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Archive: Interlagos

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.

5 comments

The proposed move to Donington

10 July 2008 18:40

Categories: Opinion

I’ll come straight out with it here: I don’t care where the British Grand Prix is held. I can well understand if people have a particular attachment to Silverstone. But I just don’t have it.

The thing is that, even though I am in Britain, I live a long way away from Silverstone. I don’t exactly live in the sticks, but the central belt of Scotland where I reside is hundreds of miles away from Silverstone. The British Grand Prix is not my grand prix. I’ve never been in a position to attend it. And I doubt I would be in the future. It simply involves too much upheaval.

Of course I would one day love to attend a Grand Prix and would pull out all the stops when I decide to do so. But would Silverstone be my first choice? Probably not. Travelling all the way to Silverstone would only be marginally more convenient than travelling to, say, Magny-Cours, Catalunya or Hockenheim.

Once I decide to spend such a significant amount of time travelling somewhere, I really may as well make a holiday of it or something rather than going along just to spend a blustery weekend in a crumbling, roofless Silverstone grandstand. It is notable that the one grand prix I have actually seriously considered attending is the Hungarian Grand Prix. I’ve never looked into travelling to Silverstone.

So my “home” grand prix means very little to me. When home is hundreds of miles away it ceases to have any meaning. My affinity with Silverstone is zilch. Of course I appreciate it as a circuit, just as I appreciate any other circuit. But I wouldn’t shed any more tears for the British Grand Prix’s loss than I would for the removal of, for instance, the Belgian Grand Prix.

As such, I can only shrug my shoulders for the prospect that the British Grand Prix is under serious threat. So I am not particularly bothered about the proposed move to Donington. I suspect most people are apprehensive about it because they suspect that Donington will never be ready in time for 2010 and therefore the announced move is little more than a proxy for the removal of the British GP.

Clearly Donington needs a lot of work to be brought up to the standards expected of a modern F1 circuit. But it is a nice circuit with plenty of history. People talk about Silverstone’s history as though it’s the only place that has history. But Donington has it as well.

People talk about Donington as though it is a pigsty. But in recent years it has been the venue for the British MotoGP. MotoGP is not Formula 1, of course, but it’s not that much smaller. Of course Donington needs work, but as I pointed out in my previous post so does Silverstone (certainly in the eyes of Bernie Ecclestone).

Access is also said to be a problem. But it handles MotoGP okay (though I’ve heard the traffic was pretty bad this year). It also plays host to the rather large Download music festival. And it’s not as though Silverstone has been free of traffic problems over the years.

There are many who also point out that Silverstone is by no means the F1 circuit with the worst facilities, with Interlagos frequently being cited as a terrible venue. However, this ignores the reality that Formula 1 simply needs a venue in South America even if that venue has to be a total dump. If F1 is to have any pretence of being a World Championship, it can’t afford to ignore this part of the world, especially as it has brought us so many great drivers over the decades. Europe, meanwhile, has grands prix falling out of its pockets. F1 can probably afford to lose the British Grand Prix. It certainly can’t afford to lose the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Where the Donington story gets fishy is the idea that the upgrades will be finished within two years. And that £100 million will somehow be raised by a fan-powered debenture scheme. Then again, you could just as easily ask where Silverstone would get the money it needs to make its improvements.

I think the harsh reality is that Britain now has no venue that is capable of holding an F1 grand prix. That certainly seems to be the view of Bernie Ecclestone. If the best hope of retaining the British Grand Prix is to throw our weight behind Donington, it might be the only way to go. Whether fans will feel this way to the extent of £100 million collectively remains to be seen.

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Three mysterious drivers

20 May 2008 00:58

Categories: Opinion

At last I have finished my exams so I now have more time to post. There is a huge backlog of issues for me to get through, and I’m not sure if I’ll get through them all. I will attempt by condensing posts and including them as ‘mini posts’ in a series. These little sub-sections could have been posts in their own right had I had the time. This first of my catch-up posts looks at the trouble we have nailing down three front-running drivers.

The mystery of Kimi Räikkönen

Clive wrote a post last month revealing his “gnawing doubt” about Kimi Räikkönen.

