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Archive: holly-samos

BBC F1 coverage: radio

25 July 2009 12:40

Categories: Opinion

Practice coverage

This is another aspect of the BBC’s coverage which is a massive improvement on ITV’s offering. Last year, practice was just covered online, on some infrastructure which was clearly pretty shaky. This year, practice is covered on the red button. Even if you opt to watch it online (which I often do), the BBC’s stream is much, much more reliable and the picture quality is better than ITV’s.

Moreover, while ITV provided just the raw World Feed, with no commentary, the BBC broadcast it with the Radio 5 Live Sports Extra commentary. The Radio 5 Live team have been covering practice for a few years now, so it was logical to use their commentary for the television coverage to do it cost-effectively.

I must say, I think the coverage of practice is great. It shouldn’t be the most captivating of sessions. But the 5 Live team use it as a chance to flex their muscles, and they simply chat about whatever is going on in the world of F1 in general, at a fairly leisurely pace. It is like Test Match Special with fast cars, and I love it. :D

David Croft and Anthony Davidson are a great partnership for Friday Practice 1 and Saturday Practice. Meanwhile, Friday Practice 2 is normally covered by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. This is much more like a pub conversation, but I love the chemistry between the pair, and their chats about the political goings-on in F1 are unrivalled for their insight.

Radio 5 Live

As I have touched on already, Crofty and Davidson are a great partnership. Even though I like to listen to Jonathan Legard, I personally like David Croft a lot even if he is perhaps not ready for the main TV job yet in my view.

I first came across him when he read the sports news on Fi Glover’s Radio 5 Live programme back in 2001. Even back then he was an engaging broadcaster who had great chemistry with his colleagues. He clearly has a deep knowledge of a lot of sports. He never struck be back then as someone who was particularly a fan of F1, which makes the fact that he is so good at covering it all the more impressive. You can see he talent in the way he is also comfortable commentating on darts and boxing matches.

Meanwhile, Anthony Davidson is a complete revelation in the commentary box. It is no surprise this year of course — he was already impressive in his previous sporadic stints commentating on Radio 5 Live and ITV. Davidson will be hoping he is racing in F1 next year (especially since there are six extra seats), but once F1 is off the radar for him, he is surely an ideal candidate for the Brundle role. Who knows — perhaps one day it will be Croft and Davidson commentating on TV.

As for Holly Samos, I still can’t tell whether I like her or not. Sometimes she seems to be doing a great job, while at other times I would be expecting better. She’s been doing the job for a few years now though, so I think the listeners should be able to expect nothing but the best at all times by now.

Like I say, though, I have not been listening to the Radio 5 Live race commentary as much this year as I have done in previous years, so I am basing my opinions on a mixture of practice coverage and what I remember of last year.

But for me, it says a lot about the BBC that is has two very competent commentary teams — one for TV and one for radio — when ITV couldn’t even scrape together one.

The Chequered Flag Podcast

Radio 5 Live’s podcast is still pretty much a must-listen. But for me it has noticeably decreased in quality this year, I am guessing as a result of budget cuts. Last year the post-race podcast would consist of decent post-race chat between David Croft, Maurice Hamilton and another major F1 journalist like Jonathan Noble, and sometimes Holly Samos.

Now it feels like Croft and Davidson just switch on the dictaphone for twenty minutes when they get back to the hotel. It’s still good, but in a year when coverage has stepped up in almost every other way, this is a noticeable exception to the rule.

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BBC 2009 F1 commentary team confirmed

29 September 2008 02:11

Categories: News, Opinion

This morning Pitpass has a scoop that reveals details of the BBC’s team that will be covering Formula 1 next season.

The names mentioned are Martin Brundle (the only person to move from ITV), David Coulthard, Jonathan Legard, Lee McKenzie and Jake Humphrey. Some of the names are not connected to any roles, but it seems pretty clear who will be doing what.

Anchor: Jake Humphrey

Jake Humphrey’s name entered the frame in the rumour mill a few weeks ago, and the more you think about it the more he makes sense. He may not have any experience in F1 broadcasting, and frankly we don’t know if he actually likes F1. However, he is clearly a rising star and, moreover, a thoroughly competent presenter with a background in a diverse variety of sports.

