Smooth driving delivers a Shanghai victory for Jenson Button

There was a time not very long ago when the denizens of a kingdom comprising a cluster of small, rain soaked islands in the north Atlantic were allowed to forget their miserable geographical lot by the simple expedient of unfurling a map of the world. Blindfolded, they could point at almost any point on said map and thereby demonstrate the global reach of Britannia. In those days, wintry conditions in Scotland or an absence of fresh bananas in England could be forgotten about quite easily if sufficiently large numbers of the islands’ natives were located in happier places.

The exact same effect cannot be achieved today but an approximation of it is rendered possible by one of mankind’s greatest inventions: the jet aircraft. The British may not enjoy the same global reach they once did but money in the pockets of any of their number and the availability of affordable airline transportation to any part of the world has made it possible for them sometimes to believe that they still lord it over the world.

In the year 2010 an event as old as the planet itself has thrown all these grand ideas up in the air. A volcano called Eyjafjallajökull on an island in the cursed country of Iceland in the north Atlantic has erupted and produced so much steam and ash that it is now unsafe for jet aircraft to enter northern European airspace. Suddenly, Brits holidaying in far flung places like Fiji are forced to accept the bitter fact that home is an island in the north Atlantic, very far away, and there is now no way of getting to it quickly. Slower alternatives are now being considered by emergency teams at the offices of Her Majesty’s Government and the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, the rest of us are paralysed by a general election campaign during which each political party seems only to want to offer pain and suffering in the years ahead. At a time like this, it is understandable if the Brits are very down in the mouth.

This may be the case but it is far from the impression I got when I watched television pictures being beamed into my living room yesterday from a far away place called Shanghai. Union flags were being waved about, champagne corks were popping everywhere and a craggy old man called John Button had himself and a luscious, young female wrapped in a massive Union Jack as the latter kissed any camera lens which came within twenty yards of her. It was the end of an incident-packed Chinese Grand Prix which had produced a British rarity, an English one-two in the guise of McLaren drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton and injected hysteria into the hearts of Jenson Button’s father, his girlfriend and the entire McLaren team. The fact that they and every other Formula One team are stuck in China until the Icelandic volcano starts behaving itself was completely irrelevant yesterday afternoon.

In a spectator’s dream race, the weather conditions – dry, then slightly wet, then dry, then wet – and the stop-start effect of crash-provoked safety car periods, the McLaren drivers demonstrated very clearly the gulf of difference between their approaches to being at the top end of Formula One. A crude but perhaps ideal summary was suggested by a television pundit yesterday: “while Button is a driver, Hamilton is a racer”. I think that is a little unfair to Button. What we saw yesterday was that an ability to gain a feel for the grip of a race track and predict the optimum points at which to come in for tyres can produce a second and a half advantage over a raw racer who overtakes everyone, does it all again and again but chews up his tyres in the process. Button had only two stops for tyre changes while Hamilton had four – and yet they ended up a second and a half apart with Hamilton closing on his team-mate in the final stages.

In terms of entertainment value, nobody produces more than Hamilton. Who will ever forget him twice humiliating seven times world champion, Michael Schumacher? In terms of cerebral, smooth, assured driving, however, Button is clearly ahead. So far it has produced two race victories for him while Hamilton hasn’t had any yet. One of the two driving styles could be the factor that decides the championship at the end of the year. It is too early to predict which.

What was surprising about yesterday was the number of drivers who got caught out by the first drops of rain. Whereas Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg (who finished third) felt confident enough to stay out on slick tyres, every other one of the big guns – including previous rain master, Michael Schumacher – chose to come in for intermediate tyres that all too quickly proved to be ill-suited to a rapidly drying track.

As we turn our minds to the European leg of the 2010 season (if the teams ever get to fly back home!), a look at the world championship points table shows just how unexpected the ultimate result may be:

Jenson Button – 60
Nico Rosberg – 50
Fernando Alonso – 49
Lewis Hamilton – 49
Sebastian Vettel – 45
Felipe Massa – 41

After four races and this set of figures, do you feel confident enough to run off to the bookies yet?

Gitau
19 April 2010

Someone in Shanghai has it in for Sebastien!

Look at this. Poor old Sebastien Buemi, the young Swiss driver, was speeding round the Shanghai circuit at 200 mph when - whoops! - both his front wheels flew off. What the devil is going on?

