The Good, the Bad and the Racing

Over the last few days we’ve seen the two faces of McLaren. The good in the signing of Heikki Kovalainen to partner Hamilton. The fact that Heikki was left out in the cold at Renault was eye catching, given how he outpaced Fisichella for the majority of the year. One of the rumours going around is that Heikki was dropped because he was considered too fast for Alonso who is out to avoid a 2007 repeat. He must not remember that Piquet Junior did finish second to Hamilton in GP2 and I doubt he will be keen to lie down given the opportunity.

With the freedom of Kovalainen, he was the obvious choice for the second McLaren seat. I’m sure fans of the Finn were getting a little worried that de la Rosa, with his Spanish connections to many sponsors who joined because of Alonso would get the nod. Nice to see McLaren do the right thing and bring in a top driver who will hopefully push Hamilton and bring the most out of both drivers.

Of course we saw the bad of McLaren over the weekend as well with an admission (finally) over the Stepney-gate issue. A statement claimed that dissemination (in English – transmitting) of Ferrari data went deeper than originally though. They have stopped development on three parts that could be potentially linked back to Ferrari data. It makes the FIA’s decision to wait till February to clear the McLaren 2008 car more prudent now. It’s possible the FIA stewards found something and have given McLaren an opportunity to rectify the problem.

The statement has led to calls for the head of Ron Dennis. Personally, I would be happy if this was the end of someone who whinges anytime his team got beaten. End of the day the buck stops with him. He staked his reputation on his team been clean and playing by the rules and the statement appears to be nothing but an admission of guilt. Will he survive this? Time will tell. Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of this spy fiasco once and for all so we can go racing clean again.

Race of Champions was on this weekend in Wembley – an event I unfortunately missed due to television issues. That was a shame because I was looking forward to the crème of racing talent going at it, especially to see Schumacher racing again for fun. If the go-kart racing in Brazil was anything to go by it would’ve been a treat. Funny thing I noted was that the Brits were selling up the prospect of Hamilton been there to race Schumacher months back. But come the event there wasn’t a peep and no Hamilton, out because of a sponsorship commitment or something similar. After all the chat about the prospect of him been there one would think they would bother to say ‘oh, he actually isn’t coming – maybe next year.’ Should be able to catch a highlights show of it somewhere.

Speaking of Schumacher, it would appear he has found a part-time hobby as a taxi driver. Running late for a plane the champ took over from the taxi driver and drove to the airport. Bloody hilarious that and decent of him to give a generous tip. The taxi driver will have a story to tell his kids. That been said, how proud of his own driving can he be when he had to give up the seat? This is one of the stories that are a bit surreal. It’s the sort of story you would think ‘I wonder what they a racing driver would do in such a situation’ and it was just great to see Schumi take the bull by the horns.