Scarlet success in Spain

The Spaniards are an excitable lot. Saturday saw them in paroxysms of glee as local hero, Fernando Alonso, flew past the timing line and into provisional pole position. The ferocity with which he punched the air in delight was only matched by the sullenness of his expression minutes later when Kimi Raikkonen calmly squeezed his accelerator and sailed his peerless Ferrari into a quicker time. Alonso's reasoning was transparent and very Spanish: "sod the race - I can't win it anyway - but I must have myself at the top of the timesheets on Saturday!" Like a bullfighter playing to a crowded arena, he wanted the glory of the moment more than anything. He wanted to hear the echoing cheers of the thousands upon thousands of Spaniards who had filled the Circuit de Catalunya to the rafters. Alonso knew his Renault did not stand a chance in a race against the Ferraris, McLarens and BMWs, so he chose instead to go for the big one on Saturday by having his team fuel his Renault as lightly as possible on Saturday. Sadly, it did not work.

This is where one has to ask oneself whether a racing driver should behave like a sprinter or more like a marathon runner. Having been pipped from second to third at the start of the race by a storming Felipe Massa, Alonso inevitably lost his third place later in the race. Lewis Hamilton performed one of the starts which made him famous last season and managed to leapfrog himself from fifth to third. All he then had to do was wait until Alonso came in for his very early pit stop and then pump in some super-quick laps. In a notoriously processional circuit, this meant that the podium order was then definitively decided. Alonso suffered even worse humiliation when Bang! His engine gave up the ghost halfway through the afternoon. I rather think he could have made it last the race distance and salvaged some useful points from the day if he hadn't flogged it so hard on the day before. But that is thinking like a marathon driver.

Think Michael Schumacher and you will see what I mean. Schumacher would read a race, see how things were going and restrain himself from going for glory. At the back of his mind always was the simple fact that the world championship is always decided on the basis of the chap with the largest number of points at the end of the season. Going for glory was what did for Hamilton last year. He succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in China and will never ever forget about it if he lives to be a hundred.

Some might argue that the numbers game is a cynical approach to motor racing. Each race should be viewed as just that: a race. Every Grand Prix weekend should be a spectacle; something to be looked back upon and cherished. This argument would hold true if we still had decent circuits where drivers raced each rather than danced behind each other in a never ending processional snake.

And they don't get much more processional than the Circuit de Catalunya. It has now been statistically proven to be even worse than the street circuit in Monaco. The television anchor man pointed out to us yesterday that Barcelona now has the record of poles to wins. In other words, in circuits as pathetically designed as this one and nearly all of the new ones created by Hermann Tilke - the German architect with about as much imagination as a pancake - you might as well cancel the Sunday event and restrict the weekend exclusively to Saturday qualifying. Admittedly, yesterday's event was rescued by the number of incidents that happened on track. For a warm, dry day in Barcelona the sheer number of crashes and engine blow-ups was remarkable. I lost count after the third safety car episode and the sixth retirement.

In the end what we saw was a return to the two race days when Schumacher was at the helm of Ferrari: the race the Ferraris were in and the one in which everybody else was participating. The Raikkonen and Massa one-two result was phenomenal but, ultimately - yawn! - boring.

One incident gave me pause. Heikki Kovalainen suffered a front left tyre blow out that forced his McLaren to go shooting through the gravel trap and into the tyre barrier at a speed of 145 mph. Ten years ago he would probably have suffered a serious injury or worse (this was almost exactly how Michael Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone in 1999). Fifteen or more years ago he would have been dead. In the event, he had to be carted off to hospital, concussed but alive and well.

What is refreshing about this season is the form of the BMWs. Hamilton had a reasonably tough job holding off Robert Kubica, who eventually bagged fourth place, but what is more interesting is his and his team-mate, Nick Heidfeld's, consistency thus far this season. The rewards of this are clearly demonstrated on the constructors'' championship league table. Ferrari leads with 47 points and BMW is second with 35. That is significant progress. Mario Theissen, BMW team boss, must be a very satisfied man.

Someone said at the start of the season that this year would be a lot more difficult for Hamilton than last. Undoubtedly. Reason? The return of Ferrari.

Gitau
28 April 2008

Bahrain and a reality check

The danger of scooping up luck by the spade full in one's first Formula One season is that one builds in one's fans an expectation of easy success at every race. Lewis Hamilton had a disastrous weekend in Bahrain and all of the blame for his dreadful showing in Bahrain can be placed squarely at his door. Crashing his car in free practice after an unforced error on Friday was pretty bad, but he made the most of qualifying on Saturday and achieved a respectable third place. Then he threw it all away in the race yesterday . Failing to activate launch control at the start caused his car to go into anti-stall mode. All he could do was sit and watch as half the field went past him. In tenth place, panic seized him and he attempted a clumsy overtaking manoeuvre on the Renault of former team-mate Fernando Alonso. It failed. He ended up climbing into the back of the Renault and ensuring that he would leave Bahrain having spent the afternoon as a back marker without scoring a single point.

McLaren's woes were Ferrari's gain. Starting second and fourth on the grid, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen easily found themselves in the lead and heading for their first one-two of the season. Massa was peerless as he took the chequered flag for his second Bahrain win in a row. Now Raikkonen has a commanding lead of 19 points while Hamilton is not just not in the lead, but now joint third in the championship stakes (with Robert Kubica and his team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen).