Do you think perhaps that someone in the Toro Rosso garage has it in for the Swiss? The Swiss after all have quietly hoovered up confict monies over many years, built up an enviable banking industry and a jolly comfortable country with the cash while not doing terribly much else at all.

Meanwhile, a volcano has blown its top in Iceland and crippled aviation in the United Kingdom, the country which was almost single handedly responsible for bankrupting Iceland a year ago.

This, it seems, is the weekend of the reckoning. My advice is stay indoors if you have reason to fear having upset anyone in the past.

Gitau

16 April 2010

Seeing the future in Shanghai

A little while ago on an abnormally sunny summer’s day in London, I was standing outside the Wellington pub in Strand, London having a few beers with my old friend Peter. A usually animated speaker, Peter suddenly went quiet and stared somewhat vacantly at the buildings in Aldwych behind me.
“Marvellous idea,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed, “nothing like a drop of London Pride on a warm summer’s day.”
“No, you twit,” exclaimed Peter irritably, “not the beer, Australia!”
“Australia?”
“Yes,” he said, “some clever clogs had a brainwave a few centuries ago. Ship out all the riff-raff from these shores to the colonies! Pity we couldn’t carry on doing it.”

Peter’s reverie had been triggered by the sight of the Australian flag flying from the rafters of Australia House in Aldwych. I was reminded of this last week when I read a newspaper article about the vast armies of Chinese manual labourers to be found in various pockets in Africa working on roads and railways. The article was written from the perspective of African ladies of the night who are none too pleased about these recent arrivals. Typically, foreign tourists and expatriate workers have proved easy pickings for hard working prostitutes in places like Mombasa but not the Chinese. Ascetic to a fault, these chaps are diligent and very well disciplined in all matters. But the article demonstrated to me that the Chinese have applied the logic of the eighteenth century Brits but sharpened it with a Chinese edge.

Offering African potentates development assistance in exchange for rights to extract much needed natural resources like base metals and oil is by no means a new game; the Europeans have been at it with varying degrees of intensity for centuries. It is also not new for Country A to lend money to Country B and then require that Country B use the same money to buy machinery and equipment from Country A and pay for professionals (architects, engineers, lawyers etc) from Country A. The money, in effect, never leaves Country A. The Chinese play this game applying the age old rules but with an added new twist: the money is also used in importing manual labourers – pick-axe wielders, bricklayers, stevedores, drivers, even spanner-boys – from the People’s Republic. This way, China gets the natural resources it needs but also solves any unemployment problems it may have while giving China its own “Australia solution”. Quite clever when you think about it.

The world is slowly waking up to the fact that these chaps from the east could just about be the cleverest on the planet. They look at things using a long telescope. The decision to invest in a grand prix circuit capable of hosting Formula One races was taken with a view to the future. Want to create a diversion from your nasty habit of sending in battle tanks to disrupt peaceful student demonstrations? Why, invite the glamour kids of the world to your largest city to drink champagne and watch cars being driven very fast round an expensive circuit! That should do it.

For simple chaps like me, it does. When I think of Shanghai I don’t think of unhappy looking people wearing green collarless jackets and waving little red books. I think instead of the 2008 Chinese Grand Prix which was so decisively won by Lewis Hamilton that the best efforts of the FIA and Ferrari to deny him any chance of winning the world championship were as nought (you may recall that he was gifted a heavy penalty of docked points after the preceding Japanese Grand Prix for a driving incident). Although it is still very early in the season, things are looking less rosy for Hamilton now than they did then but I would not put it past him.

Hamilton is one of five drivers – the others being Rubens Barrichello, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel - who could be the first to win the Chinese Grand Prix twice. For some reason – perhaps Chinese juju – nobody has stepped on the top step of the podium more than once since Rubens Barrichello won the first ever Chinese Grand Prix in 2004. Barrichello doesn’t stand much of a chance this year but any of the others could do it. If the track favours a particular manufacture that manufacturer would have to be Ferrari. With their three wins – 2004, 2006 and 2007 - they are the only team to have won in China more than once. By this reckoning the race should belong to either Fernando Alonso or Felipe Massa. The latter of the two Ferrari men looks the most comfortable in the 2010 Ferrari and could just be in the running for his first win of the season.