Despite a background in children’s television, Jake Humphrey started climbing the BBC Sport ladder when he presented Sportsround, a children’s sports news programme. Since then he has become the youngest person ever to present Football Focus and Match of the Day. He also attracted widespread acclaim when he presented the BBC’s coverage of the NFL Superbowl earlier this year.

Pundit: David Coulthard

This has been widely expected for weeks, months, perhaps even years. As a highly experienced British Formula 1 driver, DC was always likely to start a career in broadcasting once he retired from driving.

Coulthard will not just bring his driving expertise to the role — he is also a very entertaining speaker and is not afraid to speak colourfully. Some have noted that the BBC may want to rein in DC because he is not the most politically correct person in the world. He notably exclaimed live on British breakfast television earlier this year that he wanted to kick “seven colours of shit out of the little bastard”, referring to Felipe Massa. I doubt DC will launch into such a tirade in the relaxed atmosphere of a studio in London, but his colourful style will entertain viewers.

Main commentator: Jonathan Legard

Perhaps at the different end of the scale to David Coulthard, Jonathan Legard is a conservative choice for the BBC to make for the role of main commentator. He is a safe pair of hands. Perhaps not the most entertaining of speakers. He is certainly not a Murray Walker. But nor does he have James Allen’s cringeworthy faux-excitement. Legard is a calm, analytical commentator.

A BBC man through and through, Legard used to commentate on Radio 5 Live’s F1 coverage before leaving to become the station’s football correspondent. I had read that Legard was reluctant to take on the role, having ruled himself out earlier. But this is an important one for the BBC to get right given the sticks and stones that have gone ITV’s way as a result of James Allen over the years.

Colour commentator: Martin Brundle

Despite the BBC wanting to put their own mark on F1 coverage next season (as is evident from the choices above), Brundle has become almost as indispensable as Murray Walker was when coverage moved from the BBC to ITV back in 1997. It was feared that Martin Brundle would not be a part of the BBC’s team, but he is simply too good for the BBC to ignore.

It would, in fact, have been a bit of a farce if they decided not to hire Martin Brundle. He has won an armful of awards for his commentary while at ITV. His ability to come up with witty, pithy quips on the spot has won him legions of fans. That’s not to say that Brundle is perfect, and mistakes seem to be creeping into his commentary more and more as time goes on. But this is clearly the right choice for the BBC to make.

Pitlane reporter: Lee McKenzie

Lee McKenzie is the daughter of F1 journalist Bob McKenzie and has previous experience presenting motor sport highlights on ITV. More recently she has presented Sky’s A1GP coverage.

I was just recently wondering whatever happened to Lee McKenzie (I don’t have Sky) so it was a pleasant surprise to see her name in the Pitpass report. I have no idea what she is like as a pitlane reporter, but she has been presenting motorsport coverage for some years now so this should work out fine.

Anyone else?

It would be interesting if this is the entire BBC team. ITV have had two pitlane reporters ever since they got F1 coverage, with one person chasing drivers for interviews while the other hunts out stories from the garages. If the BBC have only one pitlane reporter, this will be a big drawback of the coverage.

According to the Pitpass report, the BBC will be spending less on their F1 coverage than ITV. It seems highly likely that the coverage will be anchored from a London studio, although surely the commentary team in addition to the pitlane reporters at least will travel to the races. It would be quite strange, though, as MotoGP is always presented from the paddock just like ITV’s F1 coverage.

However, I personally wouldn’t mind the coverage being presented from London. I don’t see the big advantage of having Steve Rider and Mark Blundell standing in noisy garages with engines roaring so that you can barely hear them speak. Keeping the coverage in London is a sensible scheme that will save license payers’ money.

The names now out of the picture

The omission of Holly Samos is interesting, as I had earlier read that she was already privately confirmed as the pitlane reporter. Samos is okay, but she has made a few bad mistakes during her Radio 5 Live coverage this season, completely ruining my understanding of the race on at least one occasion.

