Most people are now aware that yesterday Lewis Hamilton, driver for the Formula 1 team Mclaren and 2008 world Champion, made some rather brash and rather idiotic comments following his dissapointing race at the 2011 Monaco Grand Prix. If you’ve not seen the comments, here’s the post-race interview with BBC correspondant Lee McKenzie:
Lewis Hamilton\’s 2011 Monaco Grand Prix post-race interview
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Hamilton was clearly making a joke out of things, at least on the surface anyway, but oen does have to question if part of him believes that he is being singled out because he is black, especially after events in Spain a few years back. If this is the case, and only he can answer that, then he only has to take a look around the rest of the grid at examples as to why that belief is wrong. On the grid this year are a Japanese driver (Kobayashi) and an Indian driver (Karthikeyan). Kobayashi has been “investigated” by the Stewards as often as Hamilton has this season, what is his response? “It’s just one of those things that happens when you push” or something to that effect, he could easily bring up his minority status. Likewise, Karthikeyan could blame his lack of good drives (he last drove for Jordan when they pretty much had no money and were waiting for a take over bid) on his race, especially as there’s only ever been one other Indian F1 driver, that being Karun Chandhock who raced for the same team that currently employs Karthikeyan now, he lost his drive to someone who could bring more sponsorship money to the table (first Sakon Yamamoto then later Christian Klien, whilst Bruno Senna kept his seat despite finishing far less often than Karun). With the FIA (and in particular Bernie Ecclestone) seemingly desperate to break F1 into new markets around the world, a claim of racism from one of their top drivers, even in jest, is incredibly damaging to the sport, not only that its disrespectful towards pretty much every single black motorsports competitor and enthusiast out there.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, the biggest talking point for me is his comments about his passes (or attempts) on Massa and Maldonado, whom he pretty much declares stupid.
First up is the shunt on Massa, which saw Hamilton receive a drive-through penalty. For those that don’t follow the sport, this means that he has to drive through the pit-lane without stopping for fresh tyres, essentially adding 20 seconds onto his lap time. Anyway, as he approached the Loew hairpin he dived to the inside of Massa’s Ferrari, Massa turned in early but its unclear as to whether he was covering Lewis or moving out of the back of Webber. Even so, three cars, essentially side by side, into Loew do not go, Massa was left with no where to go and found Lewis in his side pods and his front wing hitting Webbers left rear, to me it was all a bit clumsy for both Massa and Hamilton (with Webber being mostly unaffected), and essentially a racing incident and whilst I agree with Hamilton that punishment was unfair, I do think he shouldn’t of been there, at that exact moment and that to blame Massa for the incident is overlooking his own inadequacies, those being that whilst he’s great at do or die overtaking maneouvre’s, he never feels he’s at fault when they back fire, essentially he seems to be of the mind set that everyone should move out of his way.
This is a personality trait he shares with one of the greats, that being Ayrton Senna, but what Hamilton appears to fail to realise is that Senna got himself into alot of trouble for such maneouvres too, and was often punished (although admittedly he was also unfairly treated by the then President of the FIA who favoured fellow Frenchman Alain Prost). Hamilton’s driving stylre is why he’s loved by so many, and why he’s so entertaining to watch, but he has to realise that driving in such a manner comes with its own set of issues, so whilst someone like Button will always have trouble passing his opponent on the circuit, someone like Hamilton risks ruining his own race, or worse somebody elses as he did with Maldonado.
Maldonado is the guy I feel for most in all of this. He’s come into F1 with having the reputation that he’s only in the Williams because of sponsorship money and that he unfairly displaced Hulkenberg, and I understand that view, but pretty much all season he appears to out performed his team-mate Rubens Barrichello (who’s spent most of the season bitching about his Williams) and in my eyes has shown that he’s deserving of his seat at the struggling team. He was well into the points by the time Hamilton tried a rather risky move to overtake which went wrong and saw Hamilton end the Colombian’s race with only a few laps remaining, Hamilton was quite rightly punished for the move (although he blames Maldonado for something or other) and given a 20 second time penalty after the race.
So coming back to Hamilton’s comments about the proposed intelligence of his fellow competitors, its difficult to take anything away from that other than arrogance and disrepesct towards the other drivers on the grid, something that won’t make him particularly popular in the paddock. In the Massa incident, he shares equal blame, maybe more as he was the only one who could have backed out from it, in the case of the Maldonado crash, he has to accept that he is the one to blame, he rushed in, desperate to make up another position after an absolutely dismal weekend where very little went right for him and it backfired to some degree.
Elsewhere in the race, I personally think we were denied an absolute classic finale because of the FIA’s rulings. After the crash involving Alguersuari, Petrov and Sutil (which also involved Hamilton to some degree, but he was merely a passenger), the race was stopped and the drivers made their way to the start finish straigtht. Fine, I think everyone was happy at the prospect of another 6 laps. However, by allowing the teams to work on the cars (replacing the damaged rear wing on Hamilton’s car after a Torro Rosso shunted him in the incident that stopped the race in the first place, and everyone putting on fresh tyres) we were denied the action that had been unfolding prior to the event being stopped, that being Vettel beginning to show signs of struggling on the tyres he’d had on since lap 19 with Alonso right on his tail with tyres that were 25 laps younger and then Button on his tail with even fresher tyres.
By 1. stopping the race (which couldn’t be avoided as Petrov was in the car for a prolonged period of time) and 2. allowing the teams to repair damaged cars and replace damaged tyres and then re-starting under the safety car the end to the race essentially became a procession. Okay we had the Hamilton-Maldonado incident and Webber managed to snatch fourth from Kobayashi, but we didn’t get to see Vettel potentially put on a dislay akin to Ayrton Senna at the same circuit in 1992 when he managed to hold Nigel Mansell off . Or a couple of other potential incidents such as Alonso/Button taking the lead through differing circumstances, after all, six or seven laps in any motorsport, especially at the end of the race, could result in absolutely anything happening. As it happened, the FIA’s regulations practically handed the win to Vettel.
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