There is, however, a chap itching to settle an argument. Ever since Michael Schumacher announced his return to Formula One, writers on the subject – including this one – have argued that it was a mistake. I have always thought that Schumacher was not ready to retire at the end of 2006 and should have kept going even if it meant driving for another team. Heavy pressure to leave the team was exerted upon him by the Ferrari bosses, though, and, feeling that it would be an act of extreme disloyalty to drive for the opposition, Schumacher opted to retire early.

Three years later, the driving itch proved stronger than the guilt provoked by disloyalty to a team which had given him five successive world championships and he agreed to sign up with the new Mercedes team. But three years away was three years too many. Too much technological development happens in three years. Worse, too much deterioration happens to the human body each year after the magic figure of 35. Still, Schumacher’s last win was in China in 2006 and it would give him enormous personal satisfaction if he was able to get the press off his back by a win on Sunday.

This is the last of the early morning races before Formula One comes home to Europe, so I presume you will be wolfing down bacon and eggs as you settle down to,

Enjoy Shanghai!

Gitau
15 April 2010

Malaysia sets things up nicely

A couple of decades ago, Rolls Royce, a British manufacturer of luxury automobiles, was able to get away with supercilious statements like “a Rolls Royce does not break down; it fails to proceed.” If you asked Rolls Royce to provide you with performance figures, the withering response you would get would be “adequate plus 10%.”

Taking these things literally, a successful Afrikaner farmer in South Africa in the 1970s, Mr Piet van der Merwe, decided to reward himself by applying part of the proceeds of a bumper harvest towards the purchase of a brand new Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. He loved driving the car so much and, confident that the car was incapable of breaking down, chose to use it for all purposes - even ploughing his farm. The manufacturer’s boast proved to be exaggerated when the car seized up in the middle of a maize field. Mr van der Merwe was, understandably, incensed and telephoned his local Rolls Royce dealership in high dudgeon. It took the intervention of a team of mechanics specially flown in from the Rolls Royce factory in Crewe, England for Mr van der Merwe’s temperament to be restored to equilibrium. Having enabled the car to resume its ability to proceed, the Englishmen were, at length, able to persuade van der Merwe that what he owned was not merely a means of conveyance from A to B but one that did so in some style.

In yet another dramatic Grand Prix (one that surely demonstrates the ridiculousness of the season’s opener in ghastly Bahrain), my thoughts turned to Rolls Royce during the penultimate lap. Fernando Alonso found himself stuck in ninth place behind the McLaren of Jenson Button whose tyres were progressively fading after a perhaps premature tyre change on the ninth lap. No matter how hard he tried, Alonso found it impossible to get past Button lap after lap. In a sign of probable frustration, in the last but one lap, Alonso lunged at the Mclaren and slipped past Button. His joy was short lived as Button promptly took the place back and then saw a sight in his rear view mirrors which we all thought had been consigned to the Formula One history books: a puff of blue smoke blowing out of the Ferrari’s exhaust followed by huge clouds of smoke. Ferrari engines have been bullet-proof for so long that this for me was one of the significant moments of yesterday. According to received wisdom, Ferraris like Rolls Royce cars do not break down. Apparently, not so.

If Alonso was struggling in ninth place and Button was no more than eighth in the dying laps of the Malaysian Grand prix yesterday it was because both McLaren and Ferrari had made identical qualifying errors on Saturday. As the first qualifying session began, the rain was pouring down all over Sepang. Every team but the big two chose to come out and “bank” a lap so as not to find themselves having failed to set any qualifying time at all in the event that the rain became heavier before the end of the session. Both teams were relying on their state of the art gadgetry to tell them what everyone could see by stepping outside their garages and looking up. All four drivers were badly caught out and ended up forced to start Sunday’s race at the back of the grid.

If you are looking for a man who will make the most of a bad situation these days then you need look no further than Lewis Hamilton. By the end of the first lap he had overtaken eight cars and was storming his way down the field putting the fear of god in every driver who caught sight of his mustard yellow helmet in their mirrors. Hamilton had some difficulty getting past the Force India of Adrian Sutil and ultimately had to give it up and settle for sixth place.

Notwithstanding all the excitement in the absence of the rain we had all but been guaranteed, the weekend belonged to the Red Bull team. Mark Webber produced the most efficient qualifying lap on Saturday followed closely by Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel in that order. Vettel showed how much this order meant to him on Sunday when he sped past Rosberg and dived on the inside of his team-mate to take the lead. A lead he never looked in danger of giving up until the chequered flag fell to award him a much deserved win after two consecutive failures occasioned by reliability glitches in Bahrain and Australia. Vettel always looked like a future champion last season and, assuming his Red Bull stays reliable, may well be one in November 2010. His excitement as he stepped out of his car in parc ferme showed a curious mix of excitement and relief. It was a well deserved win.

