F1 COLUMN: Glory - and gory

Author: Egmont Sippel

It's not always easy watching Lewis Hamilton in press conferences.

He's got a youthful exuberance about him, which is refreshing.

But his ego also lacks a rev limiter, which drives the young Hamilton to continually name himself in the company of all-time F1 greats.

To old timers who know how easily this game can bite, it's a bit annoying, to say the least.

Yet, it is also easy to understand why Lewis already thinks about himself in such an inflated, flat out way. He's young, fit and healthy and driving a great car in a great team.

On top of that, he already, on occasion, drives that car like an all-time great. His confidence and belief is sky high, his control majestic, his reactions swift, his inputs precise, his touch deft, his pedal modulation smooth and his grasp of line and speed immaculate.

So, watching him at work is simply a joy. There's a touch of Senna in his driving, and it stretches beyond the yellow helmet, beyond a McLaren car.

It stretches into the zone where great delicacy and precision is matched with brutal power slides and bold, audacious passing manoeuvres.

Does it stretch into the zone of pure genius?

Breeze for the Hammer

Not yet, not yet.

And we say "not yet" for the same reason that we'd like Lewis to put a check on his own self-admiration: it is too early to tell. For all Hamilton's precociousness, Alonso was - on average - still faster than the Hammer.

Granted, that Lewis has raised his already formidable game this year, judging by Australia.

But even so, a couple of hurdles remain in his quest for greatness. Apart from having to win multiple championships, the other two are both Finnish.

One is named Kovalainen, the other Raikkonen.

On Sunday, in Melbourne, Hamilton handled both of them with ease. Not even a triple erosion of his lead via safety car periods could halt the Hammer's winning ways.

In the end, Oz turned out to be a breeze for the 23-year old driving car no. 22.

Fragile Ferrari engines

The Kimster, on the other hand, had a much tougher time of it.

Qualifying didn't go well. Kubica was inadvertently blocked, which really came as a surprise because that's not Raikkonen's style at all.

Then the F2008 died on Kimi after Ferrari had sent the car out with the wrong fuel pump settings.

That must have been painful enough, but nothing compared to the moment when the same Ferrari sniffed out the same piece of tarmac barely 25 hours later to roll to another stop - a mere 5 laps from the end of the race.

More disturbingly, though, is that fact that Massa and Sebastien Bourdais also had to throw in the towel, courtesy of broken Ferrari engines.

This after years of bulletproof Maranello mills - except for a blown V8 in Japan in 2006 and fragile Mahle piston rings that packed up in the Malaysian heat, also in 2006.

That now, with the legendary Paolo Martinelli still in charge of engines - a post now filled by the equally proficient Gilles Simone, with Jean-Jacques His as his competent understudy. The latter of the two Frenchman fathered Renault's revolutionary 111 degree F1 V10 from earlier in the decade.

Nothing the matter then, with Ferrari's powerplant department; they'll fix the problem yet.

But this is Maranello's headache: to have flown the broken mills back to Italy, analyse them and find a cure, and fly them out to Malaysia again, all within the space of four days.

Come Friday, and these engines will start a two-race cycle of being severely stressed by a pair of the year's hottest venues, namely Sepang and Sakhir.

If everything goes well, Ferrari should start to claw back their instantly-delivered deficit of 13 points.

Anxious Raikkonen

Raikkonen, in particular, will be anxious to perform.

Anxious? The Iceman?

You bet. Kimi drove like an amateur in the latter stages of the Melbourne race.

First he got sucked - or suckered - into outbraking himself when Kovalainen opened the door to Turn 3.

Then, probably in a blind rage, he allowed himself to become impatient and hence sloppy behind Timo Glock. Even the world champion could not prevent his car spinning after putting wheels on the grass, trying a wider entry and faster exit, to counter Glock's shallow defensive line into Turn 3.

It was all bold and brave stuff - which is not unusual Kimster fair - but in Oz the Finn was undoubtedly pumped up a little too much by visions of another glorious win from the deeper depths of the starting grid.

This now to consolidate his reputation as probably the most dangerous of all F1 drivers, when wounded by a lowly qualifying slot.

Amazing come-back charges

Just last year, Kimi charged from dead last, a third of the distance into the Japanese GP, to finish on the Fuji podium.

In 2005, the onslaught came from 17th on the grid before the Iceman grabbed an astonishing victory going into the very last lap in Japan.

Earlier in that same year, Kimi managed to salvage 2nd in the French race, after a 10-slot grid penalty had demoted him to 13th on the grid.

