Does Hamilton’s victory parade risk ruining F1?
No sparks between drivers, fears of the most one-sided season ever … and former champion Hill admits: It’s not so good for entertainment
DAMON HILL dressed up as his father Graham and drove his 1969 Lotus for a promotional event at Silverstone this week, minus the moustache and the Carry On lines. Nostalgia is one of the main ingredients of this year’s British Grand Prix. It is the 50th staging of the event and several of the past champions will parade on the track, led by Sir Jackie Stewart driving the Matra MS80 in which he won the 1969 race after a gigantic fight with Jochen Rindt.
But the main selling point will be the sublime form of Lewis Hamilton, a British champion whose virtuosity makes him a fitting heir to the British motor-racing tradition.
Although Hamilton’s record of four wins from five races in his Mercedes, putting him three points ahead of his garage mate Nico Rosberg, should ensure Silverstone is a sell-out on July 6, the dominance of one team — and the emerging dominance of one man — is in danger of turning the season into the most one-sided of all time.
We should be careful before rushing to judgment. The 1988 championship was skewed: McLaren’s Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost each scored more than double the points of Gerhard Berger, of Ferrari, in third. There were also the Ferrari years early in this century. And we remember Nigel Mansell powering to his title as well as Jenson Button’s imperious Brawn.
But if Button and Fernando Alonso are right, Mercedes will win all 19 races this season — a level of supremacy unsurpassed in history. Mercedes already have a 113-point lead in the constructors’ table with four one-two finishes in five races. Even if Red Bull do manage to draw level, from 50 seconds back last weekend in Spain, it will be too late to change the outcome of the titles.
‘The one-sidedness is one thing that frustrates about Formula One,’ said Hill, the 1996 champion, whose father won the title twice in the Sixties. ‘We should take our hats off to the people who have worked hard and come up with the right answers. But if you are asking us to watch a motor race that is one-and-a-half hours long, it is not so easy.
‘With Senna and Prost we got some fireworks. How good a season is comes down to whether it is fought over. Much as we can marvel at Lewis, and however much we would like to see Lewis as champion, it would be good to see a contest.
‘Lewis is leading the championship, and that is after failing to finish in Australia and Rosberg coming second in the next four races. It is too early for predictions but everything is looking up for Lewis — he is in a good frame of mind after a few years — but it is a bit flat for Nico at the moment.
‘Lewis’s strongest card is his qualifying speed. I was asked who, out of all the drivers, if they were in equal equipment, would win. I said Lewis, and that is the reason. Other drivers are more astute or tactical. You can sometimes hear a little bit of anxiety in Lewis’s voice over the radio. He is not clear where he is in a race the way Alonso would be, but he drives fast.’
The circus moves to Monaco this week for Sunday’s race. Whoever gets on pole should win, given the difficulty in overtaking around the Principality’s tight streets. The emphasis on qualifying would appear to favour Hamilton, who is further helped by the more durable tyres this year that allow him to push. But Rosberg won in Monaco last year as his team-mate struggled.
So far the two men have acted cordially towards each other. There has been no seething rivalry, name-calling or skulduggery. PiquetMansell, Senna-Prost this isn’t yet anyway. Will it develop that way?
‘Nico has tried to make it clear he is not happy to come second but I am not sure it is in his nature to overreact,’ said Hill. ‘I don’t think Lewis is looking for acrimony, either. He is very competitive but not a schemer. It is fair and square but it is not so good for entertainment.’
So where has the crackling tension gone? Why don’t drivers take each other on as they once did?
‘It’s possibly an effect of the PR machines at work and that companies do not want their reputations sullied by association with an anti-hero or controversy. We are paying a price for that. It is an issue: sport should be an escape from day-to-pressure and be an outlet for frustrations.
‘If you think of the days of James Hunt and Niki Lauda, when racing was dangerous, you could not tell them to moderate their behaviour when they were risking their lives.’
So we sigh. But Derek Warwick, a veteran of 146 F1 races and Hill’s successor as president of Silverstone’s owners, the British Racing Drivers Club, is unperturbed.
He said: ‘I remember Murray Walker saying, during the Ferrari domination, why not celebrate the moment rather than criticise it?’
We’ll take that thought with us to Monaco.