Lewis Hamilton is a greater danger to his title hopes than Fernando Alonso is
Fernando Alonso has said he wants to help Felipe Massa win the F1 title
Fernando Alonso told his home press earlier this week: “Yes, no doubt, if I can help, I will help Massa.”. He followed that up in the press conference ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend with:
When I said this in Fuji what I meant is that now we have a competitive car it seems that we are able to fight sometimes with Ferrari and McLaren and first of all we need to have a competitive, hard car here in Shanghai and Brazil to be fighting with Ferrari and McLaren. If we do that and Felipe wins the race and I can be second or third I will be happy to help Felipe to take as many points as possible and this is the only approach.
To me this looks like a psychological swipe that rather than a genuine threat to get in Hamilton’s way or take him out. How will Hamilton react in Shanghai?
Advantage Massa
Hamilton may have the championship lead but the impetus in the title battle rests with rival Felipe Massa: he has out-scored Hamilton in all but one of the last five races. And at Singapore, Massa was perfectly poised to win before that disastrous pit stop.
Massa won Interlagos, scene of the season finale, in 2006, and was set for victory last year when he obligingly yielded to team mate Kimi Raikkonen to guarantee a Ferrari champion. Hamilton needs to out-score Massa by a point or two this weekend to make the Brazilian’s chances of wrapping up the title at his home race extremely difficult.
The role of Alonso
This imperative and Alonso’s words of warning will be preying on Hamilton mind. But, realistically, what could Alonso do to disrupt Hamilton’s race?
Delay Hamilton in qualifying? Alonso would get a penalty. Hold up Hamilton in the race? He’ll have to out-qualify him first. Crash into Hamilton? Surely no-one seriously expects Alonso to take matters that far.
In the press conference, Alonso claimed the extent of his desire to ‘help Massa’ was simply to finish between the leading Ferrari and Hamilton. Later Hamilton spoke about his encounter with Alonso in the season finale at Interlagos last year, which might indicate a wariness about Alonso in Hamilton’s mind:
Firstly, in Brazil I didn’t try to overtake [Alonso] and make a mistake. Fernando was on the outside and he braked a little bit earlier than I anticipated and so I had to try to avoid him, so I went wide and that forced me to go off, so that wasn’t a manoeuvre trying to overtake.
But realistically, in order for Alonso to cause problems for Hamilton, the two will have to be disputing the same piece of track at some point. And even though the R28 has clearly improved in recent races, they haven’t seen much of each other all year.
They clashed at Bahrain – which proved to be entirely Hamilton’s misjudgement – and the two wouldn’t even have been in that position had Hamilton not fluffed his start. Then at Monza Hamilton caught Alonso and passed him with a lack of drama, the McLaren several seconds quicker than the Renault at that point. Once again, it was an earlier error by McLaren that brought Hamilton and Alonso into each other’s races.
Conservatism is the key to the title
Hamilton should naturally exercise caution if he gets into a wheel-to-wheel battle with Alonso this weekend. But frankly, he needs to do a bit more exercising caution anyway – he made two in the first few corners at Fuji, and they weren’t the first he’s made this year.
It pains me to see exciting drivers curb their racing instincts. I blame a points system that over-rewards minor finishes. But if Hamilton wants to win this championship, he needs to drive like he did at Singapore and not like he did at Fuji.
If he does that, Alonso should scarcely have the opportunity to influence the outcome of the championship.
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Martin said on 19th October 2008, 1:56
@qazuhb:
thoughtful and welcome comments, placing things in perspective – to attempt to continue in same vein:
Big difference between “different driving styles” and what’s going on with Hamilton. It’s been my impression that the “edge” is considered by drivers to be aggressive driving which is right up to but not over the fine line of competing vs. endangering others to no purpose – of course this could be formulated better/differently, but such a line IS there, however we as spectators disagree over it. Certainly other drivers were often concerned about Senna, Schumacher and others crossing that line too often. Even the worst cases (eg. Senna/Prost, speaking of competitive great drivers taking each other “out”) were kept within a small number of drivers (like 2). I certainly do not recall any of the worst offenders going out of their way to antagonize all the other drivers. In those cars, it might well have proved fatal.
(As an aside, I do think spectators have become much too complacent over the safety of current cars – immensely greater, no doubt, but in Kubica’s case any human being was miraculously fortunate to escape as he did, and all this talk as if the danger has gone out of the sport is unnerving – worst of all the possiblity that some DRIVERS might have such bad ideas – one can still get killed in an F1 race, as two marshalls have SINCE Senna) –
Would really like to hear more discussion from the knowledgeable folks here about how Gilles and Senna were viewed by their contemporaries –
As to Hamilton, sure a lot of this is that he is loud-mouthed and arrogant, with the talent to back it up. At the same time, he does NOT have his head together, that’s evident in his (often amazing) driving over two years now, and if he didn’t make cracks elevating himself above his peers he wouldn’t be in this position. This season will tell the story: from here, if he wins the title, it’s his. If he loses it, HE blew it. He made it all more exciting for awhile, with growing concerns, but now he’s causing as much eye-rolling as he is applause. If the greatest talent to come along in quite some time turns himself into a joke or a might-have-been, he can look to himself, and not F. Alonso (who actually HAS two cups).
mp4-19 said on 20th October 2008, 6:51
keith;
“nando” ( meaning short in spanish) has really stooped to the lowest possible level a human can go. I mean how can a double world champion make such irresponsible comments. He is a characterless champion, he never had a cordial relationship with massa ,just have a look for urselfhttp://in.youtube.com/watch?v=LU0d6xhaMPQ . After all this nando makes such statements. He’s not only short in his stature but also in character. Teams have to realise this fact. This “short” man is dangerous to the sport. He tried to blackmail a great team that existed since before he was born.He is just trying to appease stefano dommenicalli & ferrari thats all. He really doesn’t care who wins it. If i were in massa’s place i would be most embrassed & wouldn’t accept help. If “nando” really cared about massa winning the WDC ,why should he have gone public with it. He could have shown it in his driving. He always wants to be in the limelight. Wants to make the front page of every spanish news paper.The short man “nando” must understand that ferrari are going nowhere with KERS. I expect ferrari to slump back to the berger,alesi era .Nando is making a serious mistake. He is losing respect among the elders of the sport. Fer”nando” alonso is surely going the damon hill way.