Dodgy Business

You just knew that Interlagos wouldn't be 'normal.' Not after the year we've just had.

The first drama came Friday morning when McLaren inexplicably fitted two sets of wets to Lewis Hamilton's car in the first practice session. The rules allow each driver only the one set.

A team screw-up. No argument. It hadn't been an attempt to pull a fast one, to get Lewis more circuit time on the wet tyre, just a straightforward error. On the first set, in fact, Lewis had done just an installation lap.

But against the climate of the season, you wondered immediately what the penalty might be. Everyone frantically started trying to remember tyre transgressions of the recent past and minds went back to Monaco '05, when Ralf Schumacher's Toyota was accidentally fitted with a 'mixed' set of tyres.

Different tyre regulations were in force then, and that was a bigger issue. Mixed compound sets were banned and could have been used to benefit a driver who was having problem with tyre warm-up, for instance. Ralf had half a second added to his qualifying time. Since then, time penalties had been replaced by grid penalties.

McLaren weren't the only culprits. Honda had made the same error with Jenson Button's car and so had Super Aguri with Takuma Sato's.

The rest of Friday was spent wondering whether it would impact on Hamilton's championship challenge. The simple fact was that if Fernando Alonso won the Brazilian Grand Prix, Hamilton needed to be second. If Fernando could only manage second, then fifth was enough for Lewis. In that scenario they would both finish on 111 points and the most Raikkonen could score was 110. Amazingly, Lewis and Fernando would then have both had four wins, five second places, three thirds, and one fourth. Lewis would be champion on a countback of fifth places - two to one!

Now, before I'm accused of bringing the sport into disrepute, I'm not suggesting that the FIA would do anything as unthinkable as trying to rig the championship or deliberately make it a bit more exciting, but inevitably those charged with making decisions had to be aware of the situation. A five-place grid penalty would have meant Lewis starting anywhere from sixth to ninth, from where fifth place would not have presented him undue problems. But a 10-place penalty might make things a bit more interesting...

That was the way people were thinking for most of Friday until, to their credit, the FIA stewards announced a 15,000 euro fine and the need to hand back a set of wet tyres. There was some humour down at Super Aguri who, starting near the back anyway and practically skint, threatened to campaign for grid penalties instead...

For the second race Friday in a row, Lewis sweated it out but left the circuit happy. In China it had been his driving behind the Safety Car. Now this. Not good for the blood pressure...

Then came Saturday, Q3, and the Hamilton/Raikkonen 'incident.' Exiting the pits in preparation for his final run, Lewis came out on to the back straight as Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari exited T3 on its hot lap. Lewis drove down the back straight on the left-hand side and then started to move over to take the racing line. Realising that he was about to impede Kimi, he then pulled left again and gave the Ferrari the line.

Kimi immediately had a tank-slapper in T4 and lost time. His sector two time was three tenths slower than teammate Felipe Massa and on a par with Jarno Trulli's Toyota. You cannot always compare sector times because of different fuel levels, but three tenths in one sector was a lot, regardless.

We'd only seen the TV pictures once and it was hard to remember how far over to the right Hamilton had gone. Was the McLaren far enough over, for long enough, to take Raikkonen's air? Had Lewis done it deliberately?

Such is the degree of understanding in certain areas of the press room that many didn't even appreciate anything had happened. But one of those who did was Anne Giuntini of the French L'Equipe newspaper.

At the post-qualifying press conference, she tore into Hamilton: "For everyone, it is evident that twice you disturbed Kimi. Is everything good to become a world champion?"

"To be honest," Lewis replied, "there is no reason for me to do anything to Kimi because if anything he can win..."

She carried on: "You never showed him clearly that you would give him the track free."

To which Lewis countered: "What do you want me to do, put the indicator on?"

"Is that what you call the best job?" she persisted.

"Yes," he said.

"As a sportsman?"

"Yes," he retorted, starting to look annoyed. "How are you at your job? Are you the best at your job? You have never made mistakes... No?"

There was an interlude while other questions came in about race (colour) rows, being a role model and other general irrelevancies, with someone then asking Lewis to clear up the situation 'after the ridiculous exchange he'd just had'. Hamilton explained that he had apologised to Kimi if he had gotten in his way.

Giuntini waded back in for another stab. "Let us continue this ridiculous exchange," she said, "Do you think you can do everything you want and then you just apologise -is that the way it works in Formula 1?"

Anne is married to Renault engine boffin Denis Chevrier and it is probably fair to say that she has high regard for Alonso coming from her husband's experience of working with Fernando. Ninety percent of the press room thought she'd gone barking mad but, in fairness, the questions needed asking even if the approach was a little aggressive.

Lewis, by now, was well hacked off.

"I'm not going to answer that," he said.

"Why not?"

"I just don't want to talk to you to be honest."

In the light of Alonso's 10-place grid penalty at Monza last year for impeding Felipe Massa when the Ferrari was never closer than 93m to the Spaniard's Renault entering Monza's Parabolica, there seemed every possibility that Hamilton would find himself sweating on yet another stewards' enquiry.

I must admit to being pretty nonplussed. What had Lewis been doing? In admitting that he'd apologised to Kimi he showed himself as being a decent sort but at the same time left himself open to accusations of wrongdoing. Never admit liability even if you're guilty as hell, say the insurance companies.

Lewis and McLaren were making things pretty difficult for themselves. If you suspect someone might want to shoot you, you don't hand them a loaded gun. Probably, it was a good job that it was Raikkonen involved here. Kimi is probably the least political racing driver in the history of the sport. On live TV being beamed across the world, he didn't even mention it.

