Singapore ends season’s speculation

When I first began to see lead Pussycat Doll vocalist, Nicole Scherzinger, appearing at Formula One circuits, I would smile knowingly to myself or exchange glances with whomever I might have been watching the race. An enticing girl who sang for a band with as laughable a name as The Pussycat Dolls and thrust her hips alluringly while mouthing lyrics like “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me” seemed ideal for discussing Uganda but not a great deal else. More power to the Hamilton boy, I thought, he has found himself a very useful diversion from worries about oversteer and tyre graining and who can blame him!

In a mostly dull Singaporean Grand Prix yesterday, the camera kept moving from the racing circuit, where Lewis Hamilton was driving expertly at the front of a long snake, to Nicole sitting next to another driver’s bit of totty. She – Nicole, that is – appeared to be explaining the finer points of F1 racing to her companion. From her hand gestures and head movements, it appeared to me that she knew what she was talking about. This was a good sign. There is something between the girl’s ears after all. If she is taking as keen an interest as this at what her boyfriend does for a living, there may just be some long term hope in this relationship; notwithstanding that many other young ladies have submitted applications for Nicole’s position expressing a detailed and expert knowledge of Uganda.

It was not Singapore’s fault that the race was not as exciting as one would have liked, it is just that street circuits – with the exception of Monaco which oozes history and tradition - are poor substitutes for well designed, proper overtaking circuits like Spa, Silverstone, or Suzuka. That, of course, depends on what you want to see most in Formula One. Is it wheel-to-wheel racing or beautiful people in picturesque surroundings? Call me odd but I tend to have a fondness for the former.

Having expertly put his car on pole on Saturday, Hamilton never once put a foot wrong from the start of the race to the chequered flag. After his misplaced heroics at the last lap in Monza which resulted in an unnecessarily smashed McLaren, Hamilton negotiated the narrow corners of the Marina Bay street circuit as if his car was on rails. With talent like he has and age on his side, it is almost self-evident that another world championship will soon be his for the taking.

Speaking of world championships, after qualifying appallingly on Saturday - and appearing to all the world like a man who was haunted each night by a succubus – Jenson Button looked like a man determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Nevertheless, he drove a near perfect race to fifth place and, crucially, managed to finish a significant championship point ahead of his closest championship rival, Rubens Barrichello, with three races to go. The gap Barrichello must now bridge is 15 points. This is difficult but not impossible. Remember, Lewis Hamilton was 17 points ahead of Fernando Alonso in 2008 but managed to throw it all away and deliver victory to Kimi Raikkonen at the last race. Raikkonen ended up becoming world champion ahead of both Hamilton and Alonso by a single point.

The mood in F1 circles is not quite as feverish as it has been in recent years. It seems to be received wisdom that Jenson Button will be world champion in 2009 and more attention is, therefore, being devoted to which driver is going where in 2009.

The worst kept secret in the F1 paddock is that Fernando Alonso will be driving for Ferrari in 2009. Anybody with a hint of a working knowledge of the sport will have known that the Spaniard was merely cooling his heels at Renault for a couple of years. He had stormed out of McLaren in 2007 without a suitable home for him as an A-list driver. The only other comparable team to McLaren at the time was Ferrari but both its seats were filled with other A-list names. Now, although the contractual position for both its drivers is unchanged since 2007 – both Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen are contractually bound to drive for the scarlet team in 2009 – Ferrari, in their eagerness to sign Alonso up, appear to have done a deal with Mclaren. Raikkonen will go back to his old team as Lewis Hamilton’s team-mate in 2009.

As things currently stand, the A-list for 2009 reads as follows:

Lewis Hamilton – McLaren

This is not surprising. Nurtured by McLaren from the tender age of 13, Hamilton is as loyal to his team as it is possible to be.

Kimi Raikkonen – McLaren

I have sometimes doubted Raikkonen’s commitment to F1 racing since winning a world championship in his Ferrari debut year. It had been rumoured that he wanted to leave F1 and begin a career in rallying. This gives him another year at the top end with an A-list salary to boot. Raikkonen is very much his own man, so he is unlikely to be discomfited by the fact that McLaren is virtually built around Hamilton.

