F1-FELIPE MASSA – WORLD CHAMPION (For 28 seconds)
- 27 May 2013
There are so many clichés, It ain’t over till its over, till the fat lady sings, till the final curtain, etc. The most hackneyed Hollywood script writer couldn’t have come up with a more corny ending if he were paid by Sylvester Stallone for that most crap of films, Driven. The Formula 1 World Drivers Championship decided on the last corner of the last lap of the last race. Bullshit!!! Except it happened.
After 68 of the 71 lap Brazilian Grand Prix the title was still a no contest. As he had all race, Lewis Hamilton had done just enough to claim the title with a fifth place finish. Sure the final shower of rain had come and just about everyone had changed onto wet tyres. Rival Felipe Massa was winning the race easily but Hamilton was in the place he needed to score the vital four points needed to clinch the title.
Then on lap 69 it all changed. Held up behind some back-markers Hamilton was passed by the hard pressing Sebastian Vettel in the Toro Rosso and all of a sudden it looked like Hamilton would loose the championship by one point or less for the second year in a row. Vettel was visually faster than Hamilton and going into the final lap the only guy in play that hadn’t changed to wets was 13.1 seconds up the road and it wasn’t raining all that hard. Or was it? McLaren strategist Martin Whitmarsh had already told Hamilton to forget about Vettel because he believed that Hamilton could pass Glock’s fourth placed Toyota on the last lap.
The rain kept increasing but at the end of sector 1 (out of 3) Hamilton had only gained 3.2 seconds to be 9.9 behind. Not enough. The rain got harder. The track got colder. The dry tyres lost more grip. Massa crossed the winning line and Hamilton, with 38.9 seconds of racing left was still 5.1 seconds behind Glock. Coming into the start of the final series of curves leading onto the finish straight Glock still led Vettel and Hamilton by 0.3 seconds. Again, not enough. In that final blast up the hill and over the line Hamilton beat Glock by 5.4 seconds to retake that vital fifth place and rob Massa of the title.
For just over half a minute Massa, his family, his home crowd and the Ferrari team celebrated a championship victory. Then the pain of reality set in. The horror of realization on Massa’s fathers face will be an image hard to forget. The boy from Brazil took it well and gained plenty of respect and new fans for his sportsmanship but it must have been a bitter pill to swallow.
It wasn’t a championship Massa deserved to lose. But for an engine failure at the Hungaroring and a monumental pit-lane fuck-up at Singapore Hamilton wouldn’t have even been in the picture in Brazil. But after the appalling FIA decisions against McLaren, and others, over the last couple of years in favour of Ferrari, most felt that they, and not Massa, got what they deserved. McLaren might not have won the constructors championship that they deserved in 2007, but they got the drivers title that Massa deserved in 2008. Good for Hamilton. Justice for McLaren. In-justice for Massa. But bloody hell, what a way to end a championship.
Sam Snape
4-11-2008