Brazil beckons the black man

Inequality and race are curious bedfellows. If you look across the world at countries where large numbers of black people (un)happily co-exist with their white countrymen, you will observe a consistent pattern. The black man is usually the chap cleaning the toilet while the white man is the fellow shitting in it. The geographical spread of it is remarkable: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Mauritius, South Africa and Brazil are just the examples which leap to the mind as I contemplate this. Nowhere are the inequalities more stark than in South Africa and Brazil. In the former case, a black government has enacted policies which have resulted in a black, wealthy middle class with a pronounced penchant for conspicuous consumption. I haven’t been there but I am told that in Brazil, if you’re not a footballer and happen to be black, the odds are heavily against you being the guy doing the shitting.

As the month of November begins the end to the most remarkable year in recent human history, it is to the United States and Brazil that we must turn our eyes. In both countries we are on the brink of witnessing the impossible: a black man on the top step who hasn’t run a marathon or punched someone’s lights out. This time next week the world may have a black Formula One world champion and a black leader of the free world. If Lewis Hamilton and Barack Obama close 2008 at the top I will know that the worm has begun to turn.

The action begins in Sao Paulo at the Interlagos circuit which is situated next door to an almighty slum. Being no stranger to living grandly albeit cheek by jowl with slum dwellers, I understand all too profoundly what it must feel like for Felipe Massa to drive past the slum in his hometown on his way to attempting to stop the clock of history. The black chaps in the slums won’t be yelling in appreciation of a new Brazilian hero. Never. That accolade belongs to the likes of Ronaldo. Once he gets past the snarling black faces and ghastly housing, he will be staring at a sea of white Brazilian faces imploring him to bring the championship home for the first time since Ayrton Senna da Silva did it back in 1991. When this last happened I was a skirt-chasing student, more interested in thighs than tyres.

Things are different now. Just as my daughter, Arabella, has transformed my existence, Lewis Hamilton will walk away from Brazil with the world championship safely in his back pocket and shake up the motor racing world for ever and a day. He does not need to do very much. All he has to do to secure the title is finish the race in fifth place. In the absence of sabotage, mechanical failure or events, the title will belong to the English lad with a father from Grenada. Let us take each in turn.

Sabotage

The last two sabotage attempts I can remember cost the saboteur dearly. In 1997, in a championship deciding final race at Jerez, Michael Schumacher attempted to take Jacques Villeneuve off the track by deliberately running his car into Villeneuve’s. Schumacher ended up losing the championship to Villeneuve and, worse, all his points for the season. Having failed to learn the error of his ways, Schumacher attempted an even more stupid manoeuvre at Monaco in 2006. During qualifying, he ostentatiously parked his car at an obviously dangerous corner claiming engine failure. The incident (as planned) ruined Fernando Alonso’s qualifying lap. Schumacher paid for it ultimately with the 2006 driver’s championship. Alonso has been grinning ever since.

The lesson is clear: don’t mess about; it just isn’t worth it. Methinks the entire paddock have received this message perfectly clearly. If the penalty for messing about involves a penalty to be imposed next year, no driver will want to contemplate it. In a year when everything has been as tight as it has, nobody wants to risk hobbling himself at the start of a new season.

Mechanical failure

All the cars are bullet-proof these days, aren’t they? Are they really? Well, Felipe Massa would probably have something to say about that. Having commanded the Hungarian Grand Prix this year, his engine exploded in a cloud of smoke three laps from the chequered flag and he was forced to retire. That victory, had he achieved it, would have made a significant difference to the championship tables today. He didn’t and it doesn’t.

McLaren-Mercedes in the hands of Hamilton have enjoyed a near perfect year so far. He does tend to drive his car quite hard – and wear his tyres thinner than most – but I think we can almost rule this out as a problem this weekend.

Events

When asked what was likely to blow the mighty British government off course, 50s Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan famously replied “events, dear boy, events”. There is no telling what may happen in a race. If there was there would be no point in racing in the first place! Fernando Alonso (no friend of Hamilton’s) could stall his car on the grid and cause a series of collisions. A Sao Paulo dog could invade the track and require a safety car to assist in getting the animal off. There could be an earthquake. Anything!

The point is we are at the mercy of events, I am afraid. Any damned thing can happen.

Still, mustn’t be apprehensive. After all it is a race and it is held for nothing more than our amusement, so

Enjoy Brazil!

