor that of anyone else. She was fiercely critical of mediocrity. Gurdeep had no qualms at upbraiding lecturers who were ill-prepared or giving fellow students the most withering of looks when they dared suggest that she was incorrect at anything. Oh, I forgot a minor detail, she was drop-dead-gorgeous!

One day while in my room discussing the merits of goose down pillows over duck feather ones (or something equally silly) with a giggly girl, I heard a loud rap to my door. I leapt up intending to give the door-rapper a collared ear and opened the door to find five or six anxious looking Malaysians standing outside. I recognised their faces from attendance at lectures but that was about as far as our acquaintance went.
"Hello?" I said.
A girl haltingly asked, almost in a whisper, "have you had chicken pox?"
"What! Chicken pox? Do I look like I'm three years old? Is this some sort of practical joke?"
"No," said someone else, "it is not. Big problem, la. No chicken pox in Malaysia."
"Well, good for people in Malaysia! Now, do you mind, I have some rather delicate business to conclude," I said.
"Gurdeep has chicken pox," said yet another person.
This was becoming surreal. I had more real things to be getting on with indoors." Your idea of humour is well past mine. If you will excuse me, I..."
"She has no one to see her in clinic, la! Very lonely. Can you go?"

I got away from the Malaysians and gave some thought to the conversation I had had with them. What they were telling me was that Gurdeep was under quarantine with chicken pox at the university clinic and needed company but they were unable to provide it because they had never been ill with the pox themselves. It didn't surprise me. They were all a cosseted lot. There was as much chicken pox in Malaysia as anywhere but they had somehow been insulated from it until they got to England.

As I had suffered each childhood illness going before I knew how to write down my name, there was no risk of me contracting chicken pox in the university clinic. I went to see Gurdeep on the following day and found her watching the Austrian Grand Prix in her quarantine room. For a woman who had scarcely permitted me the time of day before, she seemed surprisingly pleased to see me. She insisted I stayed and watched the race - which I did not strenuously object to doing. Her insights into motor racing were impressive. More impressive, though, was her eye for circuit design. "The more innovative circuits will be in places like Malaysia in the next ten years," she said. I told her that suffering chicken pox was no excuse for talking out of her arse. Gurdeep smiled and said "just you wait." The year was 1990.

Gurdeep was so right I wish I could find her now and apologise. Before the end of the decade the magnificent new Sepang circuit had opened in Selangor, Malaysia and the world was allowed to witness one of the most thrilling races of the last few years. The 1999 Malaysian Grand Prix was a sweet foretaste of things to come in Sepang. No race has quite measured up to it since but how many times do you get a man like Michael Schumacher so determined to nail down a point ("Hey look, you cretins, I might have been out for four months but I am not a double world champion for no reason!")?

Some say Lewis Hamilton may break Schumacher's many records. Possibly, but it is early days yet. Let us see how he gets on in Malaysia this weekend. You may be tempted to sacrifice this weekend's racing and do Eastery things instead but I would ill advise it. You might easily miss something for which you will kick yourself forever. So sod the festivities, get out of bed, switch on the telly and I'm sure you will,

Enjoy Malaysia!

Gitau
19 March 2008

The season begins in the lucky country

Have you ever heard of Joe Calzaghe? No? Neither had I until December last year. Well, he is the world super-middleweight boxing champion, Welsh and has an Italian father. Still confused? Calzaghe was voted by the British television watching public to be the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2007. He was up against Lewis Hamilton, a name on the lips of the entire world from Arusha to Zvenigorod, a man who had claimed his entitlement to the trophy as early as June. But the Brits looked askance. Instead, they gave it to Calzaghe. The set lip and stolid expression as Hamilton was called up to receive the runners-up trophy gave clear indication of his mindset. He was not surprised.

You could see towards the end of last season that wonder and amazement about Hamilton was rapidly turning into envy and resentment. This was overlaid with a thinly disguised veneer of racism. When the season was over and Hamilton had the time to throw himself at the world - magazine covers, television specials, even seven (yes, seven!) biographies and an autobiography at the ripe old age of 22! - the knives were unsheathed. To many at home the sweet, innocent little lad from Stevenage was now an uppity nigger, a swaggering, cocky bastard. Hamilton did not do himself too many favours by moving to Switzerland to avoid paying Gordon Brown's ruinous taxes and then claiming that he was doing it to avoid the wild UK paparazzi but by the time he sat down to his roast turkey at Christmas, he must have known that the honeymoon was well and truly over. During winter testing it cannot have come as too galling a shock to find himself taunted in Spain by a gaggle of Spanish idiots with blacked-up faces, wearing wigs and t-shirts with racially offensive epithets scrawled across them.

