BOREMULA ONE
Spice up snorefest of a track – Hamilton
FOR most of its 55 laps, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was the race that cried out to be put down. And when it was finally over, Lewis Hamilton spoke for all Formula One, saying: ‘They’ve got to change this track.’
The four-time world champion had huffed and puffed down Valtteri Bottas’s neck for lap after lap, but there was no way he could pass and sign off his season mirabilis with a 10th victory.
This Yas Island Circuit was built with £800million of petrodollars, but in nine years of action it has staged fewer overtakes than a pedestrianised street.
‘This is one of the worst tracks,’ added Hamilton, who finished second behind his Mercedes team-mate Bottas. ‘You basically have to have a 1.4sec speed advantage to pass. I was never going to overtake Valtteri unless he made a big mistake.
‘Abu Dhabi is a great place for a grand prix, and it would be great if they could find a way to improve the track. There is certainly money to do it.’
Former team boss Eddie Jordan put it more colourfully, saying: ‘I feel sorry for the fans who have spent a fortune. They have been mugged.’
Now we must wait to see whether the tin- eared Liberty Media executives who supposedly run the travelling circus hear the likes of Hamilton and Jordan.
Not that they were the only critics: a recent champion imitated a yawning motion as he passed in the paddock.
There is a din to hear if only Liberty had the wit to listen, for complaints opened up last night on a second front, namely over the launch of the new Formula One logo.
Hamilton was again the leading prosecution counsel. He first refused to wear the cap displaying the logo when handed it on the podium, where the new artwork was unveiled. He placed it on the head of David Coulthard, who was conducting the ceremonies.
Asked later for his thoughts about the revamp after 30 years, Hamilton said: ‘ The logo we already had was iconic. Imagine if Ferrari changed theirs. The new one is not iconic.’
It seems Liberty Media, under Formula One neophyte Chase Carey, were motivated by a perceived need to break from the Bernie Ecclestone era. Judging by fan reaction on social media, the no-doubt costly meddling has gone down as badly with them as with the sport’s champion.
The window dressing is typical of Liberty Media’s approach: concentrating on the superficial baubles rather than the central requirements.
And so back to the so- called track action, which did not even offer a first-corner lifter.
Bottas was in command from the off, as he set out to convert his pole position into the victory he had flunked in Sao Paulo a fortnight earlier.
A couple of times it looked as if Hamilton might get close enough to challenge the leader.
For all his rawest edge has been blunted by clinching his fourth title last month and the consequent partying, he was straining every sinew in an attempt to do so. But not here, of course, in the season- closing race under 5,000 light bulbs.
Williams’s Felipe Massa finished his 269th and valedictory race with a point, the meagre spoils for 10th place. A nice man leaves, and a courageous one, given how he came back from the horrific head injury he suffered at the end of a flying bolt eight years ago.
Victory for Bottas — his third of the season and first since July — was not t enough ht to b beat tS Sebastian b Vettel, a distant third here, to runners-up spot in the table. But the win was especially important for Bottas after a season in which he admitted he struggled for self-belief.
Bottas, who is as calm as the frozen lake at home into which he jumps after a hot sauna, admitted to inner happiness: ‘Finns don’t d ’t show h emotion, ti b but t th that t doesn’t mean we don’t have any.’
The winner partied with his wife, former Olympic swimmer Emilia, and team last night, but only after exchanging friendly words with Hamilton, who was as relaxed as he had been monosyllabic after losing his grudge match to Nico Rosberg here a year ago.