Black studs, a doll and the Devil's own luck

Before yesterday's eventful race, the BBC chose to offer us a little taste of what it is like to be a Formula One superstar. We saw a camera shot from behind Lewis Hamilton while he was surrounded by adoring fans presenting him with copies of photographs of himself to sign. As he took a photograph from one fan, she was overcome with extreme emotion. Her mouth drooled, her nostrils flared, her eyes gushed with tears and it was all she could do to mouth the words "Lewis, I love you soooo much!" Meanwhile, above him equally overwrought females were standing on the shoulders of men who themselves were standing on the shoulders of other men. The women were crying and screaming "Lewis, Lewis, Lewis!" Sadly for them, Hamilton couldn't linger and had to go. When he turned his head to move along, we were treated to part of the reason for the fever-pitch adulation. Hamilton was sporting a brand new look: a pair of black studs in his ears and a very cheeky grin.

The camera then panned across to the radiant features of yet another reverent fan and the reason for a rejuvenated Mr Hamilton became clear: his Pussycat Doll, Nicole Scherzinger, was back; the first time we have seen her at a Formula One circuit since last year. I felt certain that Hamilton had struck a bargain with Mephistopheles. One side of it was that the devil was to deliver a race win; the other side is yet to become apparent.

Mephistopheles did not disappoint. With more than a third of the race run and the Red Bull cars cruising towards an easy one-two wipe-out of their opposition, the forces of hell were unleashed on the brain of Sebastian Vettel (and, depending on your point view, that of Mark Webber). Seeing an opportunity to usurp race-leader and team-mate, Mark Webber, Vettel dived in on the inside of Webber's car. We were then accorded the rare privilege of seeing top-end drivers breaching the most unbreakable rule there is. Crash your car, if you must, incur penalties if you're having a bad day, but whatever you do, what you must never even dream about is causing a collision with your team-mate. Superstar, hungry to be world champion, impatient, adrenaline-filled you may be, that is understood. But you must - on pain of death - always remember who pays your salary. Red Bull would like to have their first Formula One Driver's Championship trophy more than they care about the face of the man who wins it for them. Worse, if either or both of their drivers put in jeopardy their chance to win that title or, more importantly, the Constructors' World Championship, either or both of those drivers are a liability.

Conveniently, then, third and fourth placed drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button found themselves promoted to first and second. Button came close to reversing the order of proceedings ten laps from the end by sneakily getting past Hamilton, but the Mephistophelean bargain proved itself reliable a lap later as Hamilton effortlessly took the place back and steered himself to his first ever Turkish Grand Prix victory.

When asked if, given the extraordinary circumstances of his win, Nicole had brought him a little luck, Hamilton was magnanimous. "Every time she [Nicole] comes, I seem to win," he said. "I think it was Monaco 2008 she came, then Hungary last year which I won and Singapore, so she is definitely a bit lucky for me." Nicole has been present at many more of his wins than he was relating, so I think it must be safe to surmise that Hamilton was talking about races which he won where he stood the least chance of success. He could have gone further and added that her lucky presence secured him the world championship in the least likely of circumstances at Interlagos at the end of the 2008 season.

If Hades was smiling upon Hamilton, all the prayers in Italy, Spain and Brazil could do nothing for the scarlet cars in Ferrari's 800th Grand Prix. Both cars - worst of all the one driven by double world champion, Fernando Alonso - performed way below the standards expected of as illustrious a marque as the Prancing Horse. Frustration cannot be very far away from the surface for Ferrari, for the evidence of Turkey is that McLaren are currently the only team with a fighting chance of taking on the Red Bulls.

It would be naive to expect this situation to last for very long. But in a few races time the maths will suggest to struggling team owners that 2010 is a write-off. I have a strong feeling that Ross Brawn of Mercedes is only three or four races away from making that calculation and turning his attention instead to 2011. Watch this space.

The top ten drivers in the championship after Turkey look like this:

1 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 93
2 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 88
3 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 84
4 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 79
5 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 78
6 Robert Kubica Renault 67
7 Felipe Massa Ferrari 67
8 Nico Rosberg Mercedes GP 66
9 Michael Schumacher Mercedes GP 34
10 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 22

What we are left with now is a wide open world championship. Any one of at least four drivers could concievably be world champion. Take courage and go down to the bookies now - it's your best possible chance of making a few pennies out of this stew.