The world is different for Lewis Hamilton now but I think it is a more realistic and, ultimately, better place for him. He did not win the world champion at his first attempt but he will be starting the new season stronger and wiser. He now knows that it is a cold, ruthless world out there. A world in which gifts are never dished out to the "nice" guys. The most successful driver in the history of Formula One, Michael Schumacher, was many things but one thing he certainly was not was nice. Similarly, of two things there can be no dispute. One, Ayrton Senna was a driving genius. Two: Ayrton Senna was an arsehole.

But let us not look backwards. A new season of Formula One racing awaits us. And what a season it promises to be. We begin the action at one of the most beautiful circuits on the calendar, the Albert Park in Melbourne. I am really pleased about this each March. It lifts my mood no end. Beginning the season in a depressing place like that ghastly circuit in the desert (Bahrain) would be so awful a prospect as to kill any desire for the sport in my heart. But the Australian Grand Prix is a different beast. Sunshine bathes the place, girls in skimpy bikinis radiate health and happiness, cars glow with a captivating lustre; the place is simply stunning! Every time the first weekend of F1 racing comes round I look outside at the wind and rain lashing at my window, switch on the television and am filled with a warm glow. I keep telling myself that I must go to Melbourne for the next season-opener but I still haven't been. Perhaps next year...

We have not seen any action yet but it seems clear to me that during this year's racing we will be back in the more traditional territory of only two realistic title contenders: McLaren and Ferrari. McLaren have a de facto No. 1 in Lewis Hamilton, so he will have first dibs at whatever new stuff there is produced by the boffins at McLaren headquarters. The world champion, Kimi Raikkonen, will, however, be a difficult man to beat. Ferrari looks very good indeed and Raikkonen will enjoy the useful impetus a world championship gives to a new championship campaign - especially because last year's success came in his first year at a new team and against the odds. The odd win may be sneaked in by the likes of BMW, Honda and Renault but I am persuaded beyond doubt that on the remorseful day in November when we say goodbye to yet another season at the circuit by the slum, we will watch either an Englishman or a Finn step onto the podium as world champion 2008. There is plenty to be enjoyed between now and then.

For a start, driver aids like traction control and engine assisted braking have been consigned to the dustbin of ignoble Formula One history. Now, a driver will have to control his car by the deftness of his steering and the speed of his foot. Excellent. Secondly, qualifying has been smartened up so that the asinine fuel-burning phase of the final qualifying section has been made what it should always have been: a straight driver shoot-out. There will be mistakes galore, my friends. Tears too. But this is what we have been crying for since goodness knows when. Miles Davis would, I am sure, permit me to christen this season "The Rebirth of the Cool Race".

I have been careful to avoid invitations from my Australian chums this year. I still distinctly recall a weekend in Earls Court twelve years ago. An Aussie chap called Hilary - whom I often pilloried for having a girl's name ("your father and mother looked at their new born baby boy, saw it had bollocks and then chose to call you Hilary! How cruel is that? Next you'll be telling me your middle name is Leslie!") - invited me to join him and his mates in watching "the Grand Prix Down Under". What they hadn't told me was that they intended to do so as if in Australia - on Australian time. Barbequing sausages and playing cricket in the middle of a sodden, breezy and cold London night in anticipation of an early morning start to the Melbourne race was never high on my list of priorities. Still, it couldn't be helped. By the time the race came round, my tummy was bloated from too many badly cooked sausages and my head sore from too much Castlemaine XXXX. The 1996 race - the first one ever held in Melbourne - is, thus, but a blur in my memory. I have since religiously stuck to the comfort of my own living room for the first race of every season.

It is to my living room then that I shall repair on Sunday morning armed with nothing more intoxicating than a cup of tea. If you can avoid staying up all night but instead can sufficiently control your nerves to watch an early morning race with refreshed eyes, I would advise it. Whatever you do,

Enjoy Melbourne!

Gitau
12 March 2008