As readers of this blog will know, I backed Heidfeld to win this year's championship. I say that because I do not want to be accused of being a Hamilton groupie, the inevitable chorus from the Hamilton bashers whenever anyone has anything good to say about the man. It was this constant refrain so evident in all the sites and blogs on the net that, a few days ago, decided me that it was time to re-visit the subject of Lewis Hamilton.
Lewis Hamilton
Last year we all became fed up with the unremitting praise heaped on the wonder boy by the British media; this season it has been the turn of the bashers. It matters not what Hamilton does or says, the bashers will find a way to mock and scorn and I, for one, am as tired of their prejudice as I was of the groupies.
As an instance, Lewis' reply to Ferrari's lawyer in the recent appeal case has been seized upon as evidence of Hamilton's arrogance and pride. Yet none of us know what caused those remarks; we have no transcript so we have no idea whether the lawyer had just delivered an ignorant and uninformed estimate of a racing driver's task, so inviting the kind of response he received. To me, it sounds as though that is exactly what happened and, until we know otherwise, to classify Hamilton's words as arrogant is prejudgement based upon bias against him.
That is the kind of claptrap so often encountered in comments on blogs and media sites on the net. The anti-Hamilton camp has become so entrenched in their hatred of him that he cannot do anything right. If he attempts to overtake, he is being rash and stupid, not thinking of the championship. If he does not attempt to overtake, he is not a real racer and is accused of only being able to win from the front.
The truth is that Lewis is a young man who occasionally departs from the corporate speak he has been trained in and sticks his foot in his mouth. And thank goodness he does - the sport hardly needs another boring mouthpiece of the PR machine. Like all the drivers, he thinks he is the best and would not be in the game were it not so. Racing drivers have to believe in their abilities in a way that accountants do not; in F1 we have collected the young men with the biggest egos on the planet. They have to be.
Those who remember Ayrton Senna's early years in F1 will know that he too was constantly accused of arrogance in his public statements. The other drivers were only too ready to seize upon an opportunity to criticize him; he was just too obviously something special and their egos demanded that they find excuses for being beaten. That was the root cause of the deep animosity between Ayrton and Alain Prost - Senna always knew he was the best but his confidence threatened Prost's belief in his own superiority.
And now I will be accused of saying that Hamilton is the new Senna. Well, he might be but I am not prepared to think so just yet. I use the example to show how any driver who has an impressive debut in F1 will meet with the kind of sour grapes that Hamilton is currently being served. As F1 enthusiasts, we need to rise above such gut reactions and be more realistic in our estimations of drivers.
I think it was Senna who also said that every driver is allowed one mistake a year. Lewis seems to be running at about two per season at present but there are a few more races these days so perhaps we can stretch a point in this case. And that brings me to his latest error - the first corner incident in Fuji. There is no arguing that it was a straightforward matter of missing his braking point; Lewis admitted so and it would be nice if Massa were to be as honest in his assessments of his own blunders.
Ignoring the absurd penalty decreed by the stewards for the incident (since I have had my say on that in the previous post), what really annoys me is the storm of criticism that Hamilton has reaped for an error so common that we see it at nearly every GP. He is called "stupid" and "dumb", he is "cracking under the pressure", it was not world champion class driving, he should have been more careful (meaning that he should not take an overtaking opportunity when offered).
Well, if he is stupid for attempting the pass, the whole field is as well, since they have all made the same mistake at times. But no, we expect Hamilton to somehow do the impossible by overtaking without outbraking, magicking a situation where no one is at risk and there is never any danger of a collision. Either that or he should have just sat behind Raikkonen and waited for Massa to catch up to them.
As it happens, I think that was exactly Hamilton's strategy in the event of Raikkonen getting ahead at the start. His tucking in behind the Ferrari was a clear indication that he accepted the situation and was prepared to follow Kimi through the first corner. And I am pretty sure that Raikkonen triggered the automatic racer's response to take the door that Kimi suddenly opened. That may have been intentional or accidental on the Finn's part; but it is clear in the video that Raikkonen starts moving left, rather than keeping the inside line covered.
Watch Raikkonen's battle to overtake Kubica later in the race - the Pole demonstrates how difficult it is to pass a man who keeps to the inside for a corner. If Raikkonen does not know this after all his racing experience, he is not half the driver we thought he was. And that is what inclines me to think it was a deliberate ploy, to tempt Hamilton into overcommitting himself. It worked, of course - Lewis is too much the racer to refuse an opportunity like that.
Which brings me to the point I wish to make. Lewis is a racer and it does not matter how much common sense and strategy is poured into him, he will take a chance when it presents itself. You may call it a rush of blood to the head, not thinking in terms of the championship, whatever you like - but this is what the great racers are made of. It is a natural reaction for them to go for the gap and yes, Lewis went for it.
That puts him in the same mold as Gilles Villeneuve, Ayrton Senna and Jean Alesi. Gilles never became champion, Ayrton threw away as many championships as he won and Jean managed one race win in his entire career; but they were masters of their craft in a way that the Prosts of this world will never understand. You may prefer the percentage driver who quietly accepts second place while totting up the points - me, I would rather see a driver who gives his all to each and every race, who races to win and never mind the championship.
On the evidence so far, Lewis is a racer through and through. Cast your mind back to the early races of last year when he astounded us with overtaking moves that looked impossible. Each of them could have ended in disaster but his luck was in at the time and they worked - thus fueling the Hamilton mania that we grew so sick of. It is only to be expected that sometimes they don't work and we can sit in our armchairs, scoffing at such a "silly" move.
If we look at the present drivers completely dispassionately, I think we have to admit that there are only two drivers who fit the racer type completely. One is Hamilton, as I have said, and the other is, ironically enough, Fernando Alonso. Both are there to race first and foremost, both make overtaking maneuvers that seem miraculous when they succeed but look a bit optimistic when they don't.
The real tragedy is that Kimi Raikkonen used to be one of these all-or-nothing guys but Ferrari seem to have knocked it out of him. And F1 is the poorer place, thanks to that. But we have an adequate replacement in Hamilton, I think. He has been an F1 driver for less than two years but, in that time, he has given us more to marvel at, to chatter about, to stand in judgement on, than a host of other hopefuls. Don't despise his racing instincts - they are what make him what he is.