Gitau
31 May 2010

Guilty pleasures in Istanbul

Each morning for the past few weeks I have woken up to the horrifying sight of a huge flotilla of ships anchored in what looks like an entire ocean of oil. The ships are part of a massive, expensive and intense effort by oil giant BP to stop a leak from an oil rig a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico and avert an environmental catastrophe. The eastern towns of Mexico and the southern coastal states of the United States of America are watching with unrestrained apprehension as the spread of the leak widens by the hour and millions of gallons of more oil are spewed into the Gulf. All this because mankind’s unquenchable thirst for oil has driven big oil companies like BP to take greater and bolder risks. Was drilling for oil at such significant depths in the middle of the ocean a risk too far? Probably.

I observe events like these and am ashamed at the folly of the human race. Because we want to drive cars, fly in aeroplanes, sail on ships and have goods manufactured and delivered to us from every corner of the earth, companies like BP have to look harder and wider for a rapidly diminishing resource: oil. We must be mad, mad, mad.

No, you haven’t accidentally logged on to the website of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. That last paragraph was indeed written by a self-confessed Formula One fanatic; a devotee of a sport so ruinous, so dissipative and so unnecessary that it ought to be banned. That surely must be the sane and rational thing to do. And yet it has not been banned and, like millions of others, I am drawn remorselessly to it year after year. Why? The answer lies in the final word of the preceding paragraph.

Allow me to explain. You may recall our old friend Max Mosley and his travails with a mean-spirited British tabloid called the News of the World two years ago (see, for example, “Germany and Le Vice Anglais” from 17 July 2008 on this blog). In his legal challenge against the News of the World, Mosley insisted that he “fundamentally disagreed” that his leisure preferences were depraved or immoral and was able to persuade the High Court that he should be left alone in his enjoyment of them. Mosley, in my humble opinion, was being disingenuous. If he felt like he claimed, he would not have gone to the lengths he did to keep his activities secret, even from his wife of many years. Arguing like he did was legal artifice. And it worked.

A more honest appraisal of the situation was offered many years before by Kenneth Tynan, perhaps the greatest theatre critic ever to grace the planet. Tynan achieved fame and wealth and enjoyed the company of a beautiful and loving wife but he still regularly sought after women to indulge in his desire for sadomasochism. Unlike Mosley, Tynan never hid this from his wife but instead had nasty arguments with her when she tried to persuade him to change. “I intend to continue with the sessions weekly,” said Tynan, "although all common sense and reason and kindness and even camaraderie are against it. It is my choice, my thing, my need. It is fairly comic and slightly nasty. But it is shaking me like an infection and I cannot do anything but be shaken until the fit has passed.”

Tynan’s views about his “thing” are similar to mine about Formula One. It is an affliction I cannot shake off, no matter how many oil rigs pollute the world’s oceans and needlessly murder innocent marine creatures and birds. I submit to it out of need, you must understand, not insouciance. I must, therefore, gird my lions as the fever is to re-announce its presence in a couple of days as – once again – the Formula One circus makes its way to the Istanbul Park circuit in Turkey.

I have consistently been unstinting in my criticism of the cartel which runs Formula One. It was led for many years by the double-headed monster of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley who recruited a team of spanner boys, including a German architect called Hermann Tilke. As the rights to host races were delivered to new countries around the world for the price of a few million shekels, Tilke was awarded the contract to design each new circuit. It seems that part of his brief was to make the tracks as unexciting as he possibly could: “Go out there, Tilke, and produce tracks which your grandmother would be pleased to be driven around on.” Tilke did as he was bid and Formula One has since had a cucumber halfway up its arse.

As it happens, though, there is an exception. Probably under the influence of some super-strong Turkish hashish or after a pleasing night in a seedy Istanbul house with red doors, Tilke had an epiphany. The circuit he designed for the Turkish Grand Prix is an absolute corker. It follows the lay of the land and rises and dips at unusual points. I remember sitting with friends for the first Turkish Grand Prix in 2005 and experiencing a collective moment of beer going down wind pipes as we saw the effect of the legendary “Turn 8” (a complex series of corners) for the first time. Car after car was caught out by the corner’s speed and complexity and spun out. It was and has since been exhilarating.

Following their one-two success at the historic Monaco circuit a fortnight ago, the Red Bull team is fired up and raring to go in Istanbul. I think they may find the going a little more difficult this time. But I still expect either Sebastian Vettel or Mark Webber – evenly matched thus far – to win on Sunday. The big boys at Ferrari and McLaren are desperate to get on terms with them and Istanbul gives the best opportunity yet of doing so.

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa won this race three times in a row in 2006, 2007 and 2008. He has been somewhat overshadowed by his new team-mate, Fernando Alonso this season, and needs to prove that he is still good enough to be worthy of the highly prized red overalls. Besides, there are rumours afoot that the Ferrari tailors are measuring up Renault driver Robert Kubica, as a Massa replacement for next season. A win here would, therefore, not do the little Brazilian too much harm.

