MCLAREN-MERCEDES cars cannot be trusted to act consistent and that I learnt from the 2006 F1 season. A walk down the memory lane would remind I am sure almost everyone of watching Kimi Raikkonen walk, ride a moped or stroll to the pit lane live while the races went on. Kimi Raikkonen as much gifted a motor racer as he is, could not do anything about the bizarre car troubles that only Mclaren-Mercedes cars were able to conjure. (If you cannot finish, say thrice on a sixteen-race season there remains no point in competing in the remaining thirteen, if the championship is what you had in mind! Kimi moving to Ferrari this year, serves him right!). And this was again vindicated in the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix that saw Lewis Hamilton have trouble with his gear shaft and fall further down the order while teetering on the edge of the first ten places very early in the race.
Mclaren-Mercedes' managing its team both on and off the racetrack turned out to be solidly horrendous! Now further perusing would make any one think of this article to have the sole purpose of bashing one particular team, but it does not! Mclaren Mercedes was simply too awful to deserve this. For the record Mclaren screwed up in the Chinese Grand Prix, the most important race of the season I must say for Lewis Hamilton (on the track), could not manage the squabbling Fernando (off the track) and lastly had to give all their constructor championship points away (both on and off the track). And the last race of the season actually proved that harmony among teammates actually pays off … with interest! Massa's helping out Kimi at the start of Brazilian GP definitely proved something (that harmony among teammates pays interest) and rightfully now Kimi is the World Champion, a title he truly deserves!
This year had actually been a very good year for F1. Michael Schumacher leaves and voila, F1 gifts everyone with a Grand Finale that actually happens on the last race of the season. And not just that, if we recount our memories through out the year we see a rookie driver turn the F1 world upside down with his consistent performances, the first F1 car go airborne (Remember Alex Wurz in the very first race, the Malaysian GP?), Robert Kubica have a tremendous accident which if happened a few years before would have definitely caused fatality, squabbling teammate and a three way grand finale. And there were definitely the perks and the most profoundly I remember the one which should be called the 'Super Aguri Incident' should it happen again. I forgot in which GP it was but a Super Aguri driver came in for a pit stop to find the pit crew just clambering out! (What were they doing? Watching Ugly Betty?) This is reality TV, no wonder!
And as we wait for the next season, we can almost be sure of seeing an F1 race be held at night. (Hey, I thought of it a long time ago!) It would be the Singapore GP. The 2007 Formula 1 definitely turned out to be very enticing and emotional both for the racers and the viewers and surely 2008 would be as much if not more.