A week later at the British GP, Raikkonen suffered another 10-slot demotion after having qualified 2nd. From 12th, he then hauled his McLaren through the field to finish 3rd.

In 2004, the Flying Finn beat Michael Schumacher's all-conquering Ferrari to the chequered flag at Spa, after having started from 10th.

And in 2003, Raikkonen came from 15th in Oz to lead the race, before being caught for speeding in the pit lane by a mere kilometer per hour, which dropped him back to third.

Brave call

All stirring stuff, rarely seen in modern-day F1 racing.

Just imagine then, how Italy would have reacted if Kimi had nailed Kovi on Lap 30 to finish second, let alone the tidal wave of joy he would have unleashed if the Hammer happened to have been knocked over as well.

And by Jove, it was on, it was possible. With all three of the leading drivers still having had to pit - Raikkonen for his first and only stop, and the Macca's for their second stops each - Kimi was on an equal footing as the safety car unleashed the pack on Lap 30.

Granted, that his pace on an empty tank would have been off-set at that point by softs that had been made to work overtime over the first half of the race.

Granted also that Kovalainen's much fresher rubber - only 8 laps into Heikki's second stint - had much more bite left than Kimi's.

And granted that Raikkonen would at least have finished on the podium if he had simply held his race together until the end, assuming that the Ferrari V8 could also have managed to stay in one piece.

So yes, it was a racer's instinct to go for it, the spirit of which is not to be denied, although the wisdom thereof would only have materialised (1) at the end of the season, depending on (2) exactly how the final points standing works out versus the points Raikkonen would have lost through his off-track excursions, even if the Ferrari had made it to the flag.

Under the circumstances, the mathematics of it all becomes immaterial, of course.

But fact remains that it was not Raikkonen's most clinical display yet.

Bad habits

Or maybe it's just bad habit.

Bad habit for a Ferrari to park at Monaco's Rascasse; last year Kimi came to a halt in exactly the same spot that Schumacher chose for his ignominious exit from 2006 qualifying.

Bad habit for a Ferrari to park in Melbourne's pit lane, as Kimi had done twice this year.

Bad habit for Kimi to have a moment at Turn 3; he had two there, this year, and another one last year, when he 'fell asleep' whilst leading by a country mile.

Time to wake up then, Mr. World Champion.

Because those were not your only mistakes of Oz 2008.

The real one, the damaging one, came at the first restart, on Lap 3, when you failed to stick close enough to Barrichello's Honda to scamper past as the safety car pulled off.

It was reminiscent of Bahrain last year, when the Kimster also had a dozy bad habit moment at the restart, letting the queue get away from him.

Option One

Everybody - not least Raikkonen himself - talks about the Finn's new lease on F1 life since joining up with Ferrari.

But such sloppy driving, such sleepy hollows, never seemed to have been part of the Ice Man's stint at McLaren.

Maybe Maranello is too soft on him.

Or maybe their lead driver was too perplexed, trying to work out why he was not pitted during the safety car period in the middle of the race.

Common sense tells us that a stationary F1 car loses much less ground to a pack moving at the pace of a Mercedes Benz SL, than to the pace of a pack moving flat out at racing speeds.

Option One then, was for Kimi to have pitted at the same time as Bourdais, one lap ahead of Alonso, Kubica, Glock and Nakajima.

Yet, this would have dropped him to 6th, behind Barrichello again. From there, he would have had to fight his way past Rubens, Rosberg and Heidfeld to get back up to third, with no prospect of winning - especially not if the Ferrari got held up again to the tune of 2 seconds per lap by the Honda (which had pitted on Lap 23, and was destined to run to Lap 45 before calling on fresh boots and fuel again).

Such a scenario would have equated to a loss of 30 seconds vis-à-vis the McLarens - with pit stops at Albert Park only taking 25 seconds.

Option Two

Option Two then, was for Kimi to slug it out with Kovi and Hamilton on light tanks and worn tyres, with the hope of gaining track position before pitting, which could have led to a truly spectacular result.

Ferrari chose the racer's option. Kimi went for it and lost out. Fortune does not always favour the brave.

On a bloody afternoon in Melbourne, with only six cars finishing on the lead lap, the butcher's knife was reserved for Ferrari.

The amputation was almost total in its savagery. It was gory to behold.

Which simply means that Ferrari - and Raikkonen - have a lot to make up for, in Malaysia, come Sunday.

Egmont Sippel is Rapport's motoring editor.

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