Over at McLaren, notwithstanding Lewis Hamilton’s superior driving performance, he is yet to win a race in 2010 while his new team-mate, Jenson Button has two wins under his belt already. Button won this race for Brawn last year, so going by that fact alone, he has a better than evens chance of overhauling his team-mate again.

Try and put thoughts of oil leaks, marine pollution and global warming to one side and,

Enjoy Turkey!

Gitau
27 May 2010

Monaco's magnetic appeal

If you make a lot of money very quickly, there are two ways to behave. The first is to acquire the creature comforts of wealth in one’s home and then lead a virtuous and unassuming lifestyle. This is the approach favoured by Sir Jackie Stewart, three times Formula One world champion, perennial member of the Sunday Times Rich List and all round good egg.

The second approach is to give the world and your country the middle-fingered salute and seek out places in which to launch yourself irredeemably into a purely hedonistic existence; a life fuelled by caviar, lobster and champagne, frittered away on immoderate yachts and in casinos and entertained by harems of the world’s beauties in uplifting discussions about Uganda.

Enthusiasts of the second of these two radically different approaches – a fair number of ex-F1 drivers like David Coulthard among their number – find themselves drawn magnetically to a tiny principality in the Mediterranean called Monaco which, conveniently, happens to be a tax haven. Unsurprisingly, then, it was described by William Somerset Maugham, a renowned English author, as “a sunny place for shady people.” Because of the vast wealth and extravagance of its inhabitants, Monaco has earned a reputation for glamour.

Most people, if they are honest, would love a taste of the Monegasque lifestyle; most, sadly, will never come within a sniff of it. The character of the place is such that even its royal rulers are not immune to its pizzaz. Prince Rainer III, ruler of the principality until 2005, was married to an American film star, Grace Kelly. Their son the current ruler, Prince Albert II, so enjoys the company of alluring models that he has never troubled himself with the inopportuneness of a wife (besides, if the chap knows that he will have repeatedly to trade in his missus for a new and improved version, a marriage is guaranteed to be awkward).

Since Formula One has always been associated with glamour and lavishness, it is perhaps unsurprising that the sport has maintained such a close link with Monaco that it is inconceivable that the Monaco Grand Prix could ever be dropped from the Formula One calendar.

The race itself is thrilling not so much because of the wheel-to-wheel adrenaline charged manoeuvres one sees in races at Spa or Silverstone but because of the extraordinary character of the circuit. Racing around a circuit crafted through the streets of picturesque Monte Carlo is about tight, low speed corners, no run-off areas and a crowded track requiring intense concentration. Mistakes are punished heavily by the ever present, all-too-close circuit barriers. Big crashes are almost a certainty here. A win at Monaco is difficult to achieve but is every driver’s dream. Ask any driver the question “if you could only ever win one Grand Prix in your life, which would that be?” and the answer will be the same in every case: “Monaco”. To my eternal regret I am yet to visit Monte Carlo. But I have never missed a Monaco Grand Prix on television – it is far too important.

I met a disreputable French chap called Francois in Paris once who had been to Monte Carlo and honed his pick-pocketing trade to perfection. Unfortunately, his fondness for the casino almost proved to be his undoing. After one successful afternoon’s business, he decided to attempt multiplying his ill-gotten gains on the roulette wheel but, as he was doing so, his cleverly honed intuition picked up that he was being closely observed from the blackjack table.

By stealthily moving to a different position at his table, he was able to discern that the person watching him was the girlfriend of a very drunk fellow with his right arm round the lass and his body slumped against hers like a slaughtered carcass. The wasted chap had probably overdone it in seeking to numb his mind so as to forget about losing his generously stuffed wallet that afternoon. The woman, rightly suspicious that Francois had something to do with the missing wallet, was giving him a look which said nothing at all akin to “ooh, big boy, what’s your room number?” Francois’s instinct for self-preservation kicked in so fast that he was out of Monte Carlo and on a train to Nice before the suspicious lady could find a place to deposit the dead weight she was carrying and raise the alarm.

If the big beasts of Formula One have any instincts for self-preservation, the time for radical action is now if they are going to be able to prevent Red Bull running away with both championships this year. Red Bull has been on pole for every single one of the five races this year so far. Ill luck and erratic reliability have only translated these outstanding qualifying achievements into two race wins but they have consistently been at least one second faster than the opposition. One second is a lifetime in Formula One terms.

