Days of our Drives: Part 4
Everyone remembers that epic race in Brazil 2008, where McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton won the Drivers Championship coming in 5th place whilst Ferrari’s Felipe Massa won the race. In order for Massa to have won, he had to have either finished first or second, and Hamilton had to be outside the top five. On that podium, Massa either bawled like a baby (if you are a McLaren fan) or wept like a robbed champion (if you support Ferrari).
This year’s Grand Prix final looks to be another photo-finish, with Mark Webber on 202 points, 11 points behind him is Fernando Alonso and nine points behind him, Lewis Hamilton. On top of that, one point behind Hamilton is Vettel, and only four points behind him is Jensen Button, and I’m sure you get the picture now, it’s very close. Even Ferrari’s team principal Stefano Domenicali said that,
“The championship situation is so complicated that we need to stay cool. But I believe we have everything to fight up until the last race.”
Ferrari isn’t the only team breathing heavily into brown paper bags, being highly pre-occupied with standings. After Hamilton’s contact with Webber during the Singapore Grand Prix, contact which ultimately retired him and lead him to using his steering wheel as a Frisbee out of frustration, he exclaimed that he was no longer thinking about the title which seemed completely out of reach.
However, as we all know, temper tantrums have moments of clarity afterwards, and Hamilton now reckons the 20 point gap to the Australian Red Bull driver isn’t too much of a mountain and more of a mine dump.
“On Sunday night, I was obviously exceptionally disappointed, it’s always difficult to get your head around things when you’ve just
retired from a grand prix, and it takes time to come to terms with that,” said Hamilton in an interview for his personal website.
Button is joining in with Hamilton in the McLaren positivism, as he said in an interview after the Singapore Grand Prix, “Confident. Relaxed. Happy. Yeah, I can put it in perspective, for the second year running, I’m right in the hunt for the world championship.”
Captain obvious, Red Bull Racing team Principal Christian Horner, commented after the Singapore Grand Prix that he thinks “it is almost inevitable with the way it has swung backwards and forwards that this will go right down to the wire in Abu Dhabi,”
Well we sincerely hope so! If the drivers get bored half way through and decide to call it quits in Korea, I might just pull a Felipe Massa Brazil 2008, from the Ferrari fan stance though of course.
Desiree Schirlinger
Photo Credit: McLaren Media and Mark Thompson/Getty Images