Dec 29, 2007

2007 At A Glance...

Motormouth took an extended break for 2007 - so there was none of the usual balanced opinion and considered commentary you have come to expect across the season. Ahem...

So we’re overdue a quick catch-up ahead of next season.
Okay then, so what actually happened in 2007?
Well if you lived in the UK then you’d obviously know from our fabulously unbiased and well-informed newspapers and TV stations that there was only one British driver taking part in the World Championship - in fact there was only one driver *at all* taking part in the World Championship.
And even then he didn’t win it.
Somebody called the Iceberg or something won it.
And it wasn’t fair.
If you watched it on ITV then you also encountered the surreal experience of around 20 glamourous events from often exotic and far-flung locations all looking entirely the same due to the fact that they were all presented from outside the front of Lewis Hamilton’s garage (by Steve Rider with a peculiarly creepy look on his face. Eeeeewwww.)

There was some spying stuff, some idiotic politics, a daft tyre rule that actually provided the odd bit of entertainment, some poor stewarding, some rule-breaking by the FIA, a woeful lack of genuine lap-on-lap edge-of-yer-seat racing and overtaking, Bernie Ecclestone issuing several jihads per week against Silverstone, and James Allen’s typically infuriating cocktail of hysterical, biased and shrieking commentary.
A typical year in F1 then...

And then there was a very foolish Max Mosley deciding to pick a fight with national treasure Jackie Stewart.
Very unwise. He may dress like a tiny, deranged amateur golfer and have a voice like a rusty dog whistle, but you disrespect Jackie’s standing and his opinion at your peril. You’d actually be less unpopular standing completely naked in a roomful of children, relieving yourself on a statue of Lady Di quite frankly.
And Mosley did indeed get quite the blowback and bloodying he deserved. Hurrah!

All in all, a great year for Raikkonen fans - and very probably Raikkonen himself, having valiantly put up with substandard gear and reliability since he joined the sport in 2001 - and flattered his machinery and circumstances on many occasions with flair, bravery and brilliance. He didn’t have a *perfect* season, but he had an excellent one and provided class driving, an astonishing comeback and - most entertaining of all - a lesson to all who have glibly criticised his aloof and silent nature by showing it can be far wiser to shut the hell up and get on with the job than behave like Hamilton, Dennis or Alonso and make lots of noise and fuss about yourself.

Aguri embarrassed Honda (not hard given the Brackley team’s oversized, daftly painted brick on wheels) - although poor Ant Davidson’s efforts almost went unnoticed due to some appalling luck and mechanical issues - plus Adrian Sutil’s apparent mission to run into the back of him at the start of each GP. His high point was a blistering quali lap in Turkey that made you wonder how good he’d have looked in an MP4/22...

Beyond so many comings and goings, drivers improving, cars and teams improving, so many smaller dramas and intrigues, the main event of course had to be the very public implosion of McLaren - that most disciplined and sensible of all teams self-combusting in front of our very eyes thanks to not only the spy scandal (which developed across the season, with more and more bad things creeping out) but also Ron Dennis’s delusionally idealistic driver equality policy paired with the two drivers on the grid least capable of carrying it out. All three behaved stupidly and badly, and all three - plus the entire McLaren Mercedes empire - paid the price for the foolishness in a big way.
Will they learn anything? My money’s pretty firmly on “No” as far as the driver management is concerned - it is a logical impossibility to manage driver equality at this level and Ron either needs to have the courage of his convictions and to name Hamilton as his favoured son (as he clearly is) or to expect more mayhem.

2008 brings the banning of traction control - thankfully - though that in itself is certainly not enough to bring back excitement. Nothing short of a brutal and radical overhaul of aero rules can fully enable close racing; and a whole number of other issues (including safety cars, pushes from the gravel, and cranes etc) need to be re-examined in the light of the 2007 season.

Ah well.
Bring it on...