Which, for the purposes of this little update, don’t include, “But of course this is my real hair.”
EJ is an outspoken sort of a chap at the best of times, and he was at his rambling, barely coherent best last Sunday, discussing that team orders business. Something about which he was very clear was that Rob Smedley shouldn’t have been the man giving Felipe Massa the order to slow down. The call, Eddie said, should have been given by the team managers who’d made the decision in the first place. He thought back to Spa in 1998, when the Jordan team claimed their first victory, Damon Hill leading home team mate Ralf Schumacher.
“Damon came on the radio and said, ‘If he comes by, then I’m going to have him off,’ and he was very clear about that.”
Eddie insisted that the order to hold position and preserve a 1-2 finish came from him, and that he delivered it to the drivers personally. Lotus technical chief Mike Gascoyne, then chief designer at Jordan, mentioned in the same broadcast that Eddie’s account of things had a certain economy of truth to it, and a couple of years ago I found a lovely clip on YouTube of a documentary that disproved pretty much everything the Irishman said.
It’s not there anymore. Happily, some enterprising fellow has uploaded the relevant bits. Judge for yourself how Damon put his views across, and notice that when he’s giving orders, Eddie Jordan sounds an awful lot like Ralf’s then race engineer Sam Michael:
Two races ago, on the streets of Valencia, Fernando Alonso was left apoplectic at the sight of Lewis Hamilton finishing 2nd. Lewis had unwittingly broken the rules during a safety car period, in a borderline call that the stewards of the meeting needed time to review. The safety car left the pit lane as Hamilton arrived in the same area, and by the time the Briton had made his mind up that he was allowed to overtake it and carry on, he’d just barely left the designated overtaking area. By the time they’d given Lewis a pit lane drive-through penalty, Hamilton had built up enough gap over the cars behind that he could enter the pits running 2nd and leave them running 2nd.
Fernando, who had been right behind Hamilton prior to the safety car period but ended up finishing 9th after dutifully waiting behind said safety car when it left the pits, found the whole business a trifle unfair. The stewards of the meeting had, he said, manipulated the result.
Today at Hockenheim, the Spaniard’s team mate Felipe Massa dominated the German Grand Prix. He snatched the lead at the start, maintained it through the pit stops and looked set for a first win since his comeback from the terrible head injuries sustained a year ago in Hungary. He didn’t make any serious mistakes, and Alonso mounted only one, unsuccessful, bid to race him for the lead. Despite that, it was Alonso who won the race.
His team, you see, had manipulated the result.
Article 39.1 of the F1 rulebook states, “Team orders which interfere with a race result are prohibited.” Article 39.1 was a reaction to the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, in which Ferrari ordered Rubens Barrichello to let Michael Schumacher through to win in spite of Michael being the runaway championship leader and Rubens having been faster all weekend. To emphasise that the win was being taken away from him, Rubens slowed very deliberately within yards of the finish line. It was obvious, it was embarrassing, it brought the sport into disrepute.
Changing the rules brought an end to that kind of blatant fiddling, but nobody is under any illusions that team orders are a thing of the past. The trick is to encode the message – give the driver a keyword or simply let him know that the car behind is his team mate, and that his team mate is faster. It’s not all that hard to make it appear that your driver was simply feeling generous and sporting, with the team’s best interests at heart. Nobody believes it for a second, because top sportsmen are driven by desire to win and would sooner remove body parts than give up a result, but nobody can disprove it either. Not unless you’re as subtle as a sledgehammer.
It was on lap 47 that the call came over the radio. ”OK – Fernando…is faster…than you. Can you confirm that you understood that message?” The emphasis was already present in the voice of Rob Smedley, Massa’s race engineer. Exiting the hairpin on lap 48, Massa dawdled, cruising at part-throttle until Alonso was safely by. ”Well done mate, good lad. Just…just stick with him now. Sorry…”
Massa, his spirit suitably crushed, didn’t bother to stay with him but did finish P2. The podium ceremony was a suitably frosty affair in which none of the major players looked all that happy, the Ferrari drivers went into the press conference to receive a kicking so thorough that 3rd place finisher Sebastian Vettel playfully asked to be excused on the basis that nobody wanted to ask him anything, and their team was fined $100,000 with the possibility of further punishment to come.