If you look at the points table after Malaysia, you won’t be surprised to see that the chap at the top is a Ferrari driver but what will probably be surprising is that his name is not Fernando Alonso.

1 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 39pts
2 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 37
3 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 37
4 Jenson Button (Gbr) McLaren 35
5 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes GP 35
6 Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) McLaren 31

[I will publish the championship standings at the end of each post-race commentary in the future.]

The top six are nicely bunched up now and it is impossible to predict which one will be world champion in November. Time will tell.

I am very impressed by the tenacity and consistency of Felipe Massa. When it comes to proving his mettle, he seems the more accomplished of the two latinos in scarlet overalls. Paying for the qualifying mistakes of their team bosses, both drivers had to carve their way up through the field but Massa had less difficulty getting past than Alonso. Button was an easy target for Massa but an impossible one for Alonso. I look forward to observing how the chemistry between the pair develops as the season progresses.

I am beginning to wonder how much longer Michael Schumacher will carry on in Formula One . Being consistently outperformed by his young German team-mate must be bad enough, but to have to sit through a race after being forced to retire because his team couldn’t be bothered to screw in his wheel nuts properly must be soul-destroying. It is worth a small bet that Schumacher may do what Nigel Mansell did - after coming back to F1 as a retired ex champion in 1995- and simply walk away after a few races. He certainly does not need the money.

Shanghai in two weeks time – does anyone still want to talk about Bahrain?

Gitau
5 April 2010

World championship table:

1 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 39pts
2 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 37
3 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 37
4 Jenson Button (Gbr) McLaren 35
5 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes GP 35
6 Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) McLaren 31
7 Robert Kubica (Pol) Renault 30
8 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull 24
9 Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India 10
10 Michael Schumacher (Ger) Mercedes GP 9
11 Vitantonio Liuzzi (Ita) Force India 8
12 Rubens Barrichello (Bra) Williams 5
13 Jaime Alguersuari (Spa) Scuderia Toro Rosso 2
14 Nico Hulkenberg (Ger) Williams 1
15 Sebastien Buemi (Swi) Scuderia Toro Rosso 0
16 Pedro de la Rosa (Spa) BMW Sauber 0
17 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) Lotus F1 0
18 Karun Chandhok (Ind) HRT-F1 0
19 Lucas di Grassi (Bra) Virgin Racing 0
20 Bruno Senna (Bra) HRT-F1 0
21 Jarno Trulli (Ita) Lotus F1 0
22 Timo Glock (Ger) Virgin Racing 0
23 Vitaly Petrov (Rus) Renault 0
24 Kamui Kobayashi (Jpn) BMW Sauber 0

Malaysia, land of conservativism and wonder

When I was at university in the dying years of the eighties, by far the largest group of foreign students was from Malaysia, a country I had heard relatively little about. The Malaysian students were very cliquey and unprepared to socialise outside their own community. They huddled together in little groups in lectures, never visited any of the university bars (like the popular Students’ Union bar where a pint of beer cost about fifty pence!) and conversed with each other in Chinese or Malay.

I managed partially to befriend one Malaysian Chinese chap called Tee Chock Wan by default because he happened to be in the same tutorial group as me. Tee was very guarded in his conversations with me and liked to stick to talking about improving things like the appropriateness of the use of the subjunctive in a sentence, or the importance of not splitting infinitives; an enthralling chap, Tee.

To draw him out of his shell somewhat, I once invited Tee to join me for a drink at the Students’ Union. His reaction was curious. “Oh no,” he said, “people who go there do all sorts of bad things like bonking!” I still struggle to make sense of Tee’s views. Bonking was a “bad thing”?

The only time since then that I have heard something so bizarre that it knocked me sideways was the Seinfeld episode where Jerry Seinfeld asks two super-fit babes to have a threesome with him in the expectation that they will refuse but is shocked to find them both to be enthusiastically keen on the idea. What is staggering is that Jerry then turns them down. On hearing about this, his friend, George, is convinced that Jerry has taken leave of his senses. “You said no?” George exclaims, utterly perplexed, “have you lost your mind? That’s like discovering plutonium!” Jerry, like Tee, can see nothing wrong with his attitude. “I’m not an orgy guy,” he says, “I’d have to buy new clothes and get new friends!”

