Hamilton makes debut as pop vocalist

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Lewis Hamilton appears as a vocalist on a track by American singer Ana Lou.

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Hamilton on a different track as Mercedes star unleashes singing voice in pop debut (Daily Mail)

“[Hamilton] is featured singing lyrics such as ‘Why don’t you give love another try?’ ‘Baby, you should let me be the one’, and ‘I ‘aint nothing like those other guys.'”

Update: Hamilton has since denied it is him singing on the track.

Ferrari: group governance F1’s future (Autosport)

Luca di Montezemolo: “There is no question the young boys love cars and F1 less. One of the reasons, but not the only one, is that the races are becoming too complicated to follow.”

After ‘Rush’, F1 safety hits the screens (Reuters)

“A generation of drivers has now grown up that has never suffered the loss of one of their own at a racetrack, nor started a season wondering whose funeral they might be attending before the year was out.”

Tweets

https://twitter.com/EmiliaEpi/status/416660018365493248

Comment of the day

Will this year’s dominant car be venerated in the same way other great cars have?

I was looking at this video about the McLaren MP4-4, the most successful F1 car ever made. So many people writing down what a legacy it was, how good it drove and how fast it is. Wondering whether people will remember 2013 for the Red Bull RB9 and Sebastian Vettel dominance in the same way or whether it will always be ‘that boring season’.
Sam (@Ardenflo)

From the forum

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On this day in F1

Jim Clark put a seal on his domination of the 1963 championship 50 years ago today by winning the South African Grand Prix.

It was his seventh win in ten races, and in five of those he had led every lap. Dan Gurney was a minute behind in second and Jack Brabham a lapped third.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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160 comments on “Hamilton makes debut as pop vocalist”

  1. It is being remembered positively because it was a fight between Prost and Senna and a special weekend in Italy, not because people were happy nobody else had a chance to win for the crushing superiority.

    1. This year had special weekends in: Melbourne, Shanghai, Barcelona, Monaco, Silverstone and Budapest.

      1. Basically the races that Vettel didn’t win.

  2. F1fanatic COTD in 2035
    Comment of the day

    Will this year’s dominant car be venerated in the same way other great cars have?

    I was looking at this video about the Red Bull RB9, one of the most successful F1 cars ever made. So many people writing down what a legacy it was, how good Sebastian Vettel drove it and how fast it is. Wondering whether people will remember 2035 for the Blue Rocket BR6 and Michael Vettel dominance in the same way or whether it will always be ‘that boring season’ :D

    1. Michael Vettel definitely made me chuckle!

  3. What’s that? I hear Hamilton getting the **** ripped out of him in the pitlane

  4. Jack (@jackisthestig)
    28th December 2013, 0:20

    Someone needs to pour a bucket of cold water over Lewis.

    1. Just leave him alone. He knows what he’s doing…

      1. OK, you need to give him some feedback, man. About his lyrics, rhythm. Does he need to push more? Less?

        1. and now Hamilton has just been overtaken by a “Justin Bieber”

        2. He just being passed by a Williams, he can’t going slower than that, man.

          1. What do you think he’s trying to do, man?

    2. He’s not allowed to have a hobby? :-P

      1. Not if it’s singing

        1. Wait, you took my post seriously? :-P

      2. Jack (@jackisthestig)
        28th December 2013, 6:59

        It’s not so much Lewis’ singing that makes me shake my head, but the seemingly endless public pining for Nicole. When Alonso split up from his wife a couple of years ago, the first time I was aware of it was when he was strutting around the paddock at this year’s Chinese Grand Prix with TWO stunning girlfriends in tow. Now that’s how you publically deal with a break-up Lewis!

        1. Ana Lou looks allright…

        2. @jackisthestig there was plenty of Euro tabloids Spain and Italy more so that talked about the Alonso split from his famous singer wife. So you probably just didn’t read or see the articles, and a couple were put in a round up here on this blog. Either way the entire Hamilton and his washed up gf should have ended in 2011 when he was having troubles keeping the car away from lovable magnet Massa.

    3. I’d rather this than Jenson’s wonderful rendition of “We are the Champions” in 2009.

    4. That would short out his Autotune though :(

    5. I didn´t like the song. But is it mades Lewis happy maybe he could get involved in music in a different way… Karaoke maybe?

      Now seriously as long as this is a hobby and he doesn´t try to record an album I guess is alright. After all every driver has hobbies: Alonso has samurai quotes and building mausoleums museums for himself, Vettel has old bikes and crosswords, Kimi has vodka, etc…

  5. LH gets dangerously close to the Villeneuve line.

    And once you cross it, there’s no return.

    1. I was about to type that comment in… an then i saw yours…..

      While admire him for having a great passion and a hobby apart from racing, I hope he does not end up like Villeneuve as a one time champ….

      1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
        28th December 2013, 2:32

        @tmax Villeneuve’s mistake was to try to make a team around him… with noone else. BAR was the most unreliable project ever seen those years. He should have tried to get a good manager who could have fit him in a McLaren or even a Ferrari. (Who wouldn’t have trembled to see “Villeneuve” printed in a Ferrari again?)
        Enough “what ifs” for a day.

