Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes is faster than his team would have you believe. Photo / Don Kennedy
Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes is faster than his team would have you believe. Photo / Don Kennedy
There are three World Champions in this year’s championship, considered by some to be legends of the sport, and all three were to the fore in the Australian GP held in Melbourne.
They are, of course, current World Champion Max Verstappen, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, and two-time champion, Fernando Alonso. They finished in that order in Melbourne, which was Round 3 of the 23 races that make up this year’s championship. They have 11 titles between them, and Verstappen is already on course for a third title.
Hamilton has made it clear that he wants title number 8 to break out of a current tie for the record with Michael Schumacher. It still irks Hamilton that he was within 5 laps of that 8th title in Abu Dhabi in November 2021, until Nicholas Latifi crashed his Williams, bringing out the safety car.
The FIA Race Director that day was Australian Michael Masi, and when Latifi’s car had been cleared from the track with two laps left, Masi allowed the five lapped cars between race leader Hamilton and the chasing Verstappen, to un-lap themselves, setting up a last lap shootout.
Verstappen had pitted under the safety car, but Hamilton hadn’t, and with fresher tyres, Verstappen passed Hamilton to win his first world title. For Hamilton and Mercedes fans, it was a very controversial outcome. Hamilton and his team boss, Toto Wolff, proclaimed they had been “robbed” of the drivers’ championship, even though they were still Constructors’ champions.
A number of F1 pundits believe that the title loss had an adverse effect on Hamilton’s mentality, and was an important factor in his relatively poor performance in last year’s title race, which went to Verstappen again, but this time without any controversy, as the then 24-year od Dutchman won 15 races.
Hamilton may have been psychologically damaged for much of the 2022 season, having won at least one grand prix every year since joining F1 in 2007, but none last year. But the reality is, Mercedes had produced a car that experienced excessive bouncing at high speed, and it would take them 21 races to win a race, with Hamilton’s teammate George Russell, securing his maiden grand prix victory in Brazil, with Hamilton second.
In the first race this year in Bahrain, Mercedes finished 5th (Hamilton) and 7th (Russell) with Wolff exaggeratingly proclaiming it was their “worst race ever,” vowing to replace the new car as soon as they could.
That of course didn’t happen, and two weeks later in Saudi Arabia, Russell was 4th and Hamilton 5th. The car appeared to be competitive, mixing it with the Aston Martins and Ferraris. On to Melbourne, and Russell and Hamilton qualified second and third on the grid. Mercedes was back, and although not able to challenge the Red Bulls, in Australia at least, were best of the rest, with Russell leading the race for a while from Hamilton, after pole-sitter Verstappen made a poor start. The performance of the Mercedes if you ignore the fact that Russell’s car eventually caught on fire, was cause for revised thinking.
Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz haven't fallen out, unless this picture deceives. Photo / Don Kennedy
After qualifying in Melbourne, somewhat unusually, Alonso and Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, were interviewed together in the post-qualifying press pen. They talked about the pace of Mercedes, and were asked if they were surprised at its speed.
“Not really,” Alonso said. “They were very fast in Jeddah already. And they were fast in FP2, and they are always fast.
“You know, if you read their comments, it seems that they have a car that is out of Q3. It’s not their car.”
Sainz agreed with his compatriot.
“I agree, nothing to add there. A lot faster than what people think, I think especially also in the race. They had a pace very close to Fernando in Jeddah.
“George and Lewis, they were flat out, and we couldn’t keep up with them. That car is quick. It’s clearly not as quick as the Red Bull, no one is.”
No disagreement between the two Spaniards then, whose friendship seems obvious to those in the F1 paddock. Even after Sainz tagged Alonso at the first corner, spinning him around during the third re-start, incurring a five-second time penalty that dropped him from 4th place to 12th, Alonso defended him, calling the penalty “too harsh.”
But according to renowned journalist Peter Windsor, the two are no longer friends. Windsor was in Melbourne but obviously was not very observant, otherwise, he would have seen the two interviewed together.