Gitau

31 October 2008

The theatre of the absurd continues in Shanghai

If you had said to me three months ago that Felipe Massa stood a chance of returning to Sao Paulo in October with the ultimate driving prize in the world safely wrapped in his suitcase, I would have advised you to steer clear of the whisky. Somehow, Lewis Hamilton’s charitable nature and the FIA’s crass favouritism of Ferrari have contrived to make this a real possibility. Hamilton’s impetuousness and sheer amateurism at the start of the Japanese grand prix did for his race. But the points deficit to Massa, who finished eighth, would have been reduced from seven to six points had it not been for the intervention of Ferrari’s guardian angel, the FIA. Sebastian Bourdais, who had finished in sixth place suffered a fate similar to that foisted on Hamilton in Spa a few weeks ago. As a consequence of no more than a racing incident, Bourdais was deemed unfairly to have impeded Massa’s progress, awarded a 25 second penalty and thus demoted to tenth place. As a consequence, the points deficit is now five points. Championships are usually decided on the basis of as few points as a single one.

Do the FIA think we are all idiots? I am reminded of a scene from the 1980s Eddie Murphy classic, Beverly Hills Cop. Axel Foley (Murphy) turns up at the Beverly Hills Palm Hotel and is told that there are no rooms available because there has been a mistake made in accepting his reservation. His reaction is a true gem in cinema history: “Don’t you think I realise what’s going on here, miss? Who do you think I am, huh? Don’t you think I know that if I was some hotshot from out of town that pulled inside here and you guys made a reservation mistake, I’d be the first one to get a room and I’d be upstairs relaxing now. But I’m not some hotshot from out of town, I’m a small reporter from “Rolling Stone” magazine that’s in town to do an exclusive interview with Michael Jackson that’s gonna be picked up by every major magazine in the country. I was gonna call the article “Michael Jackon Is Sitting On Top of the World,” but now I think I might as well call it “Michael Jackson Can Sit On Top of the World Just As Long As He Doesn’t Sit in the Beverly Palm Hotel ‘Cause There’s No Niggers Allowed in There!”

So, Lewis Hamilton is robbed of four points in Belgium by the FIA and Massa is gifted one point in Japan by the same bastards. Don’t they think we realise what’s going on here? A twelve point lead has been carefully whittled down to five points. The FIA clearly want to award Felipe Massa the championship by stealth!

If all Lewis Hamilton had to deal with was Ferrari and the FIA, life would be difficult. But it’s worse, far worse. There are two other drivers whom he has ignored throughout the season who could easily make life horrendously bad for him. The first is Robert Kubica who is running third in the championship standings. The BMW driver’s consistency throughout the season has meant that he is now within twelve points of Hamilton’s lead. At this point last year, third placed man, Kimi Raikkonen, was seventeen points adrift of championship-leader, Hamilton, but he went on to take the championship by one point. Two disasters for Massa and Hamilton in China and Brazil and it will be “congratulations Kubica!”

The second driver to worry about is Fernando Alonso in the Renault. It is not a secret that following their less than happy relationship as McLaren team-mates last year, Alonso and Hamilton are at daggers drawn. Alonso is hardly the chap to pop out for a bottle of Krug at the news of Hamilton becoming world champion, so I think it fair to say that it is something he would rather not see. Worse though, it has been rumoured that the extent of his bitterness is such that he is willing to do all he can to sabotage the young Brit. And for the first time in a very long time he looks like he may be in a position successfully to do so. Alonso’s car development skills are superb; so much so that I would call them Schumacheresque. As soon as he left the team, Renault dropped off the radar like a dead asteroid. Now that he has been back for the better part of a year, Renault have begun to come together in a way unseen since 2006. Two wins in a row, however fortuitous, is no mean feat. Since he has no chance of winning anything this year, it would not surprise me if Alonso threw his considerable talent into frustrating Hamilton’s progress. Watch this space.

With the western world throwing open its coffers in a vain attempt at rescuing reckless banks, the only place that seems to have any money now is China. It is perhaps a fitting distraction from these daily woes that this weekend’s Formula One action will be taking place in the People’s Republic. If last year is anything to go by, this should be Hamilton’s race to lose. But 2008 has proved to be the weirdest year I have known in my existence, so I see no reason for motor racing to be exempt from the world of the bizarre.

Nerves, dear boy, nerves. Take your cue from the principal representative of your enemy, the FIA. Earlier this baffling year, your fellow Englishman, Mr Max Mosley, found himself in a dreadful spot of bother over some extra-curricular activities of the carnal kind. He didn’t crawl under a rock and wish he was dead. Oh no. He is made of sterner stuff – nerves of steel. Mosley took on the mighty News International (the vilest news organisation since chief nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels) and won famously. It can be done, dear boy. Hold your nerve!

Meanwhile, the rest of us can bite our nails and try to -

Enjoy Shanghai!