As for the main commentator, if Jonathan Legard had decided to rule himself out, David Croft would probably have been in line to take the job. I am slightly relieved that he hasn’t got the job. While I think he is a competent commentator, he does make mistakes and he has a bit of a James Allen thing going on.

My preferred choice for the role would have been Ben Edwards. However, I have heard that it is a precondition of being part of the BBC’s F1 coverage that presenters will not work for any other broadcaster. Given that Ben Edwards has his fingers in many pies, this will have ruled him out.

What is really interesting is that no-one from the current BBC Radio 5 Live team has made the jump to the corporation’s television coverage. This is not entirely unexpected. When it was originally announced back in March that the BBC had acquired the rights to broadcast F1 on television, I suggested that the BBC might keep the current team on Radio 5 Live.

Even this is not confirmed however, as the contract to produce Radio 5 Live’s F1 coverage, currently held by USP Content, is up for renewal for 2009. It could be a case of so near yet so far for the 5 Live team. Both Holly Samos and David Croft were strongly linked to roles on BBC television, yet according to Pitpass neither has got the nod. Might they even be absent from next year’s radio coverage as well?

Update: Here is more opinion on the news from Keith at F1 Fanatic.

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What's happening to FOM's infrastructure?

22 July 2008 20:12

Categories: News, Opinion

One of the more minor talking points of the German Grand Prix was the failure of the live timing system provided by FOM. This is not the first time FOM’s timing systems have failed. In fact, a failure is a relatively common occurrence, and the odd glitch is to be expected in any system as complex as this which has to be hauled around the world.

However, the problems of the German Grand Prix were much more major than usual. And it represents what I consider to be the second large failure of FOM’s infrastructure in the past twelve months.

What happened in Germany

Problems with the live timing system became apparent when commentators across the world exclaimed to their viewers that Heikki Kovalainen was dropping down the order, but they couldn’t explain why. Soon enough commentators realised that this was an error, as Kovalainen was still running in third position with no problems whatsoever.

Each Formula 1 car carries a transponder which uniquely identifies each car. At various points on the circuit there is a beam which receives a signal from the transponder as the car passes through. This is the equipment that enables FOM to measure lap times to a thousandth of a second as well as car speeds. This equipment also records when cars enter the pitlane and how much time they spend in the pitlane.

What apparently happened is that the transponder on Kovalainen’s car failed. This is not the first time that has happened. Seemingly (and this is speculation on my part) once the people at FOM realised what was going on, Kovalainen was manually re-inserted into his actual race position — not before the legend ‘STOPPED’ (meaning “stopped on the circuit”) was displayed. This process seemed to continue for the rest of the race. A few times I spotted him slipping down the order a couple of places before magically re-appearing in his original position.

Apart from the initial scare of watching Kovalainen tumble down the order for the first time, this was a bearable issue. However, it was not the only problem to afflict live timing that day.

During the first round of pitstops, only three drivers were recorded as having entered the pitlane when in fact almost every driver had made a stop. This wreaked havoc as it was impossible to tell who had taken a pitstop and who had not. To make matters worse, the pitstops were subsequently manually added over a period of several laps. Cars were shown in the red text with the words ‘IN PIT’ which normally signify that a driver is taking a pitstop. However, they were not in the pitlane.

At this stage of the race Radio 5 Live’s pitlane reporter Holly Samos said that the teams were finding the failure of the live timing system very frustrating. It was very possible that the failure of this extremely important source of information could potentially have affected the race itself.

Captions on the television also went a bit awry for a short while at this stage, with the classification being displayed without the time or pitstop strategy information that normally accompanies it. For a few laps every driver except for Hamilton was shown as a being a lap down until this too was (seemingly) manually rectified.

The lap chart — which can still be accessed by clicking on the live timing link on this page — is a bit of a mess. Here, not only was Kovalainen largely missing from the chart, so too was Kimi Räikkönen.

2008 German GP live timing

The positions of the two Finnish drivers were not updated lap-by-lap as they should be. Instead, they jump about with their position updated at seemingly arbitrary points of the race. Gaps are left in the chart where they were supposed to be.