I soon came to learn that Tee’s perspective was common currency among Malaysians. Even when abroad as students in as licentious a country as England, they are very deeply conservative people. Religion goes some way towards explaining this but not enough; I have known religious Islamic chaps fold up their prayer mats after their evening supplication and then head out to the nearest brothel. I think the conservatism of the people is because Malaysia is one of the best examples of that delightful oxymoron: an enlightened dictatorship.

Under the long leadership of hard man Mahathir Mohammed, Malaysia’s economy prospered and its people venerated him. Mahathir understood that near blind obedience was the most efficient means by which to achieve his far-sighted aims and that conservatism was a useful tool to be employed in inculcating obedience. It worked handsomely. When Mahathir took the reins, Malaysia was categorised as a developing country. By the time of his retirement in 2003 it was a kick-ass industrialised economy. No mean feat that. Apart from an obliging populace, Mahathir also needed an absence of troublesome opposition politicians so as to be able to get on with things. In this he was mostly successful – there are ways and means of keeping troublesome fellows out of your hair – but he found a former finance minister called Anwar Ibrahim to be particularly irksome.

As they say, fortune favours the brave and Mahathir chanced upon the knowledge that, although married, Mr Ibrahim was partial to amorous encounters with humans with a full quotient of testosterone. All he then had to do was organise a few honey traps for Mr Ibrahim. Poor old Anwar, happy in the knowledge that there were young men of similar inclinations to his, found to his horror that these self same chaps were also predisposed to singing like canaries. Before Mr Ibrahim could get on the first flight to San Francisco, London, Johannesburg or any other gay-friendly city, he found himself hauled before a court to hear toe-curlingly detailed statements by several young men of his amatory encounters with them. Sodomy being a criminal offence in Malaysia, Mahathir was, thus, able to have Anwar hauled off to chokey. An inconvenient problem was thereby solved.

But Mahathir is by no means a one-trick pony. He planned the timing of his removal of the troublesome Anwar – a messy business which could have earned him loads of international opprobrium and consequently a tarnishing of his country’s hard earned reputation as a decent investment location - to coincide with showcase events that would put Malaysia on the global map as a country that had arrived. One such event was the opening of the world’s then tallest buildings, the Petronas twin towers. The other was the completion of the magnificent Sepang motor racing circuit and its hosting of the first ever Malaysian Grand Prix in 1999. The world gasped in wonder and was thereby rendered deaf to the cries of the hapless Anwar.

The Sepang circuit – unlike most of the other identikit circuits designed by Hermann Tilke – is, as it happens, a rather good circuit. It has very fast corners, a sweeping straight and some superb overtaking points. Perhaps it was because Tilke did so well at Malaysia that he was awarded the right to build every other new Formula One circuit since the turn of the century. This is where Bernie Ecclestone and his mates just don’t get it. Just because a guy has once done a good job doesn’t make him the only person who can do one. How challenging would, say, international championship golf be if every single golf course was designed by Greg Norman or Jack Nicklaus?

I don’t think there is any Malaysian Grand Prix I have not enjoyed. Last year’s race could have been a corker had its organisers not thought themselves cleverer than the weathermen. Thunderstorms were predicted for late afternoon in Sepang but the race was still started in the late afternoon to make television viewing more convenient for us cosseted television viewers in Europe. As predicted, an almighty deluge began as the race kicked off and got progressively worse lap after lap. Inevitably, the race was abandoned at about halfway distance. A little water on a race track makes a race interesting. Raging, frothy rivers do not. It would be a shame to have another washed out Malaysian Grand Prix but, as we saw in Australia, a little rain can spice up a race considerably.

Ever since the first ever Grand prix at Sepang, no man has claimed the circuit for his own quite like Michael Schumacher. This year’s race may be the opportunity Schumacher needs to vindicate himself after two lacklustre races. For a man with as colossal a reputation as Schumacher, coming back to Formula One in his forties after three years absence was always going to be risky. He will be the first to admit that questions are already being asked rather more loudly than he might like.

Still, it is not going to be easy. Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa are each determined to light up this season with their first win. There is a lot to look forward to and it doesn’t really matter too much if you get carried away in your appreciation of the action in Malaysia because Monday is a day off. It behoves me then to wish you a very happy Easter and hope that you will,

Enjoy Malaysia!

Gitau
2 April 2010