A Silver Lining

When the Formula One circus convened in Melbourne for the 2007 season opener, the usual eager anticipation was mixed with the disconcerting sense that Michael Schumacher's retirement had created an unfillable vacuum.

After a 16 year career studded with seven championship titles, Schumacher's superstar value could surely not be matched by a field which, Fernando Alonso excepted, did not have a single title-winner among them.

When Schumacher's replacement at Ferrari, the ever-taciturn Kimi Raikkonen, strolled to unchallenged victory in Australia, the disquiet increased. Sure, McLaren and others were making all the right noises about closing the performance gap to the championship leaders. But Ferrari would surely respond via their own development.

The cakewalk championship years of the early 2000s were bad enough, even with Schumacher showcasing his mastery at the head of the field. Another one-sided championship, sans the German legend, would make for a disastrous 2007 season. One of the few bright points of Australia was the composed and competitive debut performance of a 22-year-old rookie ...

Eight months later, Schumacher is a distant memory. The sport not only survived his departure, but rebounded with one of the most thrilling, close-fought, controversial, and simultaneously infuriating and exhilarating championships ever. It was a silver lining to what could have been a gloomy and dull season.

The catalyst and central figure, through all of the ups and downs, was that 22-year-old rookie, Lewis Hamilton. If ever proof was needed that nature abhors a vacuum, Hamilton's explosive entry into the top ranks provided it in spades. Like Schumacher and Senna before him, Hamilton's success polarised the F1 viewership into ardent 'for' and 'against' camps.

Unlike Senna and Schumacher, Hamilton's formative races were not marked by understandable rookie mistakes. Quite the contrary, he looked impervious to both nerves and unforced errors during his first 15 Grands Prix.

Then, in a heartening reminder that top-level racing is not as easy as Hamilton made it seem, he committed two major blunders that left surprise championship winner Raikkonen beaming as broadly in Brazil as he had in Australia.

Hamilton may have grabbed most of the headlines, but he was just part of a star ensemble cast at the head of the field. Kimi Raikkonen had enough season highlights (like the brilliantly judged wins at Silverstone and Shanghai) and low points (such as his Monaco qualifying crash, or being given the wrong tyres at the start in Japan) to keep fans switching regularly between ecstasy and despair.

Raikkonen's Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa proved that his wins late in 2006 were no fluke. Few would have bet on Massa dominating some races as he did, and fewer still on the Brazilian leading the more-fancied Raikkonen as late in the calendar as Monza.

Of the four championship protagonists, that left Alonso, whose season almost defies description. If Formula One has the equivalent of a Jekyll and Hyde device, it's Alonso's helmet. When it's on, he is the sport's perfect showman, capable of providing unsurpassed entertainment. When the helmet comes off (at least in 2007), he displayed a bitterly paranoid and morose alter ego.

Alonso has always had the showman's touch. However, his animal-aping antics at Renault had an air of being forced and contrived. During 2007, there was no need for Alonso to fabricate anything. His emotional turmoil was clearly evident, both inside the car and out.

Fernando Alonso overshoots the first turn in Montreal © LAT

However, whether in high spirits or low, his driving was always entertaining. His off-road excursions at the start in Spain and Canada shook up the grid order, and his passes were often sublime - first on Nick Heidfeld in France, then brazenly forcing his way past Massa en route to victory at the Nurburgring, and finally out-muscling Hamilton in a thrilling side-by-side duel through Eau Rouge at Spa-Francorchamps.

The Spaniard motioning the parc ferme camera over to his car after the Nurburgring victory, pointing out the black mark left by Massa's front tyre on his sidepod, and then waving an admonishing finger into the camera lens, was classic Alonso. Love him or hate him, the sport needs characters like the Spaniard.

While each of the four main championship contenders added their own unique flavour to the season-long tussle, they were helped by a mechanical advantage that was lop-sided, even by Formula One's standards of meritocracy.

Not only did the Ferrari/McLaren foursome hog every pole position, fastest lap and victory of the year, they also led for a collective 1,036 race laps to the rest of the field's combined total of 29. Then, just for good measure, they claimed 46 of the 51 podium positions on offer throughout the season.

In such conditions, many of the established drivers, marooned down the grid in uncompetitive cars, reflected the sport's enduring injustice - that so many will toil so hard for so little reward.

There was a time when Honda's Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher, Renault's Giancarlo Fisichella, Williams' Alexander Wurz and Red Bull's David Coulthard were up and coming stars with serious championship aspirations.

In 2007, this group managed just 68 championship points between them - 17 fewer than Button scored on his own in 2004, even with the Ferrari dominance in that year. Michael Schumacher may have retired in a fanfare of celebratory emotion. For the sport's other senior drivers, a less flattering exit awaits.

Wurz avoided the inevitable by announcing his retirement before season's end. Ralf Schumacher has parted ways with Toyota and Fisichella looks unlikely to retain his drive with Renault. Coulthard, Trulli, Button and Barrichello will soldier on, but their 2008 prospects don't look any rosier than this season's.

The corollary is that Schumacher's retirement has uncorked the youthful ambitions of a host of rising stars, invigorated by the realisation that Formula One is no longer Schumacher's personal fiefdom.

On its own, Hamilton's rookie season would have provided a sufficient injection of new talent into the sport. But again, he was just one of a star cast. Heikki Kovalainen, Sebastian Vettel and Adrian Sutil also arrived and impressed with their pace and aggression.

With sophomores Nico Rosberg and Robert Kubica continuing to build on their initial promise of 2006, the sport's talent pool is full to overflowing - particularly considering that all four of 2007's main challengers are also still in their twenties. Again, the potential cloud created by Michael Schumacher's retirement has contained a silver lining.

Robert Kubica crashes in Montreal © LAT

Although, despite the close championship and abundance of new talent, the 2007 season also had its share of low points. If the lack of fatalities in recent years had lulled viewers into a sense of complacency, Robert Kubica's accident in Canada served as a timely reminder that death and disablement are still ever-present risks.

Happily, the car and track safety features did their job and Kubica escaped relatively unscathed. But it's the type of accident that casts an immediate gloom over the whole race.

Wheel-to-wheel dicing and passing was again the exception rather than the norm in 2007. It's a perennial problem for which there are few readily apparent solutions - other than pitching the technology back several decades in time, while still trying to claim that Formula One represents the pinnacle in racing technology.

Fortunately, aerodynamic wash and improbably abrupt braking distances are a technological impasse that is auto-corrected by rain. After a dry spring and early summer, the rains arrived at the perfect time, adding another element of uncertainty to the already tense races down the championship stretch in Japan and China.

However, these are minor quibbles compared to the distasteful and damaging events surrounding Stepneygate. It's hard to decide which is more incredible - that two senior and experienced team stalwarts like Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan could have been so naive in their actions, or so naive that they thought anybody would believe their version of events.

Whatever the truth about what really happened, the unauthorised use of Ferrari data left the championships irreparably tainted.

However, the exclusion of the black and silver cars from the constructors' championship, and Hamilton's and McLaren's achievement of somehow blowing a 17 point lead with only two races to go, ensured that neither championship title had a silver lining. It was the most fitting conclusion to an otherwise excellent season.