All-in-all, it was a bit of a shambles on the timing front during the German Grand Prix.

The other major failure

This comes off the back of the problems experienced in the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix. Here, the timing systems were fine (as far as I am aware at least), but the weather equipment was playing up.

I and others had pointed out that the temperature was extraordinarily high at Interlagos. At its peak, the track temperature was recorded at 65 °C. Looking back, it seemed a bit fishy. Ted Kravitz pointed out, “That would’ve melted even my trusty Dr Martens boots.”

The track temperature is often of interest, but it is not usually a vital aspect of FOM’s offering. However, this time the temperature measurements were later to have a pivotal bearing on the race result in this, the final race of the championship. The Drivers Championship was almost decided by FOM’s temperature gauge.

In what became known as the ‘cool fuel’ saga, the BMW and Williams teams were deemed to have breached article 6.5.5 of the technical regulations which states that “no fuel on board the car may be more than 10 degrees centigrade below ambient temperature”.

A cooler temperature in the fuel would allow teams to refuel cars more quickly — and, indeed, fit more fuel into the car. The BMW and Williams teams were both accused (by FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer) of filling their cars with fuel which was more than 10 degrees cooler than the ambient temperature which was recorded at 35 °C.

There then followed the revelation that the rules do not state how the ambient temperature should be recorded. Should the fuel temperature be measured against the ambient temperature recorded by FOM’s equipment? Or should it be measured against the information supplied by the FIA’s meteorologists, Météo-France?

Météo-France recorded the ambient temperature as being “a few degrees lower” than FOM’s measurement. Meanwhile, Bridgestone recorded the track temperature as being 48 °C as opposed to FOM’s 65 °C.

Clearly, FOM’s temperatures were way off. Ted Kravitz speculated that their temperature sensor may have been placed in the sun — a mega no-no in meteorology. Williams technical director Sam Michael furthermore pointed out that the equipment had not been calibrated for a full seven years and that it had been clear to all the teams that FOM’s weather information was not to be trusted as early as 2005!

That just strikes me as complete laziness on FOM’s part. Coupled with the woes we saw in Germany which frustrated the teams, it is clear that, unless things change, FOM’s faulty equipment could one day alter the direction of a race or even a championship in a big way. Here’s hoping FOM look into the technical issues and try to avoid a repeat of what happened at Hockenheim and Interlagos.

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Who I'd like to see on the BBC

17 July 2008 18:36

Categories: Opinion

The news that the BBC have got the rights to show Formula 1 from next season have been very exciting. Articles about what we might be getting from the BBC still pop up from time to time on various blogs and occasional snatches of news and rumours make the picture clearer slowly but surely.

But we still know remarkably little about the BBC’s plans. We know that the races will probably be broadcast on HD and that ‘red button’ coverage is almost a certainty, with the BBCi channels carrying coverage of practice sessions.

But who will front the coverage? This is one of the most important aspects of the move to the BBC, as so many people have been begging ITV to get rid of the terrible James Allen. So in the quiet period before the German Grand Prix I thought I’d have a go at constructing my own BBC ‘dream team’.

Lead commentator

The candidates

James Allen currently does this job for ITV. And while he is near-universally disliked, there is always an outside possibility that the BBC will hire him. Against Allen is the fact that he is not a BBC man, and the Beeb are thought to be eager to stamp their authority on F1′s coverage next year and take a very BBC approach to the coverage with BBC people.

In that case, current BBC Radio 5 Live commentator David Croft could well be in for a shout. It seems as though ITV were lining him up for a job on their F1 coverage as he has been fulfilling the main commentator role on the channel’s GP2 coverage this season. I have a soft spot for David Croft, but he has only been commentating for a few years and I don’t think he’s ready for the big gig just yet. He has been known to put his foot in his mouth on the odd occasion and does sometimes have the same cringeworthy James Allen style approach. Croft will probably stay on the radio.