Kimi might have said something like: "Jesus, can you believe it! The world championship decider and he goes and screws my qually lap. Is that fair? Remember what they did to Alonso last year? Where's the consistency?" Etc, etc.

Predictably, perhaps, the Italian media teed Kimi up to do just that. No response. When really pushed he admitted that "for sure it didn't help." That was the limit of his vehemence.

Forget stretching the truth to gain an advantage. It hadn't been a big issue and Kimi wasn't going to pretend it was, much to his credit. When you looked at the sector times, his T1 time was very quick and as the timing device at the end of that sector was right at the braking point for T4, maybe that was a clue. Perhaps Kimi's T1 time was so quick because he was too late on the brakes for T4, hence his moment and his slow sector two time. It might have been very convenient to blame Lewis but that's not the way he's made.

With Brazil three hours behind the UK, anyone working for a Sunday paper was pretty much on deadline and needed to know if Lewis was about to be demoted. Up came an Italian journalist with the information that Ferrari had appealed and that Hamilton was under investigation.

I wasn't working for a Sunday newspaper but I had a mate who was, so I went down and found Stefano Domenicali, Ferrari's team manager. Was Ferrari appealing? No. Was Hamilton under investigation? No. They had apparently been to see Charlie Whiting to ask the question but were told to forget it.

Back in the press room, as journalists frantically bashed out copy, the rugby world cup final had started and was being transmitted on the screens above our desks. This obviously held little interest for the French, but Ferrari press officer Luca Colajanni arrived with the team's press release just as England scored its disallowed try in the corner.

The cheering died down and the tension mounted as we awaited the decision of those studying the TV pictures. Then the verdict: no try. Widespread disappointment.

Colajanni, with a smile, a shrug and impeccable timing, said: "At least they investigated it..." For which he received a round of amused cheers before going on his way.

There were those who thought Lewis had been fortunate. It's one thing saying you can't see in your mirrors with the rain piddling down beneath Mount Fuji, another to say it when there's only two cars on Interlagos's longest straight on a bright sunny afternoon.

Had Lewis committed a professional foul? Who knows. But on Sunday afternoon Kimi most certainly did. He made a great start, barrelled into Turn 1 ahead of Lewis and got all sideways, right on Massa's gearbox. Kimi sorted it all out but suddenly there was a five car length gap between the Ferraris as Kimi, knowing Lewis was right behind him, was very slow to pick up the throttle. In an instant, Fernando had sliced through on the inside of Lewis and into third. Job done. Nice one, Kimi.

No doubt still a bit heated, Lewis then allowed himself to be suckered into trying to get Alonso back at T4. Fernando protected the inside all the way down the straight, with Lewis in the tow, then moved to the middle of the road, braked early and left just enough room for Lewis to contemplate going around the other side. Off you go, son...

Jackie Stewart would call it mind management. Alonso had been out of sorts all weekend, unhappy enough with his McLaren's set-up on Friday to throw it away and largely replicate Lewis's settings. It hadn't helped and with a similar fuel load to Lewis in qualifying, he was still almost three tenths off the pace. And so for Lewis, surely the danger man was Kimi. And that being the case, fifth was enough. Why get drawn into a race?

His gearbox problem was the real issue, true enough, but he wasn't to know that at the time. You know, someone said, that's the first time he's looked like a novice all year because China was the team's fault. It was a fair point. He'd allowed the experienced guys to do a number on him.

A fortnight ago I wrote that I thought Kimi might just steal in the back door and nick it. But that's because I suspected the McLarens might just have the coming-together that hadn't quite happened all season. I also suspected that the McLaren would be the quicker car in Brazil. That's before I realised they had taken an iron and rolling pin to the bumpy Interlagos surface.

Alonso was never in it. Which was odd. He's normally relentless in that kind of situation and yet his fastest race lap was fully 0.65 seconds from Hamilton's. Lewis's fastest race lap split the Ferraris.

"Do you honestly think McLaren gave Alonso an equal car this weekend?" a foreign journalist asked me on Sunday night.

How could I possibly know, I said, but added that on the basis of what I've seen of them, I would suspect that they did.

"Then tell me," he went on, "how come Fernando's fastest race lap was slower than Kazuki Nakajima, making his F1 debut in a Williams?"

I had wondered exactly that myself. Nakajima made his final stop nine laps after Alonso and so had a lighter fuel load on the golden lap with supersofts. But, looking at it, neither driver set their quickest supersoft time on the golden lap - it was seven laps into Alonso's stint and eight laps into Nakajima's. Kazuki would still have been lighter at whatever the quickest part of their respective tyre cycle was, and he was chasing down David Coulthard while Fernando was cruising, but it was still odd.

I was routing back to the UK via Dubai for reasons best know to myself but as I reached the departure gate in Sao Paulo on Monday night, there sat David Robertson, who manages Kimi with son Steve.

"Can you believe it?" I said.

"After Japan we were dead and buried," he admitted. "In fact, Steve almost didn't bother to come. You couldn't in your wildest dreams imagine that Lewis wouldn't score four points in two races with that car.

"But Kimi deserves it. He really does. He's won six races, which is two more than anyone else, and he had a difficult start to the year. I know everyone's going to say that Lewis lost it, but for me Kimi won it. Everyone wrote him off but he just got his head down and did the job. He's done that all year. You've got to take your hat off to him. The kid's a proper world champion."

I don't think you can really argue with that. Lewis Hamilton is too. Just not yet.

We want to hear from you!

Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.

Take our survey

- The Autosport.com Team

Read and post comments