Fernando Alonso – Ferrari

For a double world champion, this offers Alonso the best opportunity of competing on equal terms with the rest of the A-list. However, Alonso is a prima donna who expects a racing team to suck his dick on a day-to-day basis. At team Ferrari/Schumacher where loyalty counts for everything, this will not happen. Also, Ferrari loves Felipe Massa. Worse than this, Michael Schumacher loves Felipe Massa. Still, I don’t think Alonso will be subjected to a team intoxicated like McLaren was in 2007 with Hamiltonmania. All in all this is a good choice for both team and driver.

Felipe Massa – Ferrari

Massa is as at home at Ferrari as he could ever be anywhere. He nearly died this year in a nasty accident which nearly ripped out his brain. The man’s motivation after this is nothing short of sensational. No surprises here, then.

Jenson Button – Brawn

Button has made a few career choice blunders but it looks like he has finally found himself a team in which he fits comfortably. Is it conceivable that any driver would willingly walk away from master strategist Ross Brawn? Hardly.

Rubens Barrichello - ?

At 37, Barrichello is lucky to have had a drive at all this year. He has lots of useful experience, though, and I see him ending up in a little bolt-hole like a new or up and coming team. At a guess, I would say Lotus is a good possibility for the next year or two and then retirement in Sao Paulo with enough money for a lifetime of golfing.

Before you give up on it, the 2009 season isn’t over yet. There is, after all, a race next weekend at a Japanese classic. Yes, you guessed right. Suzuka it is.

Gitau
28 September 2009

Renault begins to suffer

There is widespread outrage that Renault got off so lightly from Crashgate (see, for example, the comment by Tugs to my post yesterday). Well, it appears that the FIA are not being allowed the final word on the sordid affair. See below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/renault/6228807/Renaults-principal-sponsors-pull-out-over-race-fixing-scandal.html

Singapore hopes for an end to its shame

They must be spitting razors in Singapore’s corridors of power as I write this.

Singapore is perhaps the perfect example of what “enlightened dictatorship” is capable of achieving. The expression is often derided as oxymoronic but Singapore seems to prove that it is not. A prosperous first world economy was produced out of nothing in less than a single generation because a people collectively and willingly bowed to the will of a powerful and extremely clever lawyer, Mr Harry Lee Kuan Yew.

In Mr Lee’s mind prosperity depended first upon decent, rule-abiding behaviour and unquestioning respect for authority. If Mr Lee woke up with a bad feeling about something, his solution was to find a clever, if legal, way of declaring that something to be illegal and then see to it that the law was strictly enforced in both letter and spirit. Thus, when carelessly disposed of chewing gum was found to be blocking the doors of Singapore’s shiny new underground trains, Mr Lee’s authorities did not reach for lily-livered cures like a severe fine. No. Chewing gum was banned outright from the country. To discourage slovenliness and poor hygiene, strict sanctions were imposed against filth. If you deposit an unsightly mess in a Singaporean toilet and leave it for others to deal with, you will find yourself hauled off to chokey; leaving a toilet unflushed is a criminal offence.

Even august western publications like The Economist have found themselves banned from Singapore for daring to be critical of the government’s (for which read “Mr Lee’s”) methods.

The no nonsense nature of Mr Lee’s methods was brought into sharp focus in the 1990s. An American teenager called Michael Fay thought he could treat Singaporean residential streets like Chicago’s back alleys and vandalise motor cars when his excitable spirit moved him. Fay was arrested, tried and sentenced to six strokes of the cane. The Americans could not believe that one of their citizens could suffer such “barbarism” and the then president, Bill Clinton, tried asking the Singaporeans to be sensible. The message from Singapore was despatched back to Washington at a high rate of speed: “you do not tell us what to do with criminals here, matey!” The foolish boy was duly flogged.