The other obvious choice from within the BBC is Jonathan Legard. For a number of years he was main commentator on Radio 5 Live but left at the height of Schumacher’s dominance in 2004. Since then he has been the BBC station’s chief football reporter. That is a pretty big job. But the job of lead commentator on BBC television may be enough to lure him back to F1. His style is typically BBC: authoritative, but not too excitable. He is probably most likely to get the job.

My choice: Ben Edwards

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Ben Edwards is a quality commentator who can often be heard describing a variety of motorsport events. But the main F1 job seems to elude him. He provided commentary for Eurosport and F1 Digital+ in past years, and he has done the narration on the official F1 review video for several years now. But Edwards has never been part of terrestrial F1 coverage.

I don’t see why because he is a perfectly good commentator. He knows his motor racing inside out and conveys excitement better than any of the above names ever could. That style may not suit the BBC too well though. He may also be hindered by the fact that he is not a BBC person, so if the bigwigs at the Beeb want next season’s coverage to have a very BBC flavour, he may well be ignored yet again. Shame.

Colour commentator

The candidates

Martin Brundle is one of the few popular elements of ITV’s F1 coverage, and rightly so. His ability to come up with a witty, pithy comment on the spot leaves you in awe at how this person is not a trained broadcaster but a retired F1 driver. However, his gridwalks of late have descended into farce and does not seem to be quite on top of his game at the moment. He also may be seen as too much of an ITV brand by the BBC.

David Coulthard is currently looking for a job, and he is strongly rumoured to have put pen to paper on a BBC contract. However, DC is an unknown quantity as co-commentator and may be better suited to a punditry role.

Maurice Hamilton currently does this job on Radio 5 Live. He is very knowledgeable about F1 but I feel he doesn’t quite have the razor-sharp mind required for commentating. He is fine on Radio 5 Live, but the TV gig may be better suited to a more polished broadcaster.

My choice: Anthony Davidson

Anthony Davidson would probably be reluctant to take the role. He is, of course, fully focussed on getting a drive in F1. However, pragmatically the chances of that are slim.

He is ideally suited for the role of colour commentator. His performances on Radio 5 Live (and a one-off appearance in the role on ITV) over the years have been nothing short of outstanding, and his colleagues have commented on their awe at his ability to read a situation. Unlike Martin Brundle, he is fresh out of the cockpit as well so knows contemporary F1 better than almost anyone else.

Pitlane reporter

The candidates

This is much more difficult to read. I have not seen many rumours as to who might get this job on the BBC. Nonetheless, there is a gap here that I need to fill so I’ll have to go for it.

Ted Kravitz currently does this job on ITV. As with many of the people above, the BBC may not touch him for this reason. However, he is quite impressive as a broadcaster. You never see him with his feathers ruffled and he often does a good job of digging out stories in the pitlane. However, he has been known to be the king of statement of the obvious: “And they’re putting some fuel in… and some new tyres are going on.” Puh-lease.

My choice: Holly Samos

Holly Samos does an adequate job on Radio 5 Live at the moment. However, rather oddly she seems to be responsible for listing all of the retired drivers from time to time which is very odd. Whether she moves to TV or stays on radio, this unsettling feature of the BBC’s coverage should be dropped.

Anchor

Steve Rider is currently in contract with ITV so will almost certainly not front the BBC’s coverage. That is a bit ironic as Rider orignially moved from the BBC to ITV specifically so that he could present F1 (having previous described his regret that coverage was no longer on the BBC).

Martin Brundle is strongly rumoured to be the anchor of the BBC’s coverage. However, I fear that Brundle will simply be too knowledgeable to be the anchor. The anchor’s role is to ask questions, not answer them, and I think Brundle’s ability is obviously in answering questions. If he is the anchor, he may step on the toes of the pundit beside him. He already does a lot of James Allen’s job currently.

Adrian Chiles has also been rumoured to front the BBC’s coverage. He is genial enough and has a history of presenting sports programmes — though I’m not sure what his knowledge of F1 is like. However, he already has plenty on the go at the moment and his already heavy workload has taken its toll on his private life recently.