Assuming that everyone gets to the end of the year in a regular sort of fashion, Felipe Massa isn’t likely to win this year’s world championship. He has 85 points to leader Hamilton’s 157. Alonso, in a Ferrari that now looks like a very good car to have, sits on 123 points. Had Ferrari left Massa out in front, he’d have had 92 points and Alonso 116. In other words, Alonso would have been slightly further out of contention, but with Massa not all that much further in contention. Alonso, while not always well rewarded in terms of results, hasn’t made all that many mistakes this season, whereas it’s only this weekend that Massa has started to look anything like his old self. If they’re expecting that pattern of performance to continue (in other words, if Hockenheim was a one-off, if they were always expecting Felipe to go well there), it makes sense that Ferrari would want Alonso out in front.
In saying that, it makes just as much sense that the viewing public would want him to get there fair and square or not at all. Parallels have been drawn between this and other recent examples of Ferrari drivers swapping positions – Massa letting Raikkonen by in Brazil 3 years ago, Kimi returning the favour in China the following year – but in those instances the impact upon the title fight was obvious. Raikkonen became champion in Brazil, and Massa’s win in China set up his heartbreak on home soil, when Hamilton pipped him to the post by a single point. Both were at the very end of a season, and neither were met with any kind of condemnation. Strictly speaking, both of them were exactly as illegal as today’s effort.
What’s the difference? For one, the impact of today’s switcharound isn’t immediately apparent. If Alonso becomes champion by less than 7 points, it will be, but a glance at the current standings shows the Spaniard in 5th place – it’s not easy to explain to the casual observer why asking Massa to slow down was necessary. A knock-on effect of that is that it leads you to ask the obvious question – if Fernando was much faster than Felipe, why had he been unable to overtake him? He’d tried once, into the hairpin on lap 20, and after being forcefully rebuked he hadn’t been able to get close enough for another shot.
For another, today marks exactly 12 months since a spring detached itself from Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn in Budapest, clattered Massa in the face and came within an ace of killing him:
There’s a human aspect to this story, the kind of human aspect that the relatively safe theatres of modern motor racing very rarely offer up. Seeing Massa recover was an incredible relief, seeing him back in a racing car was heartwarming, and seeing him lead a race on merit for the first time in a long time could only ever raise a smile. What better way to mark the first anniversary of that horrific accident than a win for the likeable Felipe?
That goes not just for Massa, not just for his fans, but for Ferrari. What a lovely little PR exercise that could have been. The PR exercise they launched instead began as damage limitation and ended as a disaster. Continued insistence that they hadn’t given a team order was necessary – you don’t admit guilt in these circumstances – but the team displayed an inability to grasp why the fans felt aggrieved about Alonso being handed victory that harked back to the bad old days of the previous regime, and suggested that no lessons at all have been learned. There followed a suggestion that Massa had shifted up several gears at once exiting the hairpin that was an insult to the intelligence of the watching millions. Compounding the issue was that Ferrari had left themselves no choice but to enlist the help of Massa and Smedley as part of their damage limitation exercise. The two men are good friends, both knew they’d had a Grand Prix win snatched away from them and neither man has enough acting talent to hide their true feelings.
The cumulative effect is that instead of celebrating a fairytale success, Ferrari head to Hungary next week with the jeers of the media and the fans ringing in their ears. How odd that this episode should again have Alonso as a major player – between his 2007 season at McLaren, the Renault Liegate saga and this year at Ferrari, it’s impossible to view the constant controversy surrounding Fernando as a set of unfortunate coincidences. Circulating behind Massa earlier in the race but unable to pass, Alonso could be seen throwing his hands in the air, and a “This is ridiculous!” was picked up on his car-to-pit radio. How much of a role did Fernando’s persistent petulance play?
You’re a race fan. That is to say, you’re a fan of racing. You’re not a fan of races where the result is decided by men in garages wearing headphones. Are you more upset that the rules were broken, that they were broken with a complete disregard for your powers of thought, or because from a human perspective, and like Barrichello before him, Massa is a very nice man?
I did, in that piece about the flying Seat Leon yesterday. It might interest you to know that Bruno’s back in the HRT for this weekend’s German Grand Prix, that Sakon Yamamoto’s got a car to drive too, and that Karun Chandhok is this week’s man on the sidelines. Yamamoto didn’t disgrace himself at last week’s British Grand Prix meeting, but nor was he especially close to Chandhok’s pace, and his neck muscles appeared to have given out as early as Saturday morning’s free practice.
