The Slaying of a God

A Legend was dragged through the mud today. A pedestal was shattered, and a God was reduced to a mere mortal. A lesser one at that.

There was a time when Michael Schumacher struck terror at the heart of every F1 driver who had the fortune (or misfortune) to cross him. Legendary on-track battles and unparalleled mastery were synonymous with the Schumacher name. Love him or loathe him there is no denying that he is, definitively, the best F1 driver in history. But today, that proverbial F1 God fell from grace.

On a puddle-infested track in China, in the midst of chaos and bedlam, the divinity of Michael Schumacher was painfully and publicly laid to rest with each blotched defensive manoeuvre against the very men who grew up idolising him. That it was done in the rain was even more shameful, given Schumacher’s mastery of driving in wet weather conditions. ‘Der Regenmeister’ has lost his crown.

The ‘Young Champions’ and ‘Champions Apparent’ made such easy business of passing him on track that even rabid Schumacher loathers like myself felt an odd twinge of pity. Well maybe just a twitch that didn’t quite get around to becoming a twinge. At one point, Schumacher look like a sitting duck as he was picked off by one driver after another, with a defence that looked feeble and ragged at best. His attacks were even more pitiful, when compared with the robust and decisive stuff we are used to seeing from him. While he finally managed to conquer Adrian Sutil, it was a battle stretched over too many indecisive moves and in all probability was credit to the fact that Sutil was moving backwards, rather than Michael moving forwards. The final nail in the coffin was his running wide at the last corner of the penultimate lap, after being overtaken by Ferrari’s resident monkey, Filipe Massa.

Ever since he retired in 2006, the rumours of a Schumacher come-back refused to die out. When he finally announced his return, all the right noises were made about the folly of high expectations, but given his legacy, no one really bought the cover-your-ass PR statements. The Schumacher we knew would come back fighting and probably upset the gravy boat. Those expectations came with a disclaimer for an acceptable waiting period, but they were palpable nonetheless.

After a decent start in Melbourne, things have gone south for Michael, who has been plagued with reliability issues and unlucky incidents. The argument about inferior machinery, while valid, still sounds hollow, given that Michael has performed miracles with inferior cars. A death knell to the argument is surely the fact that he has been outshined by teammate, Nico Rosberg for four races in a row now. In short, the erstwhile F1 God is being whipped by young upstarts, and has yet to bring a decent response to the challenge.

To say that Schumacher will fade to the back of the grid is foolish. And dangerous indeed to consider him a ‘has-been’ of any sort. The sheer talent and skill he possesses, coupled with his expertise and knowledge makes him a very real threat to any of the championship contenders. Not in the sense of streaking away with the title, but by way of taking points away by still being in the mix of top 10 grid finishes. However, he has lost that aura of supernatural invincibility, in the eyes of his fellow drivers at least. That much is certain from today’s on-track display.

Schumacher has plummeted from F1’s Mount Olympus, sans divinity, into the Post-Schumacher era of the Formula One realm, where he is quickly becoming fair game among mortals.

Hmmm.... I wonder.....

Drat and double drat! I've missed the boat. For any half-decent conspiracy theory to gather a respectable gaggle of squawkers, said theory must be gently slipped into the public eye at an opportunistic time. Just as it is with sex, great comedy and a perfectly cooked steak, timing is everything.

A few days ago I happened to chance upon a particularly juicy bone in the Nelsinhogate hullabaloo that was overlooked by the media mongrels, currently salivating over the scraps of hearty rumours being thrown to them. I buried the damn thing, thinking I would go back to it in a day or two. Too late! Someone pipped me to it. Procrastination, it would seem, is a death knell to my literary aspirations.

I might as well share it now, since I've missed the eyeball grabbing window. While Pat Symmonds, Flavio Briatore and Piquet Jr. indulged in multiple rounds of glorious mud-slinging, no one questioned the presence of a character, who, at the time was still wiping off the gloop from another scandal - Fernando Alonso.

So that's two consecutive seasons now that has Alonso's teams mired in disgrace. That each team was guilty of the charges against them cannot be denied - no, not even by a McLaren enthusiast like myself. (Renault have just announced that they will not be contesting the allegations) So just what is it about Fernando Alonso that brings out the worst in his teams?

Could it just be coincidence? In all probability it is. And unfortunately so for the diver himself. His presence at the time of the downfall of two Formula One teams (and large ones at that) is surely not the kind of baggage one would like to carry around - particularly while knocking on Ferrari's door.

But then again, no-one would turn away a driver of such supreme class. Alonso's ability to wring out performances from cars that are real lemons is unsurpassed by anyone on the grid. It is one of his many "Schumacher-esque" qualities.

And yet, with the brilliance comes the unpalatable. Off the track (and sometimes on it as well) Alonso can be vindictively nasty (see Hungary 2007). His tantrums are legendary, and when things don't go his way he has been known to throw his toys out of the pram. (That's a phrase stolen from an F1 commentator methinks)

By Hungary 2007, Alonso was whining about not being treated as a "No. 1" driver in the McLaren team. By Singapore 2008 Alonso had been whining about how the Renault charger was an absolute dud for the better part of the season. Could it be then, that coupled with his incessant whining, the pressure to provide the Double World Champion with a suitable car seems to push teams over the edge?

Unlike Spygate, Alonso's role in Nelsinhogate seems to be restricted to that of surprised beneficiary. For now. Nelson Piquet Sr.'s claim that Fernando "must have known" about the whole shebang does make the old grey cells sit up a bit. For a driver starting 15th on the grid, a light fuel load is a seemingly silly idea. And whatever he is, Alonso is not stupid. His knowledge of strategies is masterful. Which makes the choice all the more suspect.

Renault's motivation to fix the race was, of course, more complex than merely putting an end to Alonso's whining. The win, however "lucky" it seemed at the time, came at the appropriate hour when the team was on the brink of leaving the sport. It also seemed to buoy the spirits of all involved, with Alonso finishing strongly in the next few races.

Whatever penalty Renault receives as a result of the scandal, the chances of Alonso's fate suffering is slight at best. The better for racing fans in my opinion. We should not lose a driver of his calibre - no matter how unsavoury a character he is. Still, I cannot help but wonder if fate, at its wily best, has conspired to make Alonso a harbinger of doom to any team he joins.

Having said that, I eagerly await news of Ferrari's driver line-up for 2010.

Forza Monza!

What a race! What a bloody fantastic race. Even though the end result was not what I would have hoped for, I was still sitting at the edge of my seat, alternating between chewing out my bottom lip and the frenzied inhaling of countless cigarettes.

One of the oldest and most historic circuits on the Formula One calendar, Monza this year was a mixed bag of triumphs, vindication, oh-so-blinking-close and a particularly resounding Phew! Not exactly your classic stuff, but thrilling none-the-less.

Triumph for the Brawns that came home in 1-2, though they might have lost a few fingernails hanging on to the coveted spots from the McLaren that was snapping at the cogs of their double diffusers. It’s not every race day that sees race engineers on the pitwall barking out fuel mix levels and sector time differentials to their top driver on a sector-to-sector basis. You don’t need to tell Jenson Button to go for the jugular.

Triumph also for Reubens Barrichello and the F1 driver pensioners who, I am sure, relished the fact that the cantankerous old fart of F1 (37 and wrinkling by the minute) pipped the cheeky youngling (in comparison of course) to the top of the podium.

Vindication for Force India – they really are quick and the leap-frogging to the front end of the grid at Spa was no fluke. For a young(ish) back-marker team with a small budget and a pompous windbag with no Formula One experience for a team owner, they’ve managed to shame the likes of Toyota and BMW, teams with superior knowledge and, more importantly, significantly superior budgets. But the thing that surely merits the old eyebrows wandering up to meet the hairline is the fact that they’ve been all over the back end of that F1 giant, Ferrari, for two consecutive races. It’s nearly a sort of “Herbie goes Bananas” story, and in my opinion, equally delightful.

PHEW for that F1 giant, Ferrari. That’s two races in a row that Kimi Raikkonnen has had to display some quick finger work with the magic red button to stay in front of Herbie. Double Phew that Kimi was in iceman mode and didn’t put a wheel out of line. Imagine the indignation of the highly-spirited Tifosi if the “ickle” Force India had managed to pull off a manoeuvre on the mighty Ferrari on their home ground. But as usual, Divine Intervention stepped in, handing Kimi a podium finish with the demise of Hamilton’s McLaren, half a lap from the finish line. What else would you expect at the spiritual home of the Tifosi?

And finally, Oh-so-blinking-bloody-close for Lewis and McLaren. What can you say? The competitive streak in these drivers borders on insanity. Why else would you strap yourself into a carbon-fibre capsule on wheels and whizz around impossibly tight corners at 300 kmph? Give a competitive driver a halfway decent car and he will bang it around the circuit in the hunt for a win. Lewis’ sector time was flashing purple before he crashed.

But then again, that is the sublime beauty of the old traditionally great F1 circuits - absolutely unforgiving on the smallest of errors. Always entertaining. Always some delightful horror to elicit a pendulum of emotional sway – depending on who you’re cheering for. And yet, many of the great circuits have met the axe in the recent past. Montreal, Hockenheim and Silverstone have each thrown up races that are legendary stuff, but find themselves booted out for greener pastures. Ultimately it is the fans who lose out, while Bernie Ecclestone employs the likes of Herman Tilke to build another “technically challenging” circuit that has teams breaking out into a sweat and the spectators breaking out into gentle dulcet-toned snores.

Scandals in the World of F1

Nelsinhogate. The latest scandal to hit the F1 world. With the amount of scandals we’ve had in the last 2 years, F1 is quickly turning into one of those sports where the headlines made off the playing field are of more interest than the on-track action. It’s all very bawdry and unsavoury. Almost “soccer-esque”.

It’s all very hush-hush right now, which is why everyone knows all the gory details. Renault have been accused of asking their rubbish driver to deliberately crash during the Singapore GP in 2008, thereby handing the victory to their prized pony - double world champion – Fernando ‘I’m a whiney git’ Alonso. Deliciously scandalous, with all the juicy trappings of subterfuge, blackmail, deception, machination, dudgeon, temper tantrums, pique(t) and pure deviousness worthy of Dick Dastardly himself.

So now we are poised on the brink of the all-important verdict. September 21st can’t come soon enough – which is when the mighty FIA shall rule on the matter. The barmy old gits in charge of F1 have had more than enough practice in dealing with scandals in the recent past. A quick update follows for the completely clueless.

It all started with Spygate, when McLaren got caught for indulging in a wee bit of peek-a-boo into the Ferrari blueprints. Tsktsk… naughty naughty. That was followed by Stewardsgate which had most genuine fans up in arms over the haphazard and sometimes biased decisions taken by the race stewards, and Spygate 2, where Renault were caught out playing peek-a-boo with McLaren blueprints. The real scandal in that particular event was that the team went unpunished, while McLaren were handed down a record fine of $ 100 million for their indiscretions.

Then the FIA President, Max Mosely, got caught on film in an S&M orgy. In all honesty it’s nobody’s business if Max likes a little bizarre hanky-panky, or in this case, hanky-spanky. But considering that he is the son of the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, and that said orgy was tinged with Nazi themed overtones, it’s no wonder the motorsport community was all er… whipped up into a frenzy, shall we say? Then again, most would agree that Max was a very naughty boy… mucking about with F1 politics and hurling his legendary ego tantrums all over the place. I would even go so far as to say he deserved to be tied up and flogged, except that he’d enjoy it too much. In any case, the sting operation created quite a stir… pun intended.

The beginning of the 2009 season was overcast by Liargate, where McLaren and Lewis Hamilton were pulled up for lying to the stewards about an on-track manoeuvre. Then came Diffusergate which was more a case of sour grapes than any real scandal at all. And now, Nelsinhogate. Perhaps the worst of the lot. In comparison, the corporate espionage of Spygate seems like a mild case of peeking over the hedges to see if the Jones’ are up to a little afternoon delight.

I pause here to distinctly state that I abhor the “mediafication” of the aforementioned events by the addition of the suffix “gate”. Lacks creativity and reeks of laziness if you ask me. Oh well, soldiering on.

The FIA is rabidly opposed to anything they deem “unsporting”, and mete out penalties willy-nilly. They went after McLaren like Pitbulls on steroids, yet Flavio Briatore and the Renault team escaped unscathed from Spygate 2. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Flavio and Bernie are best chums. Yet, I fail to see how Flavio will survive this latest debacle. The team doesn’t seem to be contesting the fact that the accident WAS deliberate. They’re just trying to pass it off as one of Nelson’s ideas. Forgive me for my uncharacteristic rudeness, but it seems to be a case of gross misappropriation of intelligence to Piquet Jr.

Whatever transpired, the fact remains that as a team, Renault have brought the sport into “disrepute”, a favourite catch-phrase of the FIA when they went McLaren hunting. It remains to be seen if the same rules apply here.