From the Pulpit

So, despite rumours circulating the ether last week to the effect that Pedro de la Rosa would be ousted to make way for Lewis Hamilton in the second McLaren for the last three Grands Prix of the year, the team have now confirmed that the veteran Spaniard will do the honours... in Shanghai and Japan at least.

It made perfect sense to keep Pedro for the two Far East back-to-back races - but it was Suzuka, and not Shanghai, that was the key. Why so? Because, like Eddie Irvine and Mika Salo before him, de la Rosa was one of those European drivers who sought fame and fortune in Japan after doing Formula Three in Europe (the British F3 Championship in Pedro's case).

As such, he won the All-Japan F3 championship in 1995, contested the All-Japan GT Championship and the Formula Nippon championship in 1996, and re-entered both those championships the following year with resounding success, duly becoming 1997 Formula Nippon champion and 1997 All-Japan GT champion.

So Pedro knows Suzuka very well indeed. Moreover, Suzuka is perhaps the trickiest F1 circuit of all for a new driver to master - even Kimi Raikkonen struggled there at first - which means that it would be an odd decision indeed to give Hamilton his F1 baptism there.

But what about Interlagos? Now, that would be a whole lot less silly. That particular weekend, the world will have eyes for only Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, who will surely be fighting out a nail-biting world championship finale - a backdrop (no, make that frontdrop) behind which Lewis could quietly cut his F1 racing teeth away from the spotlight that will inevitably shine potentially unflattering light on his every move should his F1 debut be delayed until Melbourne next year.

The helmets of Pedro de la Rosa and Lewis Hamilton © XPB/LAT

Or, to put it another way, it would be very strange indeed if Ron Dennis were to race Hamilton in 2007 without having first availed himself of a heaven-sent opportunity to have a good look at him, at close quarters, in a racing situation, wouldn't it?

Because, if Lewis were to drive even a single Grand Prix this year, doing so would bring scale and context and comparative nuance to the tens of thousands of kilometres of testing that he will surely be required to do this winter - context and scale and comparative nuance against which he would be able to map every one of his December/January kilometres, and steepen (yes, and deepen) his learning curve as a result.

If I'm right, then a statistical quirk will eventuate - one that may, in time, be oft-quoted: namely, that the great Michael Schumacher and the great Lewis Hamilton only ever drove one Grand Prix against one another. As stats go, it will be meaningless, useless and therefore ultimately frustrating - but it will be no less popular or enduring for that.

And, talking of Michael, and his last Grand Prix, and his retirement, I'm told by friends and colleagues that my column last week, the one that formed a part of the mammoth 'Schumacher Retrospective' special issue, has caused a bit of a rumpus.

And the sentence that caused said rumpus was the following one, describing Michael's exit from the Turkish Grand Prix drivers' briefing: "Only Michael is on his own, marching purposefully past any reporter who might seek to waylay him, his face a rictus of enraged discontent, his mouth pursed into the shape of a cat's anus (his trademark paralinguistic trait when he's genuinely livid)."

Apparently, it was disrespectful of me to compare the shape of the seven-time champion's mouth to a cat's anus. Well, all I can say to those of you who are still sore about it is that, cat's anus or not, Michael Schumacher was a brilliantly skilled F1 driver.

The dog's bollocks, in fact. Happy now?