Imagine then the outrage, the fury, the sheer indignation felt in the island city-state at the certainty that their country will now forever more be associated with easily the most blatant example of crookedness in motor racing and one of the worst ever in the history of sport itself. The 2008 Singaporean Grand Prix could hardly have been more execrable. Nelson Piquet Jr. was ordered to crash his car by his bosses at Renault in order to force a safety car episode at a time which so suited his team-mate Fernando Alonso that he went on to win the race. Formula One is now thought about as a mafia-controlled, vile sport where anything – even people’s lives – is expendable. Because of the skulduggery of Flavio Briatore and his loyal lieutenant, Pat Symonds, the first ever night-time Grand Prix – an event which was supposed to showcase the best of Formula One’s glamour and pizzazz - is now linked with the ludicrous new word “Crashgate”. Oh dear.

It does not take too much imagination to see that some hapless government official or minister from the appropriate government department was probably summoned to the office of Mr Lee Kuan Yew – who, although well into his eighties, now sits in the Singapore cabinet of his son, the Prime Minister, as Minister Mentor – and had heavy objects hurled at his head.

As we now know, Briatore and Symonds are now not even allowed within a mile of a Grand Prix circuit, so you might well be wondering what is to become of Nelson Piquet Jr. You are probably thinking that he is viewed like someone who has just emerged from the depths of a pit latrine liberally covered in “mature” substances and will never drive an F1 car again, right? Wrong!

At least four new teams are coming into Formula One next season and one of them has almost certainly lined Piquet Jr. up for a drive. Why? Well, Piquet Jr. is no ordinary driver, you see. This, however, is nothing to do with the Brazilian’s driving skills. Putting it delicately, he is not the most brilliant of racers (by all accounts, he even made a hash of the crash in Singapore – it wasn’t supposed to be so severe and it should have been against the opposite wall). But Nelson Piquet Jr. is special because – yes, you guessed it! – he is the son of Nelson Piquet Sr. Daddy has never been sparing in lavishing millions on his son – he even bought the boy his own racing team in Formula Three and GP2 – and would not be averse to paying any cash strapped new team a few million to keep the boy racing. Nelson Piquet Sr. is also very influential and could attract a lot of sponsorship money to any team employing his son. In other words, whether or not Piquet Jr. will be driving in Formula One any more is a no-brainer.

Singapore - and those in the world, like me, who wish we could all move on from this tawdry affair – sits with bated breath in anticipation of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix. Will it provide sufficient razzmatazz to allow us a soothing break from talk of gangsterism, thuggery and cheating? I await it with interest; particularly because we are now at a critical point in the drivers’ world championship.

With only four races left this season, there are now just four drivers with a mathematical chance of being world champion: Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. The two Red Bull drivers, Vettel and Webber are so far behind Button – 26 and 29 points respectively – one has to conclude that it would take something as terrible as a crash eliminating Button and Barrichello from the rest of the season’s races for either of them to be in with a chance.

Barrichello looks like the only driver with a realistic chance of displacing Button. The Brazilian is 14 points behind his English team-mate. Button must, therefore, make 26 points in the last four races to prevent Barrichello defeating him. That is to say, Button must achieve at least 3 third places and one second place if Barrichello wins all four races. Given Barrichello’s age, experience and the fact that this is almost certainly his best and last ever chance of winning a world championship, one must conclude that four wins from him are highly likely. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose by going hell for leather. Button, by contrast, has everything to lose by gunning for it. I expect a daredevil will to win from the Brazilian and caution from the Englishman.

What we do not know is the role team orders are likely to play. Will Ross Brawn really let his two drivers race each other to the wire? I would love to be a fly on the wall of the team briefings this weekend.

If I was to bet I would put my money on Button. In all the circumstances it seems safest.

Notwithstanding Crashgate, the Singapore Grand Prix is an exciting night-time race at an amazing street circuit. Try and concentrate on this as you knock back a chilled Tiger beer and,

Enjoy Singapore!

