Same old story…
Apparently, the stewards at Sunday’s race missed two things that are obvious in this video. Firstly, Hamilton IS marginally ahead in the run down to the chicane; unfortunately, he’s on the outside, which is not the racing line for that corner. And secondly, he immediately gives the place back to Raikonnen - as they go down the pit straight, the McLaren is fully behind the weaving Ferrari.
McLaren have appealed against the penalty, but their appeal may not be allowable under FIA rules; it is unclear whether a time penalty (as opposed to a points penalty) can be appealed. Perhaps people wouldn’t be crying “FOUL” quite so loudly if it hadn’t been Ferrari that benefited from Hamilton’s demotion to third. After all, over recent seasons the FIA, and Max Moseley particularly, do seem to have been more than generous to the Italian team.
Lewis, where did it all go wrong?
This weekend’s French Grand Prix was not a good one for Lewis Hamilton. Following on from his disastrous mistake in Canada (running into the back of Kimi’s Ferrari, which was stopped at a red light on the pit lane exit), this weekend Lewis was deemed to have “gained an advantage” when he straight-lined a chicane as he tried to overtake Vettel. Hamilton is now fourth in the Championship, ten points behind leader Felipe Massa.
These things happen; Formula One is a fast, high-pressure sport where split-second decisions are required constantly and where even blinking at the wrong time could cause you to have a big accident. You can put them down as just racing incidents - just wasn’t having a good day. But after the promise of last season, which ended so crushingly with poor tactics in the second-last race and an attack of the nerves in the final race, it seems that Lewis is (already) in danger of doing a Coulthard (or a Button, in fact). Promising so much and not quite managing to deliver.
At the moment, Lewis’ problem seems to be that he thinks everyone is out to get him, saying in an interview this week “You can keep on giving me penalties, whatever you want. I’ll keep battling, and trying to come back with a result.” Lewis, they keep giving you penalties because you keep breaking the rules. You ran into the back of stationary car - in the pit lane, no less - two weeks ago, and didn’t have the grace to apologise properly for it (”I saw the red light but it was too late to stop. I don’t think it’s a racing incident. It’s just unfortunate when this stuff happens… I apologise to Kimi if I ruined his race”). Now, you straight-line a chicane because “I couldn’t turn in on the guy, or we would have crashed”, which seems to indicate that you hadn’t overtaken him until you went straight on.
I want to see Lewis win the Championship (it’s about time another Brit did) but I’ve got a horrible feeling that his chance this year is not as good as it was last year.
Formula 1 2008: the season starts here
And let’s hope its a better one that last year. While the racing was at least slightly better than in 2006, especially with Brit interest at a height with the amazing debut season of Lewis Hamilton, the whole sport became mired in what can only be called farce with the “Spygate” scandal involving McLaren and Ferrari.
This year, hopefully, the FIA will allow all of that to be laid to rest (they’ll have to think up some other ruse to make sure Ferrari win) and we can get on with some proper racing.
There’s been some moving about in the off-season; former champion Fernando Alonso has moved back to Renault - who had a bad season last year without him (and were also found guilty in the off-season of spying, but escaped punishment due to the inadequate nature of the FIA) but good things are promised for 2008. He swaps with Heikki Kovalainen who says that he expects to be treated as an equal to his new team-mate Hamilton at McLaren. Time will tell. Meanwhile Alonso is joined at Renault by Nelsinho Piquet - bringing back one of the all-time great racing names to the Formula One paddock. You can see the full drive line-up on the F1 site.
Not too many of the cars have shown their colours yet, but Hamilton’s been out in the new McLaren and says that “It was fantastic to get my hands on the MP4-23 this morning in Jerez” and he thinks good things will happen. Meanwhile, Alonso called his first drive of the Renault “encouraging”.
BMW Sauber have thrown down the gauntlet to the big two teams, saying that they “are confident we can turn the battle in front into a battle of more than two teams” and challenge for race wins. They scored points at every race last season, but were over 100 points behind false champions Ferrari at the end of the season. It remains to be seen whether they can really do it.
So as usual all the pre-season feather-ruffling is in full swing; lets hope that this year we get some decent races and honest results to bring some credibility back to the sport.
Today’s (un)surprising fact
It’s been announced today that Fernando Alonso and McLaren-Mercedes are to part company, two years before end of their contract. Apparently it’s a mutual decision based on the fact that Alonso was not a happy bunny for most of the season. Neither side will be liable for any financial penalties.
