Lewis Hamilton: World Champion!
November 3rd, 2008After a quite frankly crazy Brazilian Grand Prix, we now have a new British F1 World Champion for the first time in twelve years! Ok, I may not be the biggest fan of Lewis due to his habit of comparing himself to Senna and evoking God as his team manager, but if you lived in Geneva with bugger to do all day and drove cars at the weekend for the most anal team in F1, you’d be a bit odd too. However at the end of the day, he is a superb racing driver and he’s British, so no complaints from me.
The race itself seemed to be a processional affair until the rain threw the proverbial spanner in the works. Hamilton qualified fourth and only had to finish fifth to win the championship, whereas Massa had to win with Lewis finishing lower then fifth for him to take the title. And so everything went to plan. Massa lead the race, doing everything he could in order to win and Hamilton held on to his points position, in an unsually conservative manner.
Then it all started to go wrong. This seasons hotshoe, Sebastien Vettel got past Hamilton and with two laps to go, Massa looked to be champion. Why didn’t McLaren tell their driver to fight? Well, because they believed that Glock, in fourth, wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace with dry tyres on a wet track. This was a very narrow call, and any other team manager would have probably told Hamilton to hunt Vettel and Glock down. Fortunately for Mclaren, Glock started to lose traction on the final section of the last lap and fell back. Hamilton was then able to scrabble past him on the last corner.
As Massa crossed the line, the Ferrari team believed that they had it in the bag and got quite a shock when they saw the Mclaren come through in fifth. I must say, I felt sorry for Phillipe Massa who has turned himself into a class act and a real contender, lets hope he continues to do so next year.
On the other hand, the way the sport has and is continued to be ran is another matter entirely. Dodgy stewarding decisions, big money crushing F1’s traditions, naff Tilke tracks, extravagant expenditure and behind-the-scene string pulling could scupper F1 entirely if they continue along these paths. But let’s think positive, eh?
