The Lewis Hamilton Roadshow
Is it just me, or does anyone else experience the same level of frustration when watching Formula One these days? Doesn’t it make you think you’re watching the US Open Golf major, or at least Tiger Woods playing in some golf match? You can be watching Tiger leaning against a tree, or walking down a fairway – not even in contention, but perish the thought that the broadcasters would actually focus on anything else, for instance some guy actually leading the event…
These days the result can be summed up not as “Massa wins the race”, but rather something like “Hamilton fails to finish”, or “Poor race for Hamilton”, or even “Hamilton goes to court to sue for race win”. Its all about Hamilton – never much about the other guys – the current world champion Kimi Raikkonen, or contender Felippe Massa, or even twice former champion Fernando Alonso.
He is admittedly brilliant, with supreme car control, but let us not forget that this is only his second year, after failing to win the championship last year (which is of course something special in itself). It is perhaps inevitable that he will become champion, more than likely several times, but there are other guys out there. Sebastian Vettel is sensational, Robert Kubica has huge potential, and of course the new crop of Kovaleinen, Piquet and Glock are just waiting to show their colours.
I do feel he was hard done by at Spa – yes, he did pull a stunt at the chicane, and I don’t feel he gave “enough” back – he still had the advantage of the slipstream, and was past again. But given that, in the wet, he was in a class of his own, he probably could still have won had he received a drive-thru during the race. Raikkonen didn’t finish, and there was no-one else even close on the track – Massa had “second” written all over him on the day. He deserved the race – in the big picture, and the marshalls just seem to be enforcing more and more rules and regulations – which are having the effect of taking away the pleasure and excitement of Formula One. They could take a page from the books of MotoGP or SBK as far as exciting racing is concerned!
No, it’s because he is British, and the commentators are British. It was the same thing with Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill – the fever takes over in Britain, and the rest of us have to endure some British driver driving a race, accompanied by the never-ending Hamilton hymns and praises. Come on guys – lets just make it a little less biased – it is a global sport – not just a British one!
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