It’s not a shock that Alonso is moving on; everyone expected it after the comments that were made to the media before, during and after the Ferrari-McLaren spying scandal. Alonso, I think rightly, expected to be top-dog at McLaren for 2007, and he was rather unprepared for the Hamilton factor. Not only was this rookie being given at least equal and possibly better support by the team but he could also drive a lot better than anyone had any right to expect. As result of all the in-fighting and background shenanigans, Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari came in at the last minute and stole Alonso’s crown.
It’s expected that in a year or two, Alonso will be driving for Ferrari but no-one yet knows where he’ll be going for 2008. Wherever it is, he’s going to be hard-pressed to win back his Championship crown without a red or silver car underneath him.
And the saga continues…
I’ve written before about Formula One and the near-farce that was the 2007 season. I’ve also written about Lewis Hamilton, rookie challenger who so very nearly won the Championship this year - missing out in the final race, to trail eventual champion Kimi Raikkonen by just one point. Well, things are moving again today.
Max Moseley, president of the FIA and pretty much boss of Formula One, has been talking to the BBC about the season just gone and the 2008 season to come (check this link for the BBC’s story). I’m not a big fan of Mr Moseley for two reasons; first, I don’t think he really has the best interests of the sport at heart and second, he and the organisation he controls, seem to be inconsistent and biased with their rulings. Let’s take a few examples from the BBC report:
He thinks that Lewis Hamilton being successful will have a negative effect on the sport: “It will start to be negative because we’ll get the Schumacher effect where people start writing to me saying can’t you do something to slow him down”. I don’t remember hearing him making such a statement when Schumacher was racing, or when Alonso won two Championships on the trot, or when Ferrari were winning the Constructors Championship every year. There is well-known ill-feeling between Moseley and McLaren boss Ron Dennis - is this perhaps why he feels a successful McLaren driver would have a negative effect?
Surely if one driver or team is consistently successful, it’s up to the other drivers and teams to raise their game to compete. Formula One is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport; it is a competition for supremacy. That supremacy can only come from being the best, consistently. Is Mr Moseley suggesting that (as with schoolchildren now) there should be no winners or losers - everyone is equal?
He goes on to suggest that if it wasn’t Hamilton who was drawing people to F1, it would be one of the other new young drivers like Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica or Sebastian Vettel. Perhaps if they’d been driving the McLaren they might have been more successful this season, but these three have not lit up the scene in the way that Hamilton has. Strangely, as he appears to be a big Ferrari fan, Moseley makes no mention of Felipe Massa, who surely has made more of an impact on F1 than any of the other three drivers he did mention.
Making reference to the McLaren-Ferrari “spy-gate” affair, Max Moseley says “although the behind-the-scenes stuff was annoying for us and the people concerned, for the public it really adds to the general interest.” Not sure I agree on that one; what the spying affair did was really throw into sharp relief the inconsistent way that the FIA applies its decisions. It was shown that there was two-way flow of information but it was not proved that McLaren had used Ferrari technology on their car. Ferrari do not appear to have been subjec to the same scrutiny. McLaren were robbed of their points and the Championship was basically handed to Ferrari who, up to that point, were completely out of the running. Yet Ferrari ran an illegal car in the first race of the season and escaped any punishment.
For 2008, McLaren will be “closely scrutinised by the FIA to ensure the team had not included any Ferrari ideas on it.”. Quite how they’re going to be able to determine this is not stated, but Moseley says “Finding something will not be easy. On the other hand, there are sources we are going to deploy who will give us as good a chance as its possible to have to find it.” Which seems to be saying that they’ll find something even if there isn’t anything to find.
When asked about Hamilton’s involvement in the spying row (Alonso and test driver Pedro de la Rosa were shown to have been involved, from email evidence they submitted), Moseley says “He’s not a known quantity to me. It would be surprising if he didn’t know something of what was going on, but I’ve got absolutely no evidence that he had. On that basis it would be wrong of me to suggest that he had.” Even though that’s exactly what you’ve just done, Max.
Formula One is supposed to be a development sport; it’s for prototypes (like MotoGP is with bikes). That development will inevitably lead to one team having new kit, or new ways of working, that give them an advantage. The other teams will then try and find out what those are. The recent row is perhaps a little more direct than its ever been before - with two top designers swapping information over the phone - but its part and parcel of the sport. Of course, the fact that they’re talking about a 10 year ban on engine development from 2008 rather makes spying a waste of time.
Formula One used to be a must-watch sport but no more. The ridiculous amount of new rules (especially the utterly stupid “two types of tyre must me used in the race” rule), the inconsistency of application of those rules and the boredom brought to the track by the stifling of technical development just make it an expensive irrelevance. I’m not so sure I will be paying any attention in 2008.
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