Hamilton anticipates Monaco - while eliminating distractions

Nicole woke up in Hamilton’s suite at the Mandarin-Oriental, Barcelona and immediately felt that something was not right. Only the sheets on her side of the huge bed were ruffled and there was a disquieting silence about the place. She quickly got up and looked in every room in the suite: there was no sign of Hamilton to be found. She sat down on a sofa in the living room and tried to think. Where had he gone? As she puzzled over the whereabouts of her absent lover, her eye was caught by a notebook on the coffee table. She picked it up absent-mindedly and opened it. “Velazquez?” she gasped. “What? The Goya Majas? What on earth is going on?”

Nicole put the notebook down and began to think fast and furiously. Something was not right. Lewis and art? No. Never. She remembered taking him to the Museum of Morden Art a few years ago and showing him her favourite Jackson Pollock painting, The She-Wolf. His philistinic reaction had infuriated her: “Call that a painting? This must be some kind of joke, right? It looks like a gang of nursery kids just shook some paint-drenched rags over the canvas! Why would anyone pay good money for this shit?

 

Yes, she remembered the day well. Lewis, the ignorant twit. What then? This was definitely Lewis’s notebook, but the curious thing about it was that the person who had written in it was certainly not Lewis. Nicole knew for sure that Lewis had brought the notebook with him when he arrived at the suite yesterday afternoon from Madrid because it wasn’t there when she herself had first arrived earlier. Lewis must have left it by accident after she accused him of visiting a Madrid whore-house.

Nicole began to feel discomfort. Had she gone too far this time? After all, anybody could lie for Spain if they were offered one thousand Euros “to spot Lewis”. A chill suddenly ran along her spine. She felt an icy spasm grip her heart. Lewis always came back with his tail between his legs when she had a go at him. It worked like clockwork every time. But, not this time. Lewis hadn’t said a word when he left the suite yesterday and, worst of all, he had remained silent - and away. Had she pushed him out of her life for ever?

Once she had dressed and breakfasted on black coffee in the vast Blanc Brasserie downstairs, Nicole stepped out. When in Barcelona she and Lewis always stayed at the Mandarin-Oriental, but there was one year when they had tried The Majestic. She made her way there and swept in as nonchalantly as if she owned the place. She approached a porter sashaying her hips seductively.

“Hi,” she said and flashed him her sweetest smile. “I was day-dreaming and seem to have lost Lewis. Did you see where he went?”

 

The porter did not hesitate for a second.”Good morning madam,” he rasped, his eyes widening. I think he went to the gym. I saw him going down there ten minutes ago.”

“Thanks,” said Nicole, her smile broadening.

“It’s a pleasure, madam,” breathed the porter, his eyes dancing merrily up and down her body.

At the gym, Nicole stood hidden from view by a pillar as she surveyed the interior. Under the steely gaze of his personal trainer, Lewis was wearing boxing gloves and singing while rapidly pounding a heavy bag as his feet shuffled to the beat of the song blaring out of the sound system.

Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do

The scene hit Nicole hard. She felt as though she was a pedestrian crossing a road and had suddenly been floored by a fast-moving lorry. Without pausing for breath or thinking about what she was doing, she rushed back to the hotel lobby and found herself instructing the doorman to get her a taxi. Instinctively, she demanded to be driven to her favourite location in Barcelona, the one place where she always found solace: the Joan Miró Foundation. There, like an automaton, she glided through the rooms until she was before Miro’s surrealist masterpiece Bathing Woman.

 

Nicole first saw the disturbing, yet uplifting painting in the Pompidou Centre, Paris when she was in her early twenties. She had been told that it was one of a series on loan to the Miró Foundation for a short while. Miró painted it in the 1920s in Paris as one in a series of surrealist images which he composed when he belonged to an extraordinary group of surrealist artists and thinkers brought together by the incomparable Andre Breton.

Nicole stared longingly at the masterpiece for a few minutes before slowly sinking to her knees and weeping as though her heart would break.

Later that day, a call was put through to Hamilton’s penthouse suite at Hotel Majestic. He listened carefully to what the voice at the other end had to say before saying slowly and evenly “I am racing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this weekend. I am going to win that race.” He calmly replaced the receiver and stared out of his window at the city of Barcelona bathed in the late Spring sunshine.

On Monday of the following week, as Hamilton pushed his trolley out of London’s Heathrow Airport, a female cub-reporter ran panting up to him poised unsteadily with a pad and pencil. “Congratulations on your stunning win in Barcelona!” she screamed. “Are you and Nicole now going to get married?” Hamilton’s face betrayed no emotion. Eyes pointed steadily ahead, he said curtly “I have a race in Monte Carlo in a fortnight and thirteen more after that this year. There’s lots to do.” With that Hamilton was gone.

Hamilton was next seen descending the steps of his blood-red private jet at Nice airport on

 Wednesday this week.

He was looking relaxed and fit; ready to do battle at the highlight of the Formula One calendar: the Monaco Grand Prix

  

 

Since his sole Formula One triumph at Monaco 2008, Hamilton had not won here. That win in 2008 was talismanic – it was from the moment he received his Monte Carlo trophy from the Monegasque ruler on that fateful day that he began to believe himself capable of winning the world championship. A win here on Sunday would mean the fifth consecutive win for Hamilton this season. It would give him the momentum he needed to surge probably far enough ahead of everyone else to secure a sufficient bank of points to make him almost mathematically impossible to beat.

Niki Lauda had expressed sentiments such as these. “Hamilton is already the world champion,” he roared. But Lauda’s words needed to be taken with a pinch of salt – as Chairman of Mercedes F1 Racing, there could be more than a hint of mischief behind them. Lauda, a seasoned ex-world champion himself, would have known only too well how mind-games work in Formula One. There was still a very long way to go.

Monaco meant so much more to drivers than any other race, it was almost tempting to think of it as a stand-alone event set apart from the world championship. Michael Schumacher’s famous words about Monaco after winning the race one year rang through Hamilton’s head every time he came here: “There are two prizes in Formula One, winning the world championship and winning the Monaco Grand Prix. If you win both, you feel on top of the world.”

Nobody understood this better than Hamilton’s hero Ayrton Senna. Before his death twenty years ago, he won six Monaco Grands Prix; five of them in a row – nobody else had ever done that before and nobody else has come close to doing it since.

Hamilton fixed his mind on Senna as he ordered his thoughts in anticipation of F1’s Blue Riband event.

Gitau

22 May 2014