I hope the rumour that the Top Gear presenters will be involved is wide of the mark. I haven’t heard anything about this for a long time, so presumably this idea is no longer on the go. Having said that, the Top Gear website has recently launched an F1 blog — another sign that the BBC intends to heavily “cross-fertilise” the two brands.

My choice: anyone from the BBC

The BBC could well choose to give this job to an established BBC sport presenter. It could be someone we don’t really know yet. After all, who was Ted Kravitz before he was ITV’s pitlane reporter?

Paddock pundit

The candidates

David Coulthard would be the ideal paddock pundit. He is fresh out of the cockpit and has a way with words.

Martin Brundle would also be good in this role if he is not the co-commentator.

Mark Blundell does an okay job on ITV, but has joked that he will be buying a new sofa to watch next season’s coverage.

Maurice Hamilton is also a good analyst.

My choice: all of the above (and more?)

The BBC may opt for a revolving door approach to this role, with one person (or maybe two people) doing it one race, and someone else doing it the next. I wouldn’t argue with that.

8 comments

When is a mistake not a mistake? When your name's Lewis Hamilton

10 June 2008 19:44

Categories: Opinion

Once again I have found myself becoming more annoyed with Lewis Hamilton because of his interviews following a controversial on-track incident. The first time this happened was during the Brazilian Grand Prix — ironically following another incident with Kimi Räikkönen.

This time round in Canada, Lewis Hamilton pulled off the distinctly un-Senna-esque feat of crashing himself out in the pitlane after failing to observe a red light. Even though I’m not a fan of Lewis Hamilton, and am a vocal critic of the mad unjustified hype that surrounds him, I didn’t feel too much schadenfreude.

The thing is, the British media’s plan of convincing us all the Hamilton is one of the best drivers there has ever been — an equal to Senna — is blatantly beginning to backfire now. And when it comes to the British press, that can mean only one thing: the backlash. And that’s not pretty to see, and it would be a real shame for Hamilton to suffer this.

The thing is that he is a genuinely talented driver, but the British media built him up so much that he couldn’t realistically achieve what the public would inevitably expect from him. So just because he is a very good driver rather than a great driver, he is going to face some horrific treatment from the media soon.

Indeed, the post-Canada backlash was pretty bad, as summarised by Axis of Oversteer. The Daily Star even went as far as to suggest that an ‘L’ plate should be affixed to Hamilton’s McLaren in future.

Others — still trying to push the ‘Hamilton is the new Senna’ myth — looked to blame the team, particularly on ITV. Nothing is ever Hamilton’s fault, it seems. If he presses the wrong button on the steering wheel, it’s McLaren’s fault for having the button there in the first place. If he crashes into someone it’s the cars fault for losing its bridge wing. And now that he failed to observe a red light, it’s the team’s fault for not telling him about the red light.

The thing about McLaren is that, partly because of the team’s culture and partly because it is also in their interest to present Hamilton as the greatest driver alive, McLaren will happily absorb all of the blame in these situations. So it’s a win-win — the media gets to blame McLaren and McLaren happily take the blame to support their driver.

But should McLaren be warning their drivers about things like red lights? I remember a few years back the F1 world dissolved into fits of laughter when it was revealed on the FOM world feed one race that Takuma Sato was being told over the radio when to move left or right. That, of course, is meant to be the driver’s judgement call.

So what is it to be? Should the driver’s hand be held throughout the race by a committee of “spotters”? Isn’t the driver paid to make these judgements for himself? This isn’t mickey mouse IndyCar or Nascar — this is Formula 1, which is supposed to contain the 20 best drivers in the world.

The fact is that Lewis Hamilton shouldn’t have needed any kind of notification or signal from his team that there was a red light at the end of the pitlane. There was already a very clear signal: the actual red light. He should have seen this. It is his job to see it. He failed. Game over.

The thing is, Hamilton made a silly mistake. Or at least, it sounds like a silly mistake. He failed to observe a red light. The right light is a classic obstacle; one that millions of road drivers every day manage to navigate with ease. As such, Hamilton’s incident is perfect for tabloid ridicule.