Why does he throw it off the road so needlessly sometimes? Why has he not blown Massa into the weeds yet? Why does he look so determined at one race and then apathetic at the next? It is all very well blaming it on his enigmatic personality but that explains nothing. The fact is that he is completely unpredictable and it is probably this that makes me doubt him.

There’s no doubt that Räikkönen blows hot and cold. Just look at the first half of 2007 compared to the end of the season. At the start, Kimi was rather unspectacular — almost anonymous. But as the season finale drew closer he became hyper-motivated, more flawless and quicker. The fact that he overcame a 17 point deficit in the final two rounds just says it all.

But now he is looking a bit more average again. In Australia he seemingly couldn’t keep his concentration, spectacularly throwing it off the road needlessly a number of times. In Bahrain and Turkey, too, we saw little of his foot-to-the-floor attitude we saw towards the end of last season. Clive asks, “Must we admit that Massa is on a par with our hero?”

I think it’s a bit much to say that Räikkönen and Massa are on a par with each other. But unquestionably Räikkönen has not become the race-winning machine some people expected him to become five or six years ago.

My own theory is that Räikkönen is genuinely great. But we became too used to Michael Schumacher’s utter dominance. When he retired, we expected someone to immediately fill a Schumacher-sized gap. It doesn’t happen that way.

Schumacher was exceptional in that he was in close contention for the Championship in almost every year of his F1 career (1999 being an exception due to his broken leg, 2005, 1996 and 1993 due to abnormally inferior equipment). No-one before him can claim that level of dominance, and I see no reason to expect anyone after him to claim it either. Not for a long time, anyway.

The mystery of Felipe Massa

Ah, for the days before Bahrain. It was all so simple then. Massa can’t handle F1 without traction control and Ferrari are looking to replace him ASAP. Not so fast. In the subsequent three races the Brazilian has mounted an incredible fightback under extreme pressure. Dodgy drivers don’t score 28 points from 3 races.

But I’m not a convert. I still think Massa is a sub-par driver who certainly does not deserve a Ferrari seat — at least not with an “equal number one” status. As has been pointed out by plenty of people, this year’s calendar flatters Massa. Turkey has moved to an earlier slot, meaning that most of Massa’s favourite circuits are bunched together.

In fact, this year he has done worse than last year. Last year he won in Spain whereas he could only come second behind his team mate this year. In 2007, Massa scored 37 points at the five circuits where Massa has managed to score 28 this year.

Of the Massa-friendly tracks, only Interlagos remains. Given that it is at the end of the season, Massa will probably be well out of contention by then, and may have to give way to assist Räikkönen’s championship hopes.

Monaco comes next, and Massa’s record there is not so glittering — a sole third place from last year being his best result in the principality. I might find myself eating humble pie here, but I doubt it. It will be business as usual from this Sunday.

The mystery of Lewis Hamilton

The last time I wrote about Lewis Hamilton, it was on the back of a lacklustre Bahrain weekend. Since then he has mounted something of a fightback, with strong performances in Spain and Turkey. But the Turkish Grand Prix yet again brought to the fore that issue that Hamilton appears to have with tyre management.

After the race it was announced by Bridgestone that Lewis Hamilton’s tyres were found to be at risk of internal delamination. Therefore, for safety reasons, McLaren opted to put him on a three stop strategy, thereby minimising the amount of time spent on his tyres, particularly the softs.

I have to take my hat off to Lewis Hamilton for managing to make the best of a bad situation. There seems to be some confusion over the optimality of his strategy. Clive seems to think it was advantageous to be on a three-stopper, but I don’t understand his explanation. He says, “that the three-stop plan was the only way for [McLaren] to stay with the Ferraris and it had nothing to do with tires”. But the explanation for this, as Clive himself goes on to explain, has everything to do with tyres. And if it was the only way for McLaren to go, why was Kovalainen on a two stop strategy?

Mike Gascoyne on Maurice Hamilton’s Inside Line podcast said that the two and three stop strategies are actually equally optimal at Turkey according to the simulations. But if that is so it doesn’t explain why Hamilton was the only person in the entire field to opt for the three stop strategy. If they were really equal, would not more people try it out if only to try and overtake their rivals ‘in the pitlane’?