On his YouTube Channel, Windsor said the penalty Sainz got was “absolutely ridiculous” because he got the penalty for an incident from part of the race that wasn’t even part of the race, because they hadn’t gone through the first sector. He may have a point, but not with his comment, “as I understand it, Carlos and Fernando have fallen out recently and there’s not a lot of love lost between them now.”
If Windsor is correct, then why would Alonso defend Sainz over the penalty, and why would he want to be anywhere near him in the post-qualifying press interviews, let alone participate in a joint interview with him?
But there is more. Obviously to boost the ratings for his YouTube channel, Windsor has, since Australia, gone back to the Abu Dhabi incident that denied Hamilton an 8th title, and agrees Hamilton was “robbed.”
“They finished the race in Melbourne behind the safety cars Ring any bells?” Windsor said.
“That’s the finish we should have got in Abu Dhabi in 2021. I didn’t see any Australian fans – and they’re pretty vociferous at the best of times - complaining or booing saying, ‘no, we want this race to finish as a proper race, this is terrible.’
“They were all cheering and clapping exactly as I said they would have in Abu Dhabi in ‘21 if they’d finished it behind the Safety-Car, as they should have done, and Lewis had been cruising round to win his eighth world title. That, to me, was absolute proof-again- of what went wrong in Abu Dhabi and I still feel very hot under the collar about that as well.
“I still think it’s rotten that they completely blew that and Lewis Hamilton was robbed of that eighth title in that one incident.”
Michael Masi was in the F1 paddock in Melbourne in his new role with Supercars, which had four races as part of their series. Yet Sky Sports pit reporter, Ted Kravitz, questioned what Masi was doing in the paddock, as if he is some criminal who should be barred, or even locked up! The British media need to get over themselves with their pro-Hamilton comments.
If there is any driver who might feel aggrieved at only having two titles instead of four or five, it is Alonso. He should have won the title for a third time with McLaren in 2007, but team boss Ron Dennis made sure his rookie star Hamilton got preferential treatment, and instead of working for Alonso, favouried Hamilton, allowing Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari to win the title by one point from Hamilton and Alonso. In 2010, now with Ferrari, Alonso only needed to finish 4th in the last race in Abu Dhabi, to become champion. But his team pitted him too early to cover Red Bull driver Mark Webber, who could have become champion himself if he won the race. His teammate, Sebastian Vettel, had started on pole and was in the lead and stayed out when Webber and Alonso pitted. They became bogged down in traffic, and Vettel, by pitting much later, had a clear run to what would be the first of four titles. Alonso only finished 7th, losing the title by 4 points.
Often accused of making the wrong decisions when it comes to changing teams, Alonso says his only mistake was leaving Ferrari in 2014 to join a woeful McLaren team again, in 2015. When Vettel announced he was retiring in July last year, Alonso swooped on Vettel’s Aston Martin drive, despite being in an Alpine car that finished fourth in last year’s championship, whereas Aston Martin was seventh.
So far Alonso has finished third in the first three races. He doesn’t have a car to beat the Red Bulls, but is now in a tussle with Mercedes and loving it. He has an ally in Verstappen, who said in Melbourne that Alonso should have won a lot more than he has. There is also mutual respect it seems with Hamilton, going by their body language on the podium and his comments in the post-race press conference.
Damon Hill, the 1996 World champion, has praised Alonso’s performance so far in the Aston Martin.
“We were making a joke that he should be a lawyer,” Hill joked. “I’d get him to defend me on a murder charge! He already understands the rules. You’d expect someone who’s been in Formula 1 so long as he has and had all the experience to have learned something, but you can automatically assume that.”
“He’s invested in this, he understands it, and he knows like Michael Schumacher as well,” Hill added
The next race is in Baku in just over two weeks’ time. F1 can rejoice in having three world champions battling at the top, each a legend in their own right.
