Corruption hits the F1 permanently
In 2007 spygate hits the news. A notorious british mechanic, Nigel Stepney, was passing technical confidential information from Ferrari team to McLaren and subsequently the information reached the Renault team. The story causes great distress and tension between the two teams, McLaren and Ferrari, grows dangerously. The F1 title is claimed by the young prodigy Lewis Hamilton who is driving a McLaren Mercedes and Kimmi Raikkonen, who is driving a Ferrari. While Kimmi is winning many races, it has serious issues with engine breakage and he loses points while Lewis Hamilton shows supreme skills for a rookie. He drivers superbly in many situations and shows that he doesn’t lack of experience.1
On the legal field, Ferrari has filled up a lawsuit against McLaren. Ron Dennis is under pressure and Mike Coughlan, the senior McLaren engineer who received the information passed by Stepney, is about to reach a settlement. The high court case in England was dropped after Ferrari reached an agreement with Coughlan and McLaren.2
In October 21 2007 the last Grand Prix of the season is taking place in Brazil. Lewis Hamilton needs the 5th place in order to win the world championship. While Hamilton begins the race second and seems to have almost secured the championship even if he was surpassed by the 3rd Raikkonen, he would still had enough points to win the F1 drivers championship. A bizarre scenario took place. While most of us never believed what the mass media and the two main teams, we had to accept that Hamilton ended up 7th after a problem on the gearbox, which was caused after his pit stop! The gearbox was the issue or at least this is what McLaren said in the press release. For most of us it was crystal clear that McLaren Mercedes had made a deal with Ferrari. McLaren handed over the pilots championship3 to the Ferrari team. This was the gentlemen’s agreement that held Ferrari’s lawsuit. Lewis Hamilton was the victim of this “spy story” which in theory, gave a clear advantage to the McLaren team. Ron Dennis was probably the artefact of this deal. He wanted this to be buried so badly that he handed the title to Ferrari and everybody was happy!
The story should end there, in Brazil 2007 the final act should have been played. Apparently it wasn’t that easy for Ron Dennis to accept this loss. Ron Dennis raised Hamilton as a driver. Hamilton was running free in McLaren pits when Hakkinen was battling Schumacher for the world title. Hamilton was an extraordinary talent, who was raised inside the team in order to became a future champion. He had the numbers since day one to become a champion. Ron Dennis felt like if he owe Hamilton a championship. In sense, the thought was not far from the truth.
In October 1 2008 in Brazil, faith you may say, weird luck, God knows why, the entire F1 world was about to see a déjà vu. Hamilton needs the 5th place, once again, to be named world champion. This time he is facing Felipe Massa for the world title and the phantom of the past of course. The course of 2007 was hard to forget for everyone.
Hamilton was under huge stressed which he didn’t handle. That’s why he lost the his key position 2 laps before the finish line. Sebastian Vettel, showed extreme skill this season and many insiders consider him the the next big thing in the F1. Hence, Hamilton was 6th when he started the last lap, it was clear that he didn’t had the nerve to handle a slippery McLaren and surpass Vettel who was driving extremely well ahead, in the wings of his Ferrari powered Torro Rosso.
Then, while Massa couldn’t believe his luck, something weird happened: Timo Glock driving a Toyota and occupying the 4th position lost 16 seconds in the last lap, because he didn’t change the tyres into medium-dry and lost grip. Timo Glock made 1.44 minutes in the last lap while every other driver of his league was between 1.26 and 1.27 minutes. The weird thing is that there were two other cars running who had the same set of tyres, the dry ones, and were 10-14 seconds faster than Glock. It’s not just a conspiracy scenario: Ron Dennis persuaded Toyota, before the race in order to have a plan B if Lewis couldn’t handle the pressure. Ron Dennis knew that his driver was facing a challenge that was to hard for him. Apparently, Hamilton one of the 5 best drivers out there, but not a champion: He failed his bigger test, he was surpassed by a lesser car, a Toro Rosso and it took tyre problem from Toyota, to make him champion.
The F1 once had just two drivers able to make us smile and crave for more: Hakkinen and Schumacher. Now there are many, skilled drivers and the stakes are high: Alonso in my opinion is the best driver today, 2 times world champion. He just need a better car and Briatore will hopefully deliver next year. Massa is extremely challenging driver, Hamilton is steady and aggressive, Kimmi Raikkonen is really good pilot4, Sebastian Vettel could do much more next year if Toro Rosso invests some money in the car, the boy for sure has some skill. We have all the ingredients to make F1 reach it’s highest levels. But this year, although it was dramatic until the end… The end was not convincing, same goes for last year. If next year something similar happens, it means that the sport has been jeopardised. Let’s hope not.
- Hamilton avoids engaging when it’s not necessary. This strategy keeps Hamilton in the front of the drivers championship. Many sport casters were commenting the fact that the 2 points who separate the 1st driver from the 2nd do not make the first position craved enough for title contenders [↩]
- There are many details that never reached publicity. Questions like who passed the information to Renault team, why Renault was not prosecuted, etc. [↩]
- The constructors was already lost by Ferrari. The FIA had punished the McLaren team by disqualifying the team from the constructors championship. [↩]
- This year Kimmi had a failure in the car set-up since the mid-season and that’s why he was not competitive until the end. But the 1 championship he won as stated above, should not be considered [↩]
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