I conclude that if Hamilton’s tyres could withstand it, he would have gone for a two-stopper. So he had a compromised strategy in Turkey. In this context, Hamilton had a stormer of a race. Even if the three-stopper was his preferred strategy, it was a great fight between him and Massa. On live timing it looked captivating as the pair swapped green and purple sectors throughout the race. And on top of it there was even a genuine overtaking move for the lead!

So hats off for the performance. But is it time for Hamilton to get his act into gear when it comes to looking after his tyres? I have been saying this for a while now. All too often now, Hamilton has been thwarted by shot tyres. You can pretty much squarely blame his championship loss on his worn-out tyres.

The debate has been whether or not Bridgestone should cater for Hamilton’s more aggressive driving style. There is something to be said for this. However, Hamilton should really learn the limitations of his equipment and be able to drive on that limit without exceeding it. Is that not what motor racing is about? For a period of time Kimi Räikkönen became known as a car-breaker because his engine went pop a few times. I think a better case can be made for Hamilton being a tyre-ruiner.

We keep on hearing from a certain man who works for ITV that Lewis Hamilton is “Senna-esque”. Senna was known for being able to make dry tyres work in wet conditions. Hamilton is struggling to make dry tyres work in dry conditions. So until he masters this, I’d like to see less of the Senna comparisons.

10 comments

I am fed up with the power-crazy FIA’s interfering

19 October 2007 20:13

Categories: Formula 1, Max Must Go

I have really had enough. Formula 1 is being ruined by a ridiculously Byzantine rule book, political in-fighting, inconsistent penalty decisions, nonsensical posturing and the power-crazy FIA President responsible for it all.

It seems to me as though the FIA is increasingly determined to stick its nose in everything, constantly bossing the teams and bosses around for no good reason, and ruining the sporting spectacle for the fans at home. All too often the race result is changed hours after the chequered flag is waved. And with the multitude of almost-random grid penalties being handed out race-in race-out they really might as well draw lots to determine the grid order.

There is no need for McLaren to be given a special scrutineer to ensure that Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are given equal treatment throughout the weekend. Even Fernando Alonso — whose complaints set off the chain of events that led to McLaren getting the extra scrutineer — says that it is completely unnecessary.

There is surely no-one who seriously considers that McLaren would do anything but offer their drivers complete equality — as far as they possibly can — this weekend. For a start, if anything goes wrong with Alonso’s car, there will be no shortage of people ready to suspect the worst and waiting to throw stones at Ron Dennis for it.

But even if McLaren were to ditch their long-standing (and contractually-binding) policy of equality between their two drivers, what business is it of the FIA’s? None whatsoever. McLaren are a private team, and they should be allowed to run their team in whatever way they see fit. Of course, Max Mosley sees it differently.

How interesting, though, that the FIA turned a blind eye to Ferrari’s policy of explicitly favouring one driver over another during the years that Michael Schumacher drove for them. Not only was this Ferrari’s well-known policy, but Ferrari were proud of it. Many today see it as the model by which all modern F1 teams should be run. If the FIA are so worried about equality, why are they not intervene when Michael Schumacher was competing for any of the five World Championships that he won for Ferrari, or for Ferrari’s own six Constructors’ Championships?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, on Friday at Interlagos came news that three drivers had broken a rule that nobody had heard of. Why on earth is there a rule concerning the number of sets of wet tyres a team can use during a practice session?

Quick, fire up the FIA Random Penalty Generator. Because we don’t know where Takuma Sato, Jenson Button or Lewis Hamilton will be on the grid. That’s right, Lewis Hamilton. Given all the criticism the FIA have faced this season, you would think they would be sensible enough to keep their grubby mitts off the championship battle and let the drivers decide the outcome on the track, the way sport should be.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not the biggest fan of Lewis Hamilton. But I must sympathise with him and the McLaren team here. Of course, it is fair enough if Lewis Hamilton and the McLaren team have broken a rule. To be frank, it baffles me why Lewis Hamilton needed two sets of tyres when he only did a dozen or so laps. And McLaren (and Honda and Super Aguri) should not be in the sort of situation where they find themselves not knowing the rules.

