Yesterday afternoon, Formula 1 managed to do the impossible and kill itself in public again.
Three hours after one of the most exciting races of the season and the race stewards decided to hand Lewis Hamilton a 25-second penalty that demoted him to third place and awarded the race to Felipe Massa – Hamilton’s direct title rival.
There have been whispers for sometime now that FIA have been favouring Ferrari over McLaren, but to be honest I have never paid too much attention to that because all the penalties that McLaren received this year have been justified. However following Massa’s lenient punishment thanks to his teams pit-stop error at the European Grand Prix (kept the victory with a $15,000 fine – peanuts to Ferrari) and now Hamilton’s severe punishment in Belgium, it’s getting more and more difficult to ignore the conspiracy theories.
Had this ruling come following a shit race, I’m not sure the reaction from the fan base would have been so aggressive, but seeing as how the Belgian Grand Prix had been one of the best of the season so far, the stewards have managed to turn an already suspicious public into a very loud and angry mob.
Compare and contrast this to the Indy Racing League which concluded its 2008 season in Chicago yesterday, which not only only had excellent wheel-to-wheel racing all year long, but had little in the way of the backroom bullshit that has plagued Formula 1 for some time.
In the end Scott Dixon claimed the 2008 IRL title over Helio Castroneves in the final race of the season, Castroneves won it by a mere 0.005 seconds. The race also saw some incredibly tough driving for the lead and at one stage Dan Wheldon, Ryan Briscoe and Castroneves were going side-by-side for nearly 15 laps at 200 miles per hour – unbelievable stuff!!And at the end of it all, everyone smiled, congratulated each other and took part in what was one big celebration…
…and his here’s the one big perk for me – the driver’s come across as nice people!! It doesn’t matter that they may be wankers in real life, it only matters that they seem nice. While I admire the current batch of Formula 1 drivers for their skill, I don’t think I would ever want to meet any of them because for the most part, they present themselves as arseholes!!