Gitau
24 September 2009

The bullet finds Briatore

My friend Zachary Oluoch got engaged to his Italian girlfriend a couple of years ago. Ochieng’s fiancé, Isabella, was from the town of Ravenna in the wealthy Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. Having never been to Italy, Ochieng was unaware that to an Italian, where one comes from matters a great deal. The differences between the north and the south are staggeringly stark. The southern part of the country is, to put it mildly, another country all together. The variation is complicated but the best way to summarise it would be to say north, rich and posh; south, poor and grubby. It is the reason there is a forthright political party, the Northern League, that advocates secession of the north.

The bit about the southern part of Italy which fascinates me the most will not be surprising to a keen reader of this blog: it is the home of the Mafia, the Calabria and all the other gangsters. That is where you find the shady, dangerous fellows you do not want to mess with.

As his relationship progressed steadily, Oluoch decided to take his fiancé on a Kenyan holiday with a difference. After taking in the joys of Mount Kenya, Tsavo and the Masai Mara, Oluoch included a surprise trip to the coastal town of Malindi. The couple arrived in Malindi at night, tired from a day’s safari and went straight to bed at the End Roc Hotel. When they awoke the next morning, Oluoch announced his surprise to his fiancé. “Today, my darling,” he said, “I am going to show you a home away from home. I will take you into Malindi town and you will see that far from being a Kenyan town it is Italian. You will see people from your country, eat food from your country and even walk in the streets licking Italian ice cream.”

Oluoch was perplexed when, after no more than a half hour’s stroll through Malindi town, Isabella fell into a mood and refused to speak to him for three days. When she eventually spoke on the flight back to London she, in a way only a highly strung woman can, put Oluoch firmly in his place. “Do not ever dare to presume that I have anything whatsoever in common with those people calling themselves Italian in Malindi,” she said. The subject was thenceforth closed forever and a day.

Flavio Briatore, the Svengali of Formula One, is not from the south of Italy. He, however, has spent, sufficient time with the denizens of the region to have acquired enough of their ways to get by in the world. Why, he even owns an island off the coast of Malindi where he has been known to entertain supermodels like Heidi Klum and Naomi Campbell. The influence Briatore has wielded over the sport has been legendary. There is no better talent scout than Briatore – after all it is he who discovered two of F1’s most outstanding drivers, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.

But, as any Mafioso will tell you for nothing, influence comes at a heavy price. Each success adds an enemy or two to a waiting gang of thugs hell-bent on destroying you. Remember, even the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, was gunned down in the street by rival gangsters. If you engineer the embarrassing filming of the FIA president as he indulges in le vice Anglais or sack the son of a Brazilian household name, you must be aware that at some corner on some day a bullet will be waiting for you.

Well, Flav will have lots of time to spend in Malindi with his shady friends now. For 16 September 2009 is the day he will remember for the rest of his life as the day when the bullet found him.

See below:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/formula_1/article6836809.ece

Gitau
16 September 2009

Gangsterism and, er, the little matter of a race in Monza

If you took the portrayal of Italians on the large and small screens as being representative of Italy, you would think that the country was heavily in thrall to the mafia. You could be forgiven for imagining that everybody in Italy wears dark glasses, hats and two-tone shoes if all you ever watched were films like Goodfellas or television shows like The Sopranos. While Hollywood Americans glamorise the life of the gangster (“As far back as I can remember I’ve always wanted to be a gangster” – Goodfellas, a film by Martin Scorsese), Italians in “the old country” show it warts-and-all in films like Gomorra, as a vile, dangerous existence to be avoided at all costs.

Formula One, while retaining very close links with Italy (the Italian Grand Prix is, after all, one of the oldest continuous motor racing events in the world), has always kept itself aloof from these seedier aspects of Italian life. Some might argue that all of that has now changed; that the board rooms of the companies running Formula One teams are becoming indistinguishable from Vito Corleone’s office in The Godfather. In a famous scene from The Godfather, a baker whose daughter has suffered abuse at the hands of some American youths goes to see Vito Corleone in search of justice. He does so in a disrespectful manner which irritates the Godfather. Corleone is obliged to steer the man towards an understanding of his surroundings: “What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, this scum who ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by some chance an honest man like yourself made enemies they would become my enemies. And then, they would fear you.”