But this is quite a silly rule that I can’t understand the point of. This probably comes under the FIA’s catch-all “cost cutting” heading, the excuse they give for introducing all of their silliest rules. It is on days like this when I wonder if Formula 1 would not be better just re-writing the rules from scratch.

A good government needs to learn when to leave things alone and treat people as mature adults who can sort things out for themselves. Of course, most governments rather prefer to grab as much power as they can, and the FIA is no different.

9 comments

Slow but steady wins the race for Räikkönen

10 October 2007 17:06

Categories: Formula 1

Sorry! Very late once again. Very busy weekend once again. I’m actually staying up well past my bedtime to write this post. (And not because I’m waiting to see if In Rainbows is released this evening, oh no!)

Anyway, the Chinese Grand Prix was just the sort of classic race that reminds you why you love F1 (that is, unless you actually hate F1). There is Lewis Hamilton, looking like a dead cert for the championship. Then, in an instant, the all-too-impatient Hamilton makes his first major mistake of the year. And what a mistake. And what a time for it to happen! This is what F1 is all about.

I simply could not believe my eyes when it was happening. First of all there was the fact that Hamilton beached it in a gravel trap — a gravel trap that most people probably did not know existed, given its obscure position on the outside of the pit lane entrance. What an irony, with all of these modern tracks shunning the old-fashioned gravel traps in favour of huge concrete run-off areas, and Lewis Hamilton got stuck in a tiny trap that was barely big enough for him to park in anyway.

There was an amusing moment when James Allen said, “He might not be allowed to get a push here.” Not that this minor quibble has stopped Hamilton from using a crane to get back into the race in the past.

After spending a while trying to persuade the nonplussed Chinese marshals to push him out of the gravel, Hamilton finally gave up. He pulled out his steering wheel, stood up and immediately turned round to look at the marshals in disgust. I wonder what he was trying to say to the marshals?

Don’t you know who I am? I am Britain’s Lewis Hamilton™! I am the greatest rookie ever (apart from Jacques Villeneuve)! Just three races into my career I was already the fifth-best Grand Prix driver in history — imagine how good I must be now! You know, in Europe they know which side their bread is buttered on — I usually get the crane treatment there.

All joking aside though, I actually felt a bit sorry for Hamilton. While he must shoulder the blame for going into the pits too impatiently, the McLaren team were obviously completely off their rocker to leave him out for so long on tyres that were effectively dead.

I was sitting here watching the race, along with Formula1.com’s excellent live timing service. The drop-off in Hamilton’s performance was dramatic. What’s more, it was getting worse. When Räikkönen was catching up with Hamilton, there was a point where Hamilton lost four seconds in two laps. The following lap, having been passed by the Finn, he lost seven seconds in one lap to Alonso.

McLaren say they were waiting to see if it was going to start raining again. But — uncertainty about the weather or not — you simply cannot leave a driver out there when he is losing upwards of seven seconds per lap. I guess it would have been a risk either way, but given the results the team ended up looking a bit stupid. McLaren made a huge error there and it could cost them the championship.

But before all those ITV viewers start sending those angry missives to the McLaren team, here is something to chew on — the dreadful state of the tyres could have been completely down to Hamilton’s over-aggressive driving.

At the start of the race, Hamilton absolutely blitzed away. He just sped off, leaving the others looking a bit silly. It turned out that Hamilton was the silly one. By setting his fastest laps when his car was heaviest with fuel, he completely ruined his tyres. Meanwhile, Räikkönen waited until lap 15 before he started putting his foot down — and those laps put Hamilton’s early ones in the shade. By that time Hamilton’s tyres had been ruined, and the game was up. The full analysis is at F1Fanatic, and it’s fascinating (if you like that sort of thing).

Questions have to be asked overall about the approach that Hamilton and McLaren took to this race. Remember, to secure the championship, Hamilton only needed to finish 5th. Yet they were taking these risks with the tyres, Hamilton was just impatient to get away from Räikkönen at the start of the race. Then when Räikkönen caught up he wasted his tyres yet again by putting up a fight that he was always going to lose.