I would say that Ferrari will easily walk this season but that is impossible with the performance of BMW thus far. Not only did Robert Kubica gain an imperious pole position on Saturday, he was no more than a couple of seconds behind the Ferraris on Sunday. Team-mate Nick Heidfeld, is in second place in the championship standings and, crucially, two points ahead of Lewis Hamilton

There is a long way to go until the end of the season and far too early for anybody to be counting their chickens, but it is clear that the challenge for Hamilton looks much more formidable than it did last year. The chaps in the best driving seat at the moment must be the boys in scarlet.

Three weeks to regroup before things start up again in Europe. Barcelona could be a crucial race...

Gitau
07 April 2008

Desert follies

I have never hidden my disdain for the state of the art circuit at Sakhir in the empty desert of Bahrain. Forsaking time-honoured classic circuits like Watkins Glen, New York, Kyalami, South Africa and The A1 Ring, Austria, Bernie Ecclestone chose to persuade his Arab sheikh friends to part with some dosh and construct a circuit in the desert four years ago which was at first and still remains resolutely counter-intuitive. The cynicism of all this causes the blood to boil. If the championship was not the result of an entire season of races, I would advise disregarding Bahrain and doing something else at the weekend with your time. As we saw last year and many times previously, in Formula One you cannot afford to write off any race. Every last point matters in the end.

There is a distasteful "mine is bigger than yours" tendency rearing its ugly head in the Middle East. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia revealed plans the other day to construct a skyscraper one mile high near Jeddah. The monstrosity will stand at a height of 1,600m (5,200ft), more than twice as tall as the next tallest building in the world. There is no need for any such erection in Jeddah or anywhere else in the world; but there is an overwhelming urge felt by the sheikh to stick two fingers up at his kinsmen across the Arabian Gulf in Dubai.

You see, the Dubai sheikhs have gone a little mad with this whole construction business. Tired of travelling the world to see its wonders, they woke up one morning and said to themselves ""f***k it, we can build it all here! Who needs Alpine ski slopes when you can build an internal ski resort complete with lots of artificial snow? Who needs to go to New York or Shanghai to see buildings disappearing into the sky? We will have Burj Dubai. In fact, while we are at it, who needs the world? We'll build a new world in the sea!" The Burj Dubai bit was too much for poor old Prince Al-Waleed. The other stuff was playboy rubbish to him but this spoke to him. He was happily planning a trip to see the family of his latest wife when along came a letter inviting him to the official opening of Burj Dubai. It ruined his day. So much so that he was soon in serious discussions with architects and construction engineers. And so, we will soon have the pointless mile-high building. Ridiculous.

Similar feelings lay behind the momentous decision to construct a Formula One circuit on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi sheikhs watched Bahrain glowing in the celebrity firmament as it hosted race after race of the world's most glamorous sport and choked on their super-sweet tea. "We have more oil than they do, have we not? We get more global attention than they do, do we not? So why the devil do they get to host the world's celebrities in their bit of the desert once a year and we don't? This cannot continue!" And so it came to pass. Bernie Ecclestone was summoned to the Emir's palace, showered with gold and told to get on with the job. He did. From 2009 there will be two Grands Prix in the desert. Lord, give me strength...

These sheikhs can be hypocritical bastards. The Arab countries are all supposed to be "dry", so you won't see any champagne on the Bahrain podium on Sunday. Instead they will provide some frothy piss for the podium spraying games - which is guaranteed to delight Kimi Raikkonen no end. But if you go into the tourist hotels you can have as much booze as you like. Your boozing companions, surprise surprise, will be the self same sheikhs.

The closest I have come to murdering a man was in London in the '90s while shopping with Liz, my then girlfriend. Liz had long blond hair which went all the way to the small of her back. As we moved up the escalator in Selfridges to the Ladies footwear section, we heard a throaty but very audible whisper from behind us declare "how much for hair?" We turned to see a swarthy Arab sheikh in full regalia (white dress, red and white handkerchief on his head - you know the look) smiling broadly. When the escalator got to the top he quickly took me aside and asked how much I wanted for Liz. I gathered as much phlegm as I could in my throat and gave his head-handkerchief a good shower before grabbing Liz and leaving the shop. Later that year, a German doctor received 50 lashes in Arabia for daring to snog a nurse who was not his wife.

It may be in Bahrain but it is also round three in the Formula One world championship battle. Ferrari came back with impressive vigour in Malaysia and, with his win there, Kimi Raikkonen is now well up in the championship battle with 11 points behind Lewis Hamilton's 14. 2008 is looking less like a two horse race than I had predicted. I am delighted to see BMW doing so well. At least one has finished on the podium in each of the two races thus far (which is more than can be said for either Ferrari or McLaren) and Nick Heidfeld is equal on points with the reigning world champion.

Bahrain is a crap circuit, so qualifying is super-important. Races have tended to be dull affairs in Bahrain and one can fully expect that the qualifying order will also be the race finishing order. I hope I am surprised. I hope there is a freak storm in Sakhir and dust and rain everywhere on Sunday. I hope also that I will step out of my flat tomorrow morning and slide into a nice new Ferrari...

Enjoy Bahrain!

Gitau
03 April 2008