It was circumstances not entirely dissimilar to these which prompted the release of devastating revelations by a sacked Renault driver, Nelson Piquet Jr, a couple of week’s ago. Piquet Jr is a rookie driver who has been anything but exceptional since being employed as a driver for the Renault team and the team-mate of double world-champion, Fernando Alonso. You could, if you were uncharitable, argue that his unremarkable driving ability goes back even further to his karting days; but I won’t. I will, however, admit that Piquet’s success in motor racing – such as it is – has everything to do with the phenomenal wealth and influence of his father, Nelson Piquet Sr. While one can pooh-pooh the abilities of Piquet Jr, the Formula One world is as one in its unstinting admiration of the three time Formula One world champion, Nelson Piquet Sr.

Like any doting father, Piquet Sr has done all he can to guide the career of his son through the maze of Formula One. Sadly, though, the boy’s abilities have not quite matched the wealth or ambition of his father. This has come as a growing – and, doubtless, devastating – realisation to Piquet Sr. The wily old man, therefore, probably sat quietly in his armchair at his palatial beach home in Rio-de-Janeiro a little while ago, glass of red wine in hand, and thought things through.

Nelsinho, his boy, had pissed several million dollars against a wall and there was little hope of anything being recovered from that. Now, with no other team prepared to grant any more favours to a spoiled young brat whose father was exhausting their patience, Falvio Briatore, the Italian boss of Renault, had threatened Piquet Jr with the sack and infuriated Piquet Sr. Things were, surely at rock bottom. What could he, Nelson Piquet Souto Maior, do so as to give his boy a dignified exit from the world of Formula One and, at the same time, settle a very old score with an Italian Formula one veteran who operated much like a mafioso hood? As he sipped away and painted various scenarios in his mind, a wry smile crept from the corners of his mouth and burst into a full blown chuckle which prompted one of the skinny girls lounging in bikinis by the pool to come racing in from her deck chair and inquire imploringly, “are you all right, Nelson darling, do you want anything from me?”

In advance of the first ever Singapore Grand Prix in 2008, a few men carrying briefcases were despatched to Enstone, Oxfordshire, home of Renault F1, to speak to some race engineers. Their instructions were clear. A crash was going to take place in Singapore involving a Renault car. Nothing about the crash was to be said until appropriate instructions were delivered in coded form.

A year later, while Flavio Briatore was in the middle of sensitive negotiations with a very wealthy Italian team over the release of the most outstanding Formula One driver currently available, a young man whom he had long forgotten about made a bizarre press announcement. So bizarre that all discussion about this year’s Italian Grand Prix in the press was pushed aside to make way for some fascinating information: Nelson Piquet Jr had announced that Flavio Briatore had ordered him to crash his Renault during the Singaporean Grand Prix last year. This, Piquet’s statement alleged, was done so as to force a safety car episode which would benefit Fernando Alonso in the other Renault. What made the story at least credible was the fact that Alonso would not have stood a chance of winning that race had there not been a safety car episode. A win by Alonso in a woefully uncompetitive car would have been useful in enhancing his value in Briatore’s negotiations with any team looking to wrest the Spaniard from his control.

It was with all this fizzing away in the background that we arrived at Monza for the Mafia, sorry, Italian Grand Prix earlier this week. The race proved to be a traditional Monza affair: good qualifying and mastery of throttle and brakes, as ever, made for a happy chappie at Monza. Rubens Barrichello, who has won at Monza twice previously in a Ferrari, was that chappie. He got – just – the edge on his team-mate, Jenson Button, during qualifying yesterday and successfully carried it through to a resounding win today. Lewis Hamilton did well by claiming pole position on Saturday but learned to his detriment that strategy mattered more than raw speed. His two pit-stop strategy was impossible for the Brawn cars and he failed to compromise on a safe points scoring third place by going for glory in the last lap and sacrificing his race – and his McLaren – in a bank of tyres.

Where all this leaves us is intriguing. For the championship, it now looks like either Barrichello or Button will be world champion. Their boss, Ross Brawn, cannot dare demonstrably favour either driver if he wants to retain harmony in his team. Given Barrichello’s superior ability in the second half of the season and that there are now 14 points between them with four races still to go, it is too difficult to call it yet.