It’s the kind of to-and-fro that would really benefit from some kind of official explanation. Instead, it got this HRT statement:
“After Sakon Yamamoto gave a very positive performance in Silverstone, the team has decided to give the Japanese driver another opportunity to drive the car alongside Bruno Senna. Karun Chandhok is still part of the Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team family and is likely to be in the car at some later races this season.”
That’s cleared that up, then.
As far as anyone’s been able to establish, Senna’s absence from the Silverstone event was a disciplinary matter, but there may have been an element of bad fortune too. Senna’s drive is not dependent on him bringing sponsorship to the team, while Chandhok is required to bring sponsorship funds as part of his deal. Chandhok’s backers are thought to have been late on a scheduled payment, with the result that Yamamoto – who, unlike HRT’s other, much quicker test driver Christian Klien, has plenty of Yen behind him – was to be promoted to the race team for Silverstone. So far, so simple.
Just prior to the Silverstone event, Karun’s sponsors came up with the necessary funds.
Suddenly, HRT found themselves with 3 race drivers and 2 race cars. It’s believed that at around this time, and with no knowledge of the driver situation, Senna composed an email in which he was critical of the management style employed by team boss Colin Kolles, an email which the unfortunate Brazilian then sent to Kolles in error. The Romanian-born businessman has a history of rubbing folk up the wrong way, but it’s perhaps a little unwise to load your cannon of criticism and fire it squarely into your own foot.
At this point, the idea of having two funded drivers became more attractive than the thought of running one funded driver and a suddenly insubordinate teammate. It wouldn’t do, of course, to have Chandhok get away completely unscathed after the late arrival of his cash injection, so the loss of his drive for Hockenheim is the penalty.
Their driver situation for the rest of the season remains fluid, with the possibility that HRT’s driving staff, Klien included, will see themselves rotated through the rest of the year.
Oh, by the way…the saga to date is documented, in a slightly more profane fashion, by Top Gear’s script editor here. I’m not in the habit of pimping other sites but Sniff Petrol is never less than amusing. Makes you wonder how the same chap can be partially responsible for Top Gear’s descent into badly scripted, tediously predictable rubbish.
Ever found yourself walking along the street thinking about what you’d do if you were suddenly confronted by an out of control, airborne Seat Leon? Try this handy video guide – we’ll sum up once you’re done:
In summary, then:
1) Run
2) Keep running
It’s easy to be flippant about these things when you know the outcome. As you’ve seen, all of the men caught up in that horrifying shunt at Brands Hatch last Sunday walked away unscathed. Had Carvalho’s car taken one bad bounce, had it caught the guardrail a little differently as it vaulted the safety barriers, the accident could have ended very differently for all involved, including the marshals at the entry to Stirling’s Bend.
It’s equally easy to forget that the marshals, without whom there’d be no racing at all, give up their time on a volunteer basis out of nothing but a love and passion for motorsport. It might be worth bearing in mind, next time you prepare to berate one for being a bit late giving a blue flag to Bruno Senna or whatever, that these men and women put themselves in the firing line for our pleasure, our benefit and no material gain. It might also be worth reflecting on whether you’d be prepared to do the same thing after watching that clip, or whether you’d be so quick to turn around and assist the driver of the crashed car once you’d established that there was no longer any need to kiss yourself goodbye. If ever a video demonstrated why the marshalling staff of race meetings across the world deserved our respect and admiration…
You may remember that last September, this little blog ran a piece on Nigel Mansell, a brilliant racing driver with a taste for overacting and the ability to suck every last drop of excitement from a sporting moment simply by speaking. In that piece, which those in need of a refresher can find somewhere around here, I had a look at some of Our Nige’s finer amateur dramatic moments and speculated on what he might do for an encore during the Silverstone 1000km sportscar race.
Nothing, as it happened. For that, we had to wait until this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, when Nigel started the race in a car he was to share with his sons Greg and Leo, then concussed himself against a wall after 20 minutes. Being entirely fair on Nigel would require me to point out that he had a tyre failure, but then being entirely fair would ignore that Nigel’s exaggerated stories of winning despite a broken clutch/bad gearbox/Flintstone propulsion system were never entirely fair on his mechanics…
This weekend, the ex-driver helping out the stewards of the British Grand Prix is this chap:
I’m not sure what odds you’d be offered on a Mansell victory this weekend, but I’d get myself down to Ladbrokes pronto if I were you.
It’s taken a little while, but the first driving casualty of 2010 is Bruno Senna, abruptly dumped by HRT a day before the start of a race weekend. A surprise to many, this one, and that presumably includes Bruno, who spent his Wednesday cycling around the new Silverstone layout.
