The majority of F1 fans I spoke to in the run up to Sunday’s title decider were strangely gloomy about Lewis Hamilton’s chances. There seemed to be a dark cloud of very British pessimism forming over the country, to match the great storm clouds threatening to soak the Interlagos circuit.
We don’t have much belief in our sportspeople, do we? Success to us Brits is so unexpected: we greet our winners with open top buses, parades, honours from the Queen – Olympians, Ashes winners – so disbelieving are we that they have actually won something.
In Australia, their sports stars are expected to win: it’s their job. If their cricket team was awarded the equivalent of an MBE every time they won the Ashes, Shane Warne would need to have a pretty big mantelpiece.
That’s not to say that we should not laud our sporting heroes, merely that we’ve been conditioned to expect failure. Tim Henman, Colin Montgomerie, the English football team in penalty shootouts, Hamilton in 2007: we’ve had so many nearly men over the years that we’ve become a nation of sporting pessimists.
So it seemed entirely appropriate when, with two laps to go, Lewis Hamilton was passed by Sebastian Vettel, relegating him to sixth place and seemingly robbing him of the world title for the second year running.
What followed was one of the greatest, most dramatic turnarounds in sporting history, and left Hamilton and a nation exultant.
Nail-biting finish
It was a shame Hamilton couldn’t win it on his own terms: perhaps by battling back past Vettel. In truth it was not one of his or McLaren’s best weekends. The team went conservative, fuelling Hamilton long, perhaps fearing that Ferrari would employ some less than sporting tactics to disrupt the Briton’s race. But this left Hamilton looking less than racy. He was painfully slow from the third phase of qualifying onwards and was constantly under pressure in the race; first from Timo Glock and then the marauding Vettel, who nearly cost Hamilton the title when he passed him on lap 70.
It was a truly exhilarating finish. The championship was decided on the final corner of the final race of the season: Hamilton passed Glock – struggling on dry tyres in the wet – to take the fifth place he needed to claim his first championship.
It was a brutal reversal for the Massa family – who were already celebrating in the pit-lane – and you can’t help but feel sorry for the Brazilian driver. He did everything he had to do, winning the race comfortably, and could only hope that Hamilton would find trouble: mechanical or otherwise. For a few brief moments, it looked as if Hamilton had obliged by slipping down to sixth place, and had the race ended when Massa crossed the line then the Brazilian would have been the champion.
Just the beginning
For Hamilton you feel that this is the start of something big. As the youngest winner of the drivers’ crown in the sport’s history, he has all the time in the world to cement a place in the pantheon of great F1 champions.
His story is one of humble beginnings, of the support and sacrifices of his father, and of a dedication and ambition that you feel will become the stuff of sporting legend.
Hamilton has said he hopes to win more titles. You would have to say that only the most pessimistic of his supporters would see this as a one off. He suggested that next time he’d like to do it with “a bit of style maybe.”
Lewis could certainly have won in a more stylish fashion, but it’s hard to imagine a more thrilling finish to a Formula One season.