But the red light problem is relatively uncommon in Formula 1. Even though the presence of the red light during Safety Car periods has been around for yonks, for various reasons drivers in the past normally encountered this light as green and it was rarely an issue.

However, the red light is a particular problem at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve because the pitlane is so short compared with the actual race circuit that runs along next to it. The pitlane is basically a continuation of the long straight whereas the start / finish straight has a chicane at one end of it and a tricky ‘S’ bend at the other. Juan Pablo Montoya was disqualified a few years ago in Canada for running the red light. Fisichella and Massa were disqualified last year. The problem has become more common at other circuits now partly due to the new Safety Car rules.

Anyway, Hamilton fell foul of a rule that he should have known about. But it is still a relatively uncommon incident, so perhaps it is not much of a surprise that checking for the red light slipped his mind. After all, Nico Rosberg slammed straight into the back of Hamilton having also failed to spot the red light. I saw Hamilton’s incident as a silly but understandable mistake.

However, Lewis Hamilton’s post-race interviews made sure that any sympathy I had for him drained away pretty quickly. Here he exhibited all of the characteristics that rub me up the wrong way about Lewis Hamilton.

First of all there is the refusal to accept he made a mistake. You can tell he knows he was in the wrong. Even as he got out of the car his body language said it all. He looked simultaneously embarrassed and angry. But he just can’t bring himself to actually say it. This week’s Chequered Flag podcast has an interview that demonstrates his evasion of responsibility (it’s 13 minutes in if you want to look for it):

Lewis Hamilton: You can’t even call it a racing incident really, can you? I mean, what is it?
Holly Samos: Just one of those mistakes?
LH: I don’t… I don’t call it one of those either. I don’t know what I’d call it.

I would definitely agree with him that it was not a racing incident. A racing incident is what happens when two people are racing for position and it’s a 50/50 situation and both end up colliding and it’s no-one’s fault in particular. This certainly wasn’t the case here. Kimi Räikkönen was just minding his own business and the whole incident can be put down to Hamilton’s brainfade.

So it must have been a mistake, right? Not according to Lewis Hamilton. He can’t even bring himself to use the word ‘mistake’ in his response, calling it instead “one of those”. But the fact that he doesn’t know what to call it other than a mistake says it all. Listening to him duck responsibility like this is as painful and embarrassing as listening to a politician evade a pressing question.

The interview also encapsulates Hamilton’s rather misplaced confidence. You might call it cocky or even out-and-out arrogance. In his interview with ITV he asserted that he was “breezing it” during the race. In the BBC interview he said, “We were the best this weekend. No-one could touch us this weekend.” But you certainly aren’t the best — you definitely aren’t untouchable — if you are prone to a silly brainfade moment like that.

Moreover, it’s not clear that Hamilton would automatically have won the Canadian Grand Prix without the pitlane incident. He looked good in qualifying, but we don’t really know how much fuel Kimi Räikkönen had. Filling up at that stage of the race, almost certainly both cars would have needed to stop again, in which case Räikkönen probably had the advantage because he had got out in front of Hamilton. And, having fuelled lighter, Kimi may have been able to pull out a decent lead.

McLaren really needed to win in Canada. The circuit is known to suit the McLaren in particular. Coming off the back of Monaco — another McLaren-friendly circuit — meant that these were two vital races for McLaren and they really needed to maximise their points haul to make much of this year’s championships.

As it was, Ferrari looked surprisingly good in Monaco and Hamilton needed a dash of luck to take victory there. Meanwhile, Kovalainen could only manage one point in Monaco. In Canada, McLaren came away with a big fat zilch. Make no mistake — this is a major blow to McLaren’s chances. The next few circuits suit Ferrari better and this could be the red team’s opportunity to pull out a serious lead.

Canada was probably McLaren’s best chance to grab 18 points in a weekend but instead BMW took the 1-2. And now McLaren lie 3rd in the Championship. They can’t have been planning for that. Furthermore, the fact that the McLaren underneath Kovalainen did not perform in Canada must be ringing alarm bells in Woking. Far from “breezing it”, I think McLaren will now be bricking it.

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