        1. @omarr-pepper couldn’t agree more !!!!

        2. Yeah, I could write a book of a response, but I’ll just say for starters that as much as I yearned for JV to drive for Ferrari, the fact remains that while JV was in F1 MS did not have the guts to take on a WDC level teammate to actually compete against him, and had they hired JV and actually treated him 50/50 on the team MS would not have achieved anywhere near the numbers he did. So it makes no sense to suggest JV should have had a better manager to get him to Ferrari…no manager could have done that. You have to remember that after JV’s WDC in 97, and then for some years ahead at Williams the engine was no longer being developed, so JV’s competitiveness there had been curbed, and there were no top seats available at the time, but such was his impressive resume, he was able to be a key center at a brand new team with Reynard, who built his CART winning cars and who had won in every series they ever built cars for, and then his talent was enough to bring Honda back into F1. If F1 is to be considered the pinnacle of racing, then by extension the odds are always going to be massively stacked against a brand new team succeeding, but oh my goodness how massive the rewards would have been had it worked.

          1. for a year or 2 it was when rather than if JV would drive for mclaren then in a matter of months he fell out of favour and everyone(wrongly) thought he was useless.

            I still remember him friday qualifying the BAR in 3rd place at australia in 03 i think. Was a brilliant lap.

          2. @Robbie I truly believe JV was a great talent and if he had greater support from Williams team than Hill in 1996 then he might have won the WDC on debut. I always rated him much above hill and it was heart breaking for me to watch his botched Williams pitstop and rear wheels flying away in the championship decider in Japan even though winning WDC in last race would have been a far cry. Interestingly I had the same feeling when Lewis was stuck in the pit entry gravel in Chinese grandprix in 2007.

            BUT I also do believe that it is not right to put all the failures of JV on one perpetual villain MS. Given the Villenueve history at Ferrari, if JV had impressed enough the trio of Big Luca, Todt and Brawn they would have put him in that seat instead of MS . MS was also having second thoughts about Ferrari and Ron was openly courting him with the Newey carrot. At the end of five years Ferrari can say “Money well spent”. I am sure they are not regretting putting MS instead of JV there. I would be surprised if Ferrari had performed any better than what they already did between 2000 to 2004 with JV. That era was absolute domination. I mean it just could’nt get better than that. Mika was moving on so JV could have gotten into Mclaren and teamed up with Newey again to build a team around him to challenge MS and Ferrari. Nothing in that scale happened. I believe he lost the interest completely after the Winfield episode and he was not motivated enough compared to others especially MS who was a winning machine by then.

            All this brings me to another thought. Fast forward … people say “MY Granny would have been a 4 time WDC if they had given her the RBR which Vettel was driving.” Interestingly I never heard anyone saying the same about Hill and JV regarding the 1996 and 1997 Cars and WDCs which was a class apart Newey machinery. I mean Hill was on the front row for the entire season in 1996. I never heard the same criticism about Hill and JV like the ones on Vettel !!!!

      2. Speaking as a Vettel fan, even I think Hamilton needs to get his head back in the game and stop with these distractions. In my opinion, he should be concentrating 100% on his racing. Vettel is likely to be hugely distracted during this upcoming season. If I were Hamilton, I’d be totally focused on taking advantage of that situation. Just a word of advice from an honest admirer, Lewis!

        1. @aka_robyn are you hinting that Vettel would be distracted because he is gonna be a dad in 2014. I don’t think so.

          If that logic holds true romain grosjean should have had a bad year in 2013

          1. I’d agree with that if Vettel and Grosjean were clones of one another — but they’re different people, and it’s possible they’ll respond to fatherhood differently. Believe me — I’d prefer it if you were correct! But if I were Hamilton (or Alonso), I’d be ready to take full advantage…

          2. @aka_robyn On the contrary I felt Vettel would be less distracted than RO GRO. I felt Vettel left the family drama and emotions in the alphine mountains when he traveled to the race weekends. I mean he never gets a cart full of family members to races nor is he interested in the media spotlight on that topic. That I believe would help him to keep things simple.

        2. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, same for Lewis, Kimi, Fernando, Sebastian, Jenson, Romain et al.

          1. There will be plenty of time for not being dull after they’ve retired from F1! (Or at least after they’ve won their fill of championships, which Hamilton clearly has not.)

          1. @lewymp4 No, that falls under the heading “work for sponsors” (in this case, Infiniti), which all drivers are somewhat unfortunately required to do. Nice try, though!

        3. @tmax Your first paragraph…I appreciate.

          Your second paragraph…It is completely inaccurate to suggest I blame JV’s failures on MS. And when JV had the equipment, he beat MS…hardly failure.

          I don’t believe there was ever any thought about any driver but MS going to Ferrari, once Max and Bernie decided they needed a new icon post -Senna and it would be a move of MS from where he was winning to Ferrari where they weren’t, with all the kit and kaboodle to boot.

          Such a shame there wasn’t the courage for them to take on JV treated fairly, but that was never in the plan for any driver let alone JV. It had to be a non-WDC bootlicker compliant to the extremest usage ever in F1 of the one-rooster philosophy.

          I don’t recall any rumors about JV going to Mac and I don’t think that was in the cards so easily as