No official reason for Senna’s departure has yet been given. HRT have two test drivers this season, both ready to be called upon if needed:
Christian Klien – previous F1 experience in good cars, kept Mark Webber honest at Jaguar and was as quick as David Coulthard at Red Bull
Sakon Yamamoto – previous F1 experience in tail-end machinery, noted for inability to drive nail into piece of wood
Yamamoto’s in the car for Silverstone. Expect the official HRT press release to feature the word ‘ker-ching’ at least once a paragraph.
All of this would rather seem to overlook that what HRT really need is a new car, not a new driver. At least, they do if their technical consultant is to be believed. The Dallara-designed machine is clearly a difficult car, and it takes only a pair of working eyes to spot it darting across the racetrack apparently of its own free will whenever the drivers try to turn a corner. The team hasn’t a prayer of qualifying in the top 20 no matter who they employ to turn the wheel, so it’s easy to speculate that money is the driving force behind the change in personnel. So easy, in fact, that I did it a paragraph ago. It’s simply impossible to imagine any other cause at the minute.
A little video to finish? Bruno at Goodwood last weekend, driving his uncle Ayrton’s McLaren MP4-8 with his right hand and filming the event with a phone in his left hand. Don’t try this at home:
Ever wondered how hectic the start of a Grand Prix must be for the men in the midfield? Here’s a bit of on-board footage from Sunday’s race in Valencia, as seen by an old bloke in a Mercedes:
A bit busy, then. I stand by my opinion that this Schumacher chap isn’t all that bad.
For the benefit of those who’ve just returned from a weekend break on Jupiter, here’s an Australian chap having a bad Sunday afternoon:
It’s a testament to the strength of modern-day Formula 1 machines that Mark Webber got out of that with nothing more than a scratched arm, and a wave of Lady Luck’s fair hand that kept the Red Bull away from anything solid while it was up in the air.
Run into the back of somebody on your daily commute and your insurance company will hold you responsible. Run into the back of Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus on the streets of Valencia and it’s a different affair. The overtaking driver is responsible for ensuring that his move is completed safely and successfully, and it’s difficult to argue in favour of this pass meeting those criteria, but sometimes the driver ahead has a part to play. So it was in this case.
Our old friend Cakey was defending his place, as is his right. Usually a Red Bull encounters a Lotus only when lapping backmarkers, but after a bad start and an early pitstop Webber was down the pack, and this battle was for position. In doing so, he made a series of small but noticeable darts across the racetrack, not especially visible from the on-board shots in the above video but far more apparent from the external head-on shot. The unwritten rule states that the defending driver can change his line once. Heikki did it at least twice.
That’s not a sensible move at the best of times, but became a dangerous one because of the closing speed of the Red Bull. Lotus are doing a fine job in their first season, but their car is nevertheless several seconds per lap slower than the frontrunners. Webber came galloping up to the back of Kovalainen at an enormous lick, and it seemed that neither driver was quite prepared for how quickly the two cars came to occupy the same space. The onus here lies with Webber to avoid Kovalainen no matter what Heikki’s doing ahead, and in Heikki’s defence there was always plenty of track to the side of the Lotus for Mark to aim at, but Webber can be forgiven for failing to anticipate how great the closing speed would be.
That’s especially true when you consider that Kovalainen had applied the brakes ready for the upcoming tight right-hander. It’s been suggested elsewhere that Webber missed his braking point. Red Bull’s telemetry is said to indicate that on the previous lap, he didn’t hit the brakes until 80 metres beyond the point of impact – on that lap, he made the corner with no trouble. It wasn’t that Webber missed his braking point, simply that the correct braking point for a Red Bull was that much further down the track than the correct braking point for a Lotus.
None of that means they shouldn’t keep racing. David Coulthard would have you believe that Kovalainen should have jumped out of the way, that the new teams should limit themselves to racing each other. This is a nonsense, of course – I forget which energy drink firm has Coulthard as an ambassador, but perhaps you can fill in that particular blank yourself. There is no Class A and Class B, no reason for the new teams not to mingle with the established outfits and no grounds for suggesting that Kovalainen should have done anything other than defend his position. What wouldn’t go amiss, though, is a little more awareness of the speed differential we’re dealing with, and that goes equally for the man coming through the pack.
