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
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
posted by Gitau at 5:09 pm
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