If you recall Fernando Alonso’s torrid few months at McLaren in 2007, you may remember that his chief complaint was that he was not receiving sufficient respect after, he claimed, single-handedly finding an extra six tenths of a second of speed in the McLaren car– a gargantuan achievement. This just shows you the mountain Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and the others have to climb. I do not think any of them can find a second in a week. This and the virtual impossibility of overtaking at this circuit would suggest that the Monaco trophy is either Sebastian Vettel or Mark Webber’s to lose on Sunday. Whichever one of the two is able to nail pole position on Saturday should be able to go to sleep that night safe in the knowledge that, barring events, they will be receiving a gilded trophy from Prince Albert on Sunday afternoon.

But there is the rub: events. Monaco is a strange race and has been known to produce incredible results. Do not be surprised to see somebody you least expect sweeping past the chequered flag on Sunday.

The good news for fans of Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton is that the championship standings have not been unduly affected by the domination of Red Bull. Here they are:

Jenson Button (McLaren) – 70 points
Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) – 67
Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) – 60
Mark Webber (Red Bull) – 53
Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) – 50
Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) – 49
Felipe Masss (Ferrari) – 49
Robert Kubica (Renault) – 44
Michael Schumacher – 22
Adrian Sutil (Force India) – 16

It has been suggested that I have something against Lewis Hamilton. Thinking about it, this is a reasonable conclusion to draw from my reporting of incidents which have affected the McLaren driver. I must deny the assertion, though. I think Hamilton is probably one of the most accomplished Formula One drivers we have seen in a generation. Nobody else overtakes cars lap after lap so effortlessly and with such panache. But Hamilton has lately been plagued by rotten luck. That is the problem. I have no doubt we will see him back at the top before long but we have to hope that he begins to enjoy better luck if we are to see it any time soon.

If your television is on the blink, go to a pub or a friend’s house. If your wife or girlfriend is unhappy, give her a wad of notes and tell her to go treat herself. If you are worried about your baby crying, get a babysitter. If the dog barks, throttle it. If a mate phones you, cancel his name from your Christmas card list. Just make sure you are on hand at the weekend to,

Enjoy Monaco!

Gitau
13 May 2010

Barcelona, not Hamilton's ideal place

Most people who have taken the trouble to go there will readily admit to having fallen in love with Barcelona. It is one of those beautiful cities by the sea where you can have a delightful lunch while staring away into ripples of nothingness in the sea and feeling mightily contended with life. Perhaps I am being a little hasty here. “Most people” does not, without a doubt, include a young English chap who goes by the name of Lewis Hamilton. If you asked him to decide which of this year’s nineteen Grands Prix he would like to see axed from the Formula One calendar forever and a day, I am sure he would have little hesitation in hissing out “the Spanish one” through gritted teeth.

Hamilton began the race in third place behind the Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel – both of whom had demonstrated on Saturday that the Red Bull car is easily the fastest of the lot – and was unable to do very much to improve his position. A cleverly selected pit-stop for tyres and a bit of muscling of Sebastian Vettel had promoted him to second place and he looked certain to secure eighteen points when, one lap from the end of the Spanish Grand Prix, his front left tyre suddenly deflated and he found himself careering off the circuit into a tyre wall, his McLaren wrecked. Events like this usually produce gasps, sharp intakes of breath and anguished groans or sobs. Not in Spain. Hamilton’s duels with Fernando Alonso – a man who is revered more highly in Spain than the King – in 2007 have meant that he is hated there. By being a brilliant rookie who dared to make Alonso look, well, mortal, he earned the enduring hatred of the entire Spanish kingdom.

As Hamilton stepped out of his stricken car, the pain of missing out on eighteen points was as nothing compared to the ecstatic cheers that rang out around the Circuit de Catalunya. To a man the locals leapt up, waved their flags and hooted with joy. Hamilton’s mind would probably have gone back to the racial insults he received a couple of years ago from blacked-up Spaniards in golliwog wigs and rued the day he first set foot on Spanish soil. If Spain goes the way of Greece and has to be rescued by its European Union partners, I bet you £100 that Mr Hamilton will probably extract a nicely chilled bottle of Veuve Clicquot from his fridge and quietly drink a toast.

If the Englishman had good reason to put the memory of yesterday behind him, his Australian opponent in the Red Bull will probably count his win yesterday as the best drive of his career. From pole-position to the chequered flag, Mark Webber was so imperiously in control of events that nearly a whole minute separated him from Fernando Alonso who inherited second place after Hamilton’s retirement. The only thing Webber would have had to worry about was lack of reliability – the thing that has proved to be the Achille’s heel of the Red Bull team. Sure enough, poor reliability dogged Sebastian Vettel for the last third of the race and it was only the fact that he was so far ahead a resurgent Michael Schumacher in fourth place that he was still able – just – to finish on the third step of the podium.