So why did he seem so desperate to take so many risks in order to win instead of playing it safe? A lot of people will say that it’s just because of the way Hamilton is. He only wants to win. Maybe so, but his approach only gave him failure.

A lot of people point out the fact that Hamilton is a real racer and a risk-taker, in stark contrast to many other F1 drivers. I can’t help wondering if the other drivers just have wiser, more balanced approaches to their races. if Hamilton learns from this race, perhaps in the future it will be seen as a turning point in Hamilton’s career — when he learned to be conservative like the other drivers.

There is another fascinating thing that I read on F1Fanatic, in the Ben Evans column. I’ve mentioned before about Hamilton not being so good in the wet, although Fuji seemed to put that to bed (if you decide to ignore his dreadful driving behind the Safety Car). But Shanghai has opened it all up again. This was without doubt the worst race of his F1 career so far, and it demonstrated his weakness in the wet. Ben Evans says:

Interestingly, following the European Grand Prix in July a racing acquaintance who ran a Formula Renault team at the same time Hamilton was in the series commented ‘He’s bloody quick, but has no feel for the car in changeable conditions’. Thus it was at the Nürburgring and again appeared to be the case on Sunday.

It was the reverse case for Jenson Button. What a superb drive he put in on Sunday. To get that Honda car into fifth position demonstrates just how good he is in the wet. It is amazing to see — after such a terrible season in a dog of a car — that he could put all that behind him and put in a solid performance. Button has gone up in my estimation a lot this season, particularly since he seems to have put Barrichello in the shade.

Big mention also for Toro Rosso. They really are having a strong end to the season now, and Sebastian Vettel is a revelation. When he moved to Toro Rosso, the joke was that Vettel had scored a point in his first race (for BMW), but by moving to Toro Rosso he was guaranteed to wait 18 months for his next one! Not when Vettel is at the wheel though. What a way to bounce back after his Fuji mishap.

Don’t forget also that Vitantonio Liuzzi scored three points for Toro Rosso as well. All-in-all, a brilliant race for Toro Rosso. I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “Forza Minardi!” Despite Button’s good haul of points, Toro Rosso leapfrogged over Honda in the Constructors’ Championship.

As for the Drivers’ Championship, Hamilton still has the best chance, but obviously it looks as though he has lost a lot of the momentum. Dead cert going into China, a bit shaky going into Brazil. It’s incredible how there seems to be some kind of mystical force that makes sure the championship is usually decided at the final round.

There are a number of mouth-watering possibilities. If any one of the three contenders win, they will thoroughly deserve it.

Hamilton has had a barnstorming début season. He has beaten everyone’s expectations. He has made some amazing overtaking manoeuvres that have made amazing drivers look silly. His qualifying performances have been nothing short of unbelievable. He has rattled Alonso. But, I still doubt that he is truly ready to be World Champion. If conditions at Interlagos are changeable (as they often are), he will be in big danger.

If Alonso wins the World Championship, it would be an equally amazing achievement. A back-to-back triple world champion is not something you see every day. Well, okay, apart from in 2004. But, Alonso would achieve it with two different teams, which is a real rarity. It’s not easy to move teams (and boy, has Alonso’s experience been proof of that!), but Alonso has put all the nonsense behind him and delivered solid results on the track. Also, I would love to see the look on Anthony Hamilton’s face if Alonso wins the Championship!!

But I would be happiest if Räikkönen won the Championship. Yes, I hate Ferrari. And yes, I generally like McLaren. But the conduct of both of McLaren’s drivers this year has put me off them both a bit.

Räikkönen is long overdue a World Championship. It is a long shot. Due to the bumpy nature of Interlagos, McLaren will have the upper hand. Räikkönen will be relying on Alonso getting a bit of the Iberian red mist descending, and crashing himself into Hamilton. Most importantly of all, I would laugh so much if Räikkönen won the Championship. It would be the funniest thing ever. Imagine the protagonists of the whole Championship, Alonso and Hamilton, being gazumped by Räikkönen. They they would both be pissed off with everyone and everything. I might never stop laughing.

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