Gitau
16 October 2008

Fuji and nerve control

Many years ago while I was still cutting my teeth as a young banking lawyer in the City of London, I received instructions from the Chase Manhattan Bank to prepare the documentation for the financing of a large shipping vessel. Chase was part of a smallish syndicate of fifteen banks providing the funds for the vessel and, for a large bank like Chase, it was a humdrum, easily digestible transaction. My client at Chase was a charming, young English rose called Vanessa who learned very early in our dealings that all she had to do to make me melt was flutter her eyelids and smile at me.

Vanessa coordinated the comments of the various banks on each draft document that I produced which made for smooth and efficient progress. Being English, Vanessa found it impossible to get her tongue round foreign names. One of the members of the syndicate happened to be a Japanese bank called the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank. Vanessa never bothered attempting to pronounce their name; she instead referred to them constantly as “the Hok Tok Bank”. “Right, Geetar,” she would typically say, “I have some comments from Chase, some from Shitty Bank (Chase’s then rival, Citibank) and none from the Hok Tok Bank.” In keeping with my admiration of Vanessa, I applied her Japanese abbreviation in my documents for the sake of speed. I mean to say, repeatedly writing down or typing “The Hokkaido Takushoku Bank” can rather wear you down.

Once the documentation was agreed, a grand signing ceremony was arranged by Chase in the ballroom of the Hyde Park Hotel. Vanessa and I arrived early to lay out the documents at their appropriate points and to ensure that each guest had a brand new Mont Blanc placed before his seat for the purposes of his signature. When the guests arrived and took their seats, I did what any dogsbody lawyer is paid to do and went round the table from person to person indicating the point at the back of each document where they were to sign it. The bankers chatted amiably amongst themselves while I did this. Vanessa stood at the foot of the table observing my progress. I eventually got to a little Japanese gentleman representing the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank and pointed at the place where I wanted him to sign my document. As his eyes followed my finger he began to moan “Aaah Aaah Aaah!" He then declared with a shout “is not name of bank!” I looked down at my document and my blood froze. At the point reserved for the signature of an authorised signatory of the Hokkaido Takushoko Bank, in bold capital letters stood the name “The Hok Tok Bank”. I stared up at Vanessa and her face was scarlet. Sniggers ran round the table. I wanted to die there and then.

The Hok Tok incident (as I like to call it) put the wind up me to such an extent that I was put off Japan for a very long time – well, at least until I got home and realised that I would have to switch on my Sony television early on the following morning in order to be able to watch qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix! If the Hok Tok incident was dramatic for me it is also true of virtually every Japanese Grand Prix I have ever watched. For some reason – perhaps the fastness of the Suzuka and Fuji circuits or the fact that the race always comes near the end of the season when blood pressures are unduly high – Japan never produces a dull race.

This is of particular importance for those like me who have spent our lives in banking circles and are now walking about with clenched bum cheeks as the banking world falls off a cliff. At times like these distractions are essential. I traditionally have found mine in tasty totty and motor racing. My association with banking imbues me with an aura of toxicity which causes humans to steer well clear of me for fear of contagion – which pretty much means that the former of my distractions is now rendered well beyond my reach. It is for this reason that the Japanese Grand Prix has extra special significance for me this weekend.

As if our nerves weren’t sufficiently jarred by the nail biting end of the 2007 season, 2008 is proving to be even more of a threat to the continuing health of the nervous system. Lewis Hamilton arrives in Japan with a 7 point lead. This would be reason to be cheerful on most days but given that he approached the last two races of 2007 with a 17 point lead which he then squandered, nothing can be taken for granted. Curiously, the usually erratic Italians seem to have learned nerve control better than the English (perhaps from their long association with a robotic German) over the years. But even this is not to be taken for granted. Felipe Massa’s race was destroyed in Singapore by nothing more than the sheer ineptitude of the Ferrari pit crew. One of the two drivers will almost definitely end up being world champion but which one depends upon nerve control.

Circumstances can come into play too. If it rains in Fuji – as well it might – Lewis Hamilton has a better chance than anybody of winning Sunday’s race. His performance in the wet last year in Fuji and this year at Silverstone and Monaco were so breathtakingly commanding, so brilliant that comparisons with Ayrton Senna do not now seem ridiculous. The Fuji circuit at the base of Japan’s great mountain is, like Spa, more given to wet than dry conditions. It will do my heart the power of good if I switch on the television early on Sunday and see the ITV Formula One crew dressed in their rain gear.

Here’s a positive sign: you know you’ve arrived when traffic policemen adopt you as their fast driver of choice. It has been reported that British traffic policemen’s favourite one liner when pulling over a speeding driver is now: "Who do you think you are - Lewis Hamilton?" That’s progress.

Enjoy Japan!

Gitau