As far as Formula One is concerned, your guess is as good as mine. As any mafia movie devotee worth his salt will tell you, a war is never far away from the surface. Nelson Piquet Souto Maior may just have lit the blue touch paper...

Gitau
13 March 2009

Ferrari buys Fisichella

Anyone who has ever had the good fortune to be in a negotiating session with a member of the Kenyan police constabulary will tell you that those uniformed gentlemen of the law speak the language of Formula One very eloquently indeed. If you are driving and a Kenyan copper pulls you over and says “what you have just done is commit an offence,” he really means “I could do with two hundred shillings to tide me over for a couple of days, matey.” If, though, the copper says “you have just committed a very serious offence!” you know that the wolf is bivouacked outside his door and hunger pangs are gnawing at the bellies of his children. He really means “one thousand bob from you will mean the difference between the mortuary and survival for me.”

Applying this sterling logic to the language we heard from Giancarlo Fisichella and his Force India employers last weekend and throughout the earlier part of this week was, for me, the work of an instant. When Fisichella was asked whether he would be replacing Luca Badoer in Felipe Massa’s Ferrari seat for the rest of the 2009 season, he said “I have not received any call from Ferrari and am very happy driving for Force India at the moment.” In translation, he meant “It’s a done deal. The official Ferrari tailor was in my room five minutes ago measuring me up for my promotional photographs in brand new Ferrari togs in time for the Italian Grand Prix two weeks hence in Monza.” Similarly, Fisichella’s boss issued a statement on Monday denying the claims of a senior Force India employee that the Fisichella Ferrari move was “a done deal”. About his employee, Mallya said “he is not the official spokesperson for Force India and his comments should be ignored.” He meant “only I am authorised to negotiate on behalf of Force India and the Ferrari cheque has been written out in my name, not this arsehole’s.”

Taking a step back, this all looks to me like a game of numbers. Vijay Mallya owes Ferrari money for the engines they supplied his team last season which he hasn’t yet paid for. Fisichella has scored eight points for the team which will be worth a few million quid at the end of the year. Ferrari run the risk of having Italian fans throwing seats on the circuit at Monza if Luca Badoer comes last again which could ultimately be injurious to the team’s bank balance. There has been no Italian driving a Ferrari since Ivan Capelli in 1992. Giancarlo Fisichella is Italian. As the Americans say, do the math…

You can just see it, can’t you? Mallya picked up a phone call from the Ferrari boss, Luca di Montezemolo. I am privileged to have obtained access to a cleverly obtained copy of the telephone conversation. Here is a transcript:

Mallya: How nice to hear from you, Mr di Montezemolo.
di Montezemolo: Vijay, is-a no need-a to be so formal-a. You call-a me Luca. Maybe I invite-a you and a woman – don’t-a ‘ave to be-a your wife-a! (heh heh) - to my villa in Toscano. Maybe we ‘ave a swim-a and maybe a good-a Italian meal-a together-a. You like-a da plan-a?
Mallya: Sounds very good, Luca.
di Montezemolo: Okay you leave-a everything-a to me.
Mallya: No problem, Luca.
di Montezemolo: You remember those engines-a you ‘ave-a still-a to pay?
Mallya: Don’t worry, Luca. Now that we have some good points, there will be enough money in November for me and for you.
di Montezemolo: No, no, Vijay. You are-a now my friend-a. We forget-a engines. Okay?
Mallya: Thank you, Luca. But what’s the catch?
di Montezemolo: No, no, Vijay. You are-a too suspicious-a! Ha ha!
Mallya: Well, I..
di Montezemolo: You no worry. I take-a care of everything. Can you do something-a small for me, Vijay?
Mallya: What is that, Luca?
di Montezemolo: Tell-a Fisichella his overalls are now ready and the new-a team photograph is this-a Thursday. Okay?
Mallya: (sighs) Yes, of course, Luca. Anything you say.
di Montezemolo: Gracie, amico miyo. See you in Toscano! Ciao.

Gitau
4 September 2009