I dropped my brother to the airport yesterday and we had a nice healthy row about the Hamilton/Massa incident.
It’s always the Hamilton/Massa incident these days, isn’t it?
My brother’s contention, shared by countless F1 afficionados the world over is that Hamilton stuck his nose in where it wasn’t wanted again and should have backed out of it in time to avoid another avoidable incident that wrecked the race for two drivers.
My view, which is also popular but perhaps a little less so, is that Hamilton did his level best to try to get out of it once he realised Massa was going to turn in regardless of the consequences.
For once the stewards, this time in the company of that most even tempered of men Johnny Herbert, sided with Hamilton and Massa got a trip down pit lane to help keep his blood simmering for a little while longer.
To many it might seem that it would have been more appropriate that no penalty should have been applied and that certainly Hamilton wasn’t in the wrong in any way.
However, with the rules as they currently stand and given the way Hamilton has been treated by the stewards this year, that would have been a cop out.
It was obvious that Massa looked in his mirror and knew Hamilton was there so he has to have been guilty of ‘causing an avoidable incident’ because Hamilton, fine racer that he is, was fully committed.
I’ve said it before (and not just on the way to the airport yesterday!) that I believe that Hamilton is not very popular with certain sections of the media currently and that might be colouring the view of these incidents.
He may or may not have brought the bad press vibes on himself but they have nothing to do with how each incident should be interpreted.
Either way, while I like a row as much as the next man (who may or may not be a sibling!) someone needs to get Massa and Hamilton in a room together, and quickly. Off the top of my head I can’t say I’ve never seen Hamilton do anything wilfully aggressive in a racing situation but I certainly think Massa’s defence smacked of the Schumacher-style ‘none shall pass’ variety.
The sad thing is that the latest spat between the pair was just about the only thing of note worth discussing about yesterday’s dull race and the Indian organisers and race fans certainly deserved better.
The public have embraced the event, the drivers love the track and F1 got a big kick out of finally getting to race in that part of Asia.
However, the only vehicle capable of racing ‘off line’ was a JCB, legions of which were at the track up until the start of the event.
There was so much dust off line that it was more like a wet race and there was never any chance to see some proper racing at a layout that suggests it can lend itself to decent entertainment.
The track might have been cleaned up a bit if they had more than two junior single seater races on the programme. Once upon a time Grands Prix used to be wonderful festivals of car racing with F1 topping the bill but the latter day trend is for an F1 race run for TV with a thin support race programme which cocks a snook at the paying spectator.
Only in Australia have they figured out how to put on a proper show with non-stop entertainment from the time the gates open on Friday morning to shutting them again on Sunday evening.
Not only that but what happened to that old rule that you couldn’t run a Grand prix at a new permanent venue until there had been some sort of lower level international race at it?
In this case, a six hour sportscar race with lots of different classes and line-cleaning speed differentials would have done the job nicely. All this last minute venue completion wouldn’t seem quite so frantic if they had to have it done a few weeks earlier, would it.
That’d be good for Bernie’s nerves...