Just One Of Those Days

Ever get the feeling that something is going to happen?

That’s what happened this morning when I awoke to my phone ringing. I had taken the decision to sleep the live race out after a late Saturday night. Looking at the caller ID it read ‘Dad’. Right there I knew something was up. Groggily I picked up the phone and he asked if I was watching the race. I knew then it was going to be one of those days.

As long as I’ve been watching Formula One, there has never been a time that someone would ask my view on a race that I haven’t seen. Nearly always I watch them live even at the small hours of the morning for the race across the globe. I’ve never liked the idea of watching replays. There is always a cheat complex to it that you can just check up the results if you get bored or if you tape the race that you can skip through the boring parts. Something just feels wrong about watching a race that is already completed. It’s why I hate the idea of watching NASCAR five days after I know the results. It just feels wrong.

Within the family there is an unspoken rule that you never talk about the race if you have seen it. This was the extremely rare case that I was the one who missed the race so in receiving the call I knew something had happened. He denied it of course but I knew something was going to be up.

Of course in hindsight it would have been well worth waking up for it! Years have gone by where we pine for a wet race and in the space of two weeks we have a pair of them. The weather always shakes things up.
There were some crazy decisions from McLaren, Hamilton or both. They didn't seem to want to put the blame on one side. This was not a team or driver who wanted to win the championship by any means today. It was a team that wanted to win the championship by winning. Of course I think if any of us were in his boots, we would like to win it by a win.

But that doesn't mean that it has to be done the fairytale way. Hamilton should of thought 'damage control' and drive for a championship. He didn't need to race Raikkonen but he did. The racer in me says 'that's great, don't give it up' but I'm sure it hardly helped the condition of his tires. Brundle called the situation on his tires about a lap or so before we actually saw the issues with the rear. The smart move would've been to pull him and like I said damage control.

Hamilton is more than a good enough racer to make up a deficit on track. But they held out and it cost them. Second time this season that we have seen tactics messed up at McLaren. Reminds me back to the race at the Nurburgring which ironically, was Hamilton's only other DNF this season.

It was good to see the positive attitude from him after the race and it was a really nice touch for him to go into the team and thank them for the job they did in the garage. Like he said, he can still do it. Still be tough to bet against him. It will be interesting to see how he bounces back from it in Brazil with the added pressure of fighting for the title. To correct the constantly bias James Allen, Hamilton needs more than a third place finish if Alonso wins as the Spaniard would take it on race wins if they are on equal points if he wins. The Eurosport website had a nifty list of what permutations the trio need to become champion which is located here.

Three drivers go into Brazil looking for the title, the first time since 1986. That season saw Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and Alain Prost challenging for the title. Will we be treated to the same sort of finale as then? We will find out in a couple of weeks.