I had intended to write this piece a few days ago. Unfortunately, spending a long weekend camping in a field directly under the landing path for the adjacent East Midlands Airport, pausing only to rock and drink a volume of cider you’ll later come to regret, tends to leave you feeling a tiny bit beaten up. By the time I felt anything like human enough to come up with something coherent, Autosport’s Tony Dodgins had beaten me to it. Still, you’re not all Autosport Plus subscribers, so let’s have at it anyway.
The popular opinion appears to be that Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula 1 racing was a mistake. In the wake of his 11th place finish in Canada last weekend, there were forceful suggestions from fans and media figures alike that Schumi was a desperate character, shorn of his past speed, completely without answers to the pace of his younger rivals. Martin Brundle described Sunday’s race as the worst one he’d ever seen Michael Schumacher drive. Some of the criticism seemed a bit like bandwagon jumping, some of it was written by men very capable of forming their own opinions. What I’m about to do is take that Indianapolis Motor Speedway blog, the opinion of a man who has forgotten more than I’m ever likely to know about motor racing, and then completely disagree with it.
Cards on the table before we start, then. This simple blogger really wants the Schumacher comeback to work. It feels a little strange to be rooting for him, because it got incredibly dull watching him win what seemed like every weekend in the early part of the last decade. Brilliance is that much easier to appreciate when it overcomes a worthy opponent, and with a fantastic car in a team geared around him, Michael managed to go whole years at a time without having to take on such a challenge. No matter how good the package is, though, you still have to drive it, and Michael did that better than anyone else in the modern era. The idea of him returning to put everyone back in their place, the grand old man of motorsport showing he still has it 3 1/2 years after his last race for Ferrari, is one I can wholly support.
That, as anyone with the gift of sight must accept, isn’t happening. Whether he hasn’t yet quite got to grips with a 2010-spec car on this season’s narrower tyres or whether he simply doesn’t have the searing pace of old, Schumacher is not blowing everyone away. He’s spent a fair chunk of the season in broadly the same part of the field as teammate Nico Rosberg, a jolt to all those used to seeing Schumacher, then a 30 second gap, then Rubens Barrichello (it should of course be noted that old Rubinho, whatever you may think of him and however you might perceive his time at Ferrari, was close enough to Michael often enough to earn respect, and sometimes plain faster).
What is happening, though, is that Michael’s getting progressively closer to being the kind of driver demanded by the huge weight of expectation. Having been at best ordinary and at worst dismal through the early-season flyaway races, Spain provided the first glimpse of vintage Schumacher. His overtaking move on Jenson Button, sweeping around the outside of the first chicane as the Brit left the pits and giving the reigning champion precisely one car width and no more with which to do something about it, was a reminder that the aggression and competitive spirit remained undimmed. His defence of the position against a McLaren with a huge advantage in a straightline was a lesson in robust rearguard driving that didn’t once overstep the limits of fairness, and the BBC’s mid-race revelation that Michael was purposely changing his line through corners to cause maximum disruption to the handling of the man behind was startling. The mental capacity for which he became famous, then, must still be there.
Monaco. Leave aside your thoughts on the time penalty he was given, consider the move he made on Fernando Alonso, ask yourself whether it was the move of a man losing his touch, a man with no answers for the drivers around him. If you answer yes, consider doing something else on a Sunday afternoon.
Turkey. A weekend in which Michael had something in hand over Nico from the first lap on Friday morning, drove clean around the outside of Button again on the opening lap and settled in to an uneventful P4 in a car that had nothing for the McLaren and Red Bull battle ahead. Best of the rest might not be where you’re used to seeing the 7-time world champion, but there was no realistic prospect of him finishing any higher.
I know. You’re wondering how there’s any way to defend his performance in Montreal. You’ve taken in all the business about being too aggressive with Kubica, being passed by Sebastien Buemi and a fleet of Force Indias, that swerve on his old mate Felipe Massa towards the end of the race, and you can’t see how it’s possible to excuse the inexcusable.
Let’s immediately get rid of this idea that the Canadian Grand Prix was the worst race he’s ever driven. Dodgins cites the 2003 Japanese event, in which Michael drove into everything that moved on his way to a nervy 8th place and a narrow world championship win. You might wish to select the 2005 Chinese race, which involved an accident on a reconnaissance lap 30 minutes before the race started and a faintly ridiculous spin into retirement while trundling around behind the safety car. You could look to the Hungaroring, where Michael was classified 8th but didn’t make the finish in 2006 after a series of wheel-banging sessions damaged a track rod.
You could, but you’d be as silly to pick that race as you would be to select last weekend’s one.
There are parallels. In Montreal, as in Budapest nearly 4 years back, Schumacher had been on the pace in practice – it suits the ‘give it up now, Michael’ argument to ignore that his pace on Friday in Canada was strong, up with the very quickest cars on a longer run during practice. Both times his grid position was lower than it should have been, in Hungary due to a time penalty for a rule infringement and in Canada due to a bad tyre choice in Q2, the Mercedes not able to generate sufficient heat in its rubber. Both times Schumacher made big strides in the opening part of the race, up to 5th in Hungary and as high as 3rd during the opening pit stop sequence last weekend, 7 seconds off the lead and maintaining the same pace as the Red Bulls.
In 2006, Michael and Giancarlo Fisichella made slight contact, the Ferrari front wing being knocked askew and necessitating a pit stop that sent the German down the order. Last weekend there was no contact, but close quarters racing with Robert Kubica that saw the Mercedes puncture a tyre. Schumacher had Kubica touching the grass on the inside of the track towards turn 3, exactly the kind of aggressive move to maintain position we’ve seen in the past – ask Alonso about the shove into the scenery he took on the opening lap at Silverstone in 2003. Kubica arrived at turn 3 going too quickly to make the turn, and while you could argue that Schumi should have conceded position and passed Robert again as the Renault recovered back to the racetrack, it’s not entirely fair to ignore Kubica’s later admission that he wasn’t in position to complete the pass and would have ceded the place had he not wanted to demonstrate how little he’d been intimidated.
Kubica isn’t averse to the odd dangerous manoeuvre himself, unless you consider violently swerving into the path of a rival at 200 mph in a late, misguided bid to enter the pit lane a safe activity, but I digress.
Puncture repaired, the Merc was now out of sync on tyre strategy, vital in a race that saw teams struggling to get any kind of life out of the softer tyre. Some drivers couldn’t get 5 quick laps from them. In a call that Ross Brawn later admitted was optimistic, Mercedes tasked Schumacher with making them go for half a race. Since he couldn’t, they didn’t.
Lacking grip under braking and visibly down on traction under acceleration, Michael was a sitting duck. Buemi made a very well judged move to claim 8th position, while Massa’s attempted pass was a badly thought-out affair – there wasn’t time to pass on the outside before the final chicane and still turn into the corner, and ample space on the inside for a move that would surely have worked – though there can be no doubt that Michael wombled across the road prior to contact being made. Liuzzi and Sutil snatched the final points positions away on the final lap, after a scrap that occasionally bore greater resemblance to tag team wrestling than to motor racing – Liuzzi and Schumacher made contact through the chicane of turns 6 and 7, matters being resolved in the Italian’s favour when the Mercedes’ rubber cried enough again through the following 8-9 chicane. Sutil’s pass, taking advantage of Michael’s reduced speed as he rejoined the racetrack, was an altogether cleaner affair, but none of Schumi’s aggressors had any doubt that there’d been a race.
A race, though, brought about by the degradation of those soft tyres, which were surely never going to make it, and it’s a fool who overlooks that. Those with longer memories may recall a race a few years back in which, recovering from an unscheduled pit stop, Schumacher found himself on worn tyres (intermediates on a drying track this time), with a queue of cars behind him and no grip to fight them off with. Michael held his ground forcefully, perhaps a little too forcefully at times. More than once, he visited previously uncharted stretches of land, usually located some distance away from the prescribed racetrack, in a bid to hold position. More than once, he refused to concede position even when it seemed prudent to do so, hitting both Pedro de la Rosa and Nick Heidfeld. If you were paying attention a few paragraphs ago, you’ll not need to be told that the race was in Hungary, or that it took place in 2006.
Michael, who came within an ace of making it 8 world titles in what everyone thought was his farewell season, was no spent force then. Incredibly resistant to being overtaken, yes, and driven to stretch the rules to their limits and beyond if it helped him to stave off a challenge from behind, but far from over the hill. Wondering what’s changed since then? As far as I can see, it’s this:
Yes, I know. Some races happened and they were really exciting, with a whole load of stories to tell, and I said nothing.
I was moving house, you see. Then moving house again. Then going to Donington Park for Download. I had a lot of fun, since you ask. Ta. A note, though: the Donington Grand Prix Museum? The largest collection of F1 cars held anywhere in the world? If you’re walking up to the door, camera at the ready and entrance fee in hand, you’d better be damn sure they haven’t closed the museum for the duration of the music festival. I nearly cried.