Truth be told, in the absence of rain to spice things up, the race was a dull affair. Barcelona may be a vibrant city bursting with life and beautiful people but the Circuit de Catalunya just doesn’t cut it. The good news is that we only have a week to go before the most glamorous and prestigious race in the entire world: the Monaco Grand Prix.

Ferrrari and McLaren need to get their thinking caps on fast because Red Bull are increasingly looking to be as much of a problem for everyone as Brawn GP were in 2009. How quickly things change in Formula One…

Gitau
10 May 2010

A race in mighty Spain

While a cash-strapped student a couple of decades ago I found myself in Brussels one evening after a long and exhausting train journey from Amsterdam. My intention was to travel further south to France but was too hungry and fatigued to contemplate much more than a meal and a bed for the night. Luckily I stumbled upon a Greek hostel of sorts which offered cheap lodgings and inexpensive food.

Either Brussels was not the place to be on that particular evening or my guest house had a repellent character which I failed to observe but I found a curious absence of guests at the Greek establishment. Untroubled, I checked in and was soon sitting in the hostel’s tiny dining room examining a rather meagre menu which offered little more than moussaka and Greek salad. The mousakka turned out to be rather toothsome and I was wholeheartedly tucking into my generous portion of the stuff when I was joined at my table by the fat proprietor of the enterprise, Mr Stavros Constantinides. He seemed eager to talk to and had brought along a couple of bottles of red wine from which he constantly replenished my glass and his (mercifully at no cost to me). Stavros seemed a pleasant enough chap and, well lubricated by the wine, I found we shared similar views on a variety of things.

“You see that cluster of huge buildings to your right?” asked Stavros. “That is the headquarters of the European Commission. We love the European Commission in Greece. It is full of wonderful people.
“Really? Why is that?” I asked. “My experience of the British is that they are deeply suspicious of the EC and everything it stands for.”
Stavros laughed a long belly-laugh. ”The British are too honest for their own good,” he said. “They should speak to us. We are the experts! When we cry the EC wipes our tears. When we are hungry, the EC feeds us. When we shit the EC licks our arse clean for us. Nobody can play the EC better than the Greeks, my friend, nobody. Ha ha ha!

Well, since that fateful conversation, Stavros’s mates in Athens have been spending money liken drunken sailors and are now in such desperate trouble that the rest of the European Union is urgently cobbling together a bail-out package. Portugal and Ireland are expected soon to follow Greece but the thing that is keeping Europeans awake at night is the fear that mighty Spain may follow suit. In the words of the most articulate speaker since Cicero, Mr George Walker Bush, spoken as banks self-combusted in September 2009, “if money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down!” I have little doubt that many Spaniards are watching the events in Greece and thinking “there but for the grace of God go we.”

While the Greeks may have few qualms about accepting European largesse (but seem violently unwilling to suffer for doing so), the Spaniards a proud people. You need look no further than the grandiosity of their names for evidence of this. Take the names of three famous Spanish artists, for instance. Names like Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes or Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez are jolly impressive aren’t they? Well, they look like mere pretenders when you consider the names given to Spain’s most famous painter. Can you really do better than Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso?

The Spaniards also have something the other basket case European countries do not: the Spanish Grand Prix. In addition, they have a double world champion and arguably the best all round Formula One driver in Fernando Alonso. Having arrived at Ferrari, he seems determined to win another world championship in his first year at Ferrari. In doing so he is prepared to employ as much ruthlessness as may be required to get the job done. We saw this during the last Grand Prix when he committed the ultimate act of disrespect to his Ferrari stable-mate, Felipe Massa: overtaking in the pit lane entrance. Massa was furious but Alonso was less than concerned. He was making a statement: “I am a double world champion, so get used to it, matey!” I expect more of the same from the Spaniard. He won’t win friends and influence people by behaving like this but he knows that it matters little, for he is a semi-god at home. The Spanish love Alonso more adoringly than I have ever seen in Formula One.

The Spanish Grand Prix is not usually a stellar race unfortunately. The track tends to produce processional racing not too dissimilar to the shambles we witnessed in Bahrain, so I am not overly optimistic about this weekend’s racing. Admittedly, as we have seen at the last three races, rain would shake things up a great deal but I fear it may be too much to ask of the Gods to allow us four rain affected races in a row. Still, there is nothing lost by hoping.

I suppose the best way to approach the race in Barcelona is to expect nothing spectacular and then be pleasantly surprised if you get fireworks. Nevertheless, it is a Formula One race and these are always good fun, so crack open the Cruzcampo and,

Enjoy Barcelona!

Gitau
07 May 2010