English perfidy in Barcelona?

The English have a habit of upsetting people even when they do not wish to. Latin types spend their nights in dread of “perfidious Albion” and usually tread with caution around the English. In a sport where one is literally placing one’s life in the hands of others, it is perhaps best to remember the lyrics of the song from West Side Story called A Boy Like That I Have a Love: “stick to your own kind”. This is the advice which, I am sure, Rubens Barrichello’s grandmother would have given him upon learning that he was about to sign up with Brawn GP, an English racing team with a team-mate driver who happens also to be, well, English.

You might recall that a couple of years ago Spanish racing driver, Fernando Alonso, another emotional Latin, convinced himself that he had been stitched up by the English. He had joined McLaren, an English F1 team, and was partnered with a new English rookie called Lewis Hamilton. The Latin temperament got the better of the Spaniard and the sorry affair ended in acrimony.

I am unsurprised that the Portuguese driver, Rubens Barrichello, is feeling decidedly miffed. He finished yesterday’s Spanish Grand Prix convinced he had been double-crossed. Saturday had not gone ideally and all he was able to do was qualify in third place. But he used his loaf and his vast experience at the start of the race to take off so expertly that not only was he able to get past second placed man, Sebastian Vettel, but also the pole-sitter and his team-mate, Jenson Button, an Englishman.

This should have been enough. Since both Barrichello and his team-mate were in identical cars and racing using exactly the same three-stop strategy, in the absence of a crash, he had the race win comfortably in the bag. But, no, Ross Brawn, ace strategist and team principal of Brawn GP quietly (some might say deviously) switched Jenson Button to a two stop strategy. Result: Button got ahead of Barrichello and took the chequered flag in first place for the fourth time this season. A guaranteed win had been snatched away from Barrichello by the man who mastered the dark art of mid-race strategy switches with Michael Schumacher at Benetton and Ferrari. He sank into a sofa at the end of the race and asked nobody in particular “how did I lose that race?”

You could argue this two ways. You could say that Ross Brawn read the race appropriately – as he is paid to do – and chose to go for the switch so as to maximise points for the Brawn GP team. That would be reasonable, I think. Alternatively, you could, if you are an Anglophobe, say that the English team principal of the English Brawn GP team stitched up his Portuguese driver.

The latter view is, I respectfully argue, erroneous. It is still very early days in the season. Ross Brawn spent many years working at Ferrari and understands the Latin temperament very well. The last thing he needs is a suspicious Latin muttering into his helmet every time he sits in a Brawn car. Brawn GP is not Ferrari in the Schumacher days. There is no prima donna world champion who needs cosseting at Brawn. Winning the constructors championship would be like finding platinum at the bottom of your toilet – at least that is what everybody would have said at the start of this remarkable season. Brawn does not need to favour Jenson Button – not just yet anyway.

And remember, nearly all of the Formula One teams are English, so they surely must have learned about English perfidy before now...

The most famous non-English team is, of course, Ferrari. What the devil is going on? Kimi Raikkonen, the best paid driver in F1 seems to have given up completely. The team appears to be in disarray. I am no fan but I do not like to see Ferrari so out of sorts. It just isn’t edifying. Whatever one may feel about the team, one cannot contemplate Formula One without Ferrari. It just wouldn't be Fomula One.

Monaco, the most glamorous race on the calendar, is on in a fortnight. Let’s see how well young Jenson can perform there.

Gitau
11 May 2009