2007 Formula One Chinese Grand Prix

[turbolc2]

McLaren cocked up big time. It was clear to everybody that Hamilton should have been in several laps before. Even the lap before he lost 8seconds to Alonso, if that's not bloody reason enough to bring him in, then i don't know what is. Hamilton could have wrapped up the title today, but McLaren messed it up.

Hamilton out!!! The championship will go down to Brazil after all!

Hummm, Let's look at this season. McLaren gets busted for possessing Ferrari data. The ruling came down right before the Belgian Grand Prix. Oddly Ferrari won the Belgian Grand Prix and the Chinese Grand Prix.

Look at Spyker and STR results after the ruling. Before Belgum These two teams were averaging 12/13th positions IF they even finished at all. Now they are finishing in the top 10, sometimes the top 5.

STR and Spyker use Ferrari engines. Tell me how a team such as these can be on a level like Toyota before the FIA, to a top running team after the ruling NOT be a collution between the FIA and Ferrari???


Remember the Schumacher days, people complained how boring F1 has gotten?? No position changes or different driver/manufacturer wins??? Hasn't this years F1 season been eerily like NASCAR???

Again what got me was going back through the season and seeing how well STR and Spyker have improved since the FIA ruled in favor of Ferrari. I'm not saying that what McLaren did was right, I'm saying that things like the tire problems with Hamilton in China the different drivers on the podiums after Belgum is showing that the FIA is turning F1 into an entertainment spectacle like the joke that is NASCAR.

[Rockefella]

It's amazing that pretty much the same thing happened in every formula he has raced in since the age of 12 !!

Liek Arnold Palmer said "the more I practise, the luckier I get"

He's a good driver, but if you put him in the Honda chassis he wouldn't be up front competing with McLaren and Ferrari. All I said is that he was lucky in the sense that his rookie year in McLaren was in the car that was arguably the strongest of the field.

[fpv_gtho]

Hummm, Let's look at this season. McLaren gets busted for possessing Ferrari data. The ruling came down right before the Belgian Grand Prix. Oddly Ferrari won the Belgian Grand Prix and the Chinese Grand Prix.

Look at Spyker and STR results after the ruling. Before Belgum These two teams were averaging 12/13th positions IF they even finished at all. Now they are finishing in the top 10, sometimes the top 5.

STR and Spyker use Ferrari engines. Tell me how a team such as these can be on a level like Toyota before the FIA, to a top running team after the ruling NOT be a collution between the FIA and Ferrari???


Remember the Schumacher days, people complained how boring F1 has gotten?? No position changes or different driver/manufacturer wins??? Hasn't this years F1 season been eerily like NASCAR???

Again what got me was going back through the season and seeing how well STR and Spyker have improved since the FIA ruled in favor of Ferrari. I'm not saying that what McLaren did was right, I'm saying that things like the tire problems with Hamilton in China the different drivers on the podiums after Belgum is showing that the FIA is turning F1 into an entertainment spectacle like the joke that is NASCAR.

I think its mere coincidence. Ferrari cant do anything that significant to the engines anymore to create the increases in performance youre suggesting. STR and Spyker starting to get results is more likely as a result of the B spec Spyker and Adrian Sutil getting something out of it, and the STR mechanics and engineers finally understanding how to get the most out of the Red Bull chassis.

[Zytek_Fan]

Spyker has been doing well because Adrian Sutil is a damn good driver. He was the only person able to compete with Lewis Hamilton in GP2 in 2006.
STR I would call luck.

[fpv_gtho]

Sutil is good, but not 1s per lap good. Mike Gascoyne can do alot more for the cars performance than Sutil. Apart from a perfectly timed lap in the wet P3 at Monaco he hadnt shown anything other than completely dominating Christian Albers until the B spec car made its debut where the car was actually in a position to race with the Super Aguri's, Honda's, Toyota's and STR's. He also never competed in GP2, he was Hamilton's team mate in F3.

[Matra et Alpine]

He's a good driver, but if you put him in the Honda chassis he wouldn't be up front competing with McLaren and Ferrari.

True. But I think he'd be doing better than Button

All I said is that he was lucky in the sense that his rookie year in McLaren was in the car that was arguably the strongest of the field.

Not down to luck either.
When he won a kart championship as a teenager he was presented a drivers award by Ron Dennis. Lewis asked Ron for his name, address and telephone number. Dennis reportedly said"give me a call in 9 yers" . He did
THAT is planning and determination, linked with skill - and luck isn't needed

[fpv_gtho]

Personally, i dont buy that whole determination story from Ron and Hamilton meeting at the Kart event. Any smartarse kid wouldve done the same.

[Matra et Alpine]

Personally, i dont buy that whole determination story from Ron and Hamilton meeting at the Kart event. Any smartarse kid wouldve done the same.

Well it IS documented and perhaps all those "smart arse" kids who tried it also, in the end didnt' have the skill or the determination ?

[fpv_gtho]

Probably true. I'm just sick of the media trying to paint that particular meeting point between Ron and Hamilton as some part of his climb to success, when its more likely coincidental. Ron obviously saw talent in him, he wouldnt have provided millions in sponsorship through his career until now otherwise.

[Matra et Alpine]

An interesting perspective on Lewis' "luck" ................

From The Times September 18, 2007

Lewis Hamilton the victim of association - Matt Dickinson

Lewis Hamilton has been told a thousand times in the past few days that he is lucky still to be competing for the Formula One drivers’ championship. But looking at things from his perspective, he is entitled to wonder where all this good luck is supposed to have gone.

Hamilton is so lucky that his McLaren team have been riddled for much of the season with unprecedented infighting and disruption. Ron Dennis, the team principal and his mentor, apparently has such a loose grip on operations that he did not know that secrets were being passed around his camp.

Hamilton is so lucky that he has been dragged into a scandal whose wider ramifications have resulted in him becoming loathed in Spain because he has fallen out with Fernando Alonso. And he has had to put up with all the innuendo from the “Ferrari-gate” scandal, even though he is implicated solely by association.

The only McLaren driver who was known to be in a certain position to gain from the information leaked from Ferrari was Alonso, through his e-mail exchanges with Pedro De La Rosa, the test driver. As Hamilton said: “The only e-mail I’ve sent to Pedro was about a female.” Not even the World Motor Sport Council can quantify what concrete advantage was gained by McLaren, but Hamilton must endure all the doubts.

Hamilton is so lucky, too, that he was forced to miss an important day’s practice for the Belgian Grand Prix in Spa last week to appear in front of the FIA while the rest of the drivers, including Alonso, his main rival for the title, perfected their set-ups.

He must also share a garage with a two-times world champion in Alonso who is so disaffected that he will probably do anything to get ahead of the young Briton (and vice versa). A team-mate, too, who has reportedly been bunging bonuses to his mechanics in an effort to overhaul the rookie at the top of the championship.

So we can probably forgive Hamilton if he has not exactly felt the need to offer prayers of thanks to the FIA for sparing him in last week’s glaringly contradictory judgment. After years believing that a God-given talent can make him a legend of motorsport, the last notion that he will have been ready to embrace is that cheating, luck and/or the mercy of the sport’s governing body have put him – and kept him – at the top.

The idea that winning the title in his first season may be “tainted”, as Max Mosley, the FIA president, has claimed, may even come as an affront to a young man with Hamilton’s self-certainty. Given the 22-year-old’s increasing outspokenness, including his ill-tempered comments about Alonso “swiping” him during the race on Sunday, it was a surprise that he did not tear into Mosley rather than change the subject.

The intriguing question now is how many other people will buy into Mosley’s argument if Hamilton holds on to his shrinking lead and, in Britain, we can probably count them individually. Certainly no one who watched BBC Three’s Billion Dollar Man on Sunday night will want to believe that a triumph for Hamilton will come with an asterisk attached.

It was a programme that took you away from the skulduggery and back to the building of Hamilton’s career from a council estate in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. The fairytale story, in other words, that the FIA knew better than to bring crashing down.

There is sure to be at least one repeat, if you missed it, and the story will be told plenty of times on the round of chat shows that young Hamilton is bound to embark upon once this season is over. Or you can read one of the five books, including his own, which are being rushed out in time for the Christmas market. Hamilton may have spent 14 years constructing his career with fearsome dedication, but he has only just begun the journey to stardom.

Bolstered by clips from Blue Peter, whose coverage of Hamilton’s early career must count as a first scoop for a children’s television show, Billion Dollar Man reminded us of how his father, Anthony, juggled several jobs at a time, including washing dishes and putting up boards for an estate agent, to fund his son’s karting career.

The money kept the father-and-son partnership going in a sport where working-class black children were about as common as they are in the members’ bar at Augusta National. Indeed, racist abuse was one of the spurs to success. “In the past years I have had the racist names called to me,” a 12-year-old Hamilton said with the poise that has been his trademark until recent, frazzled days.

“The first time it happened I felt really upset. I told my mum and dad. I felt I needed to get revenge. But lately I just ignore them and get them back on the track.”

It could hardly be farther from a story of fortune or privilege, which is why Hamilton will hate accusations that some of his success has not been earned the hard way. This is a man who was gutted when Michael Schumacher retired because he wanted to test himself against the most prolific of champions.

The idea that he may need an advantage to reach the pinnacle of his sport would be almost as shocking to Hamilton as an accusation that he would try to gain one by illegal means. Some will say that he is lucky if he wins the championship, Mosley will say he is tainted. Hamilton may regard himself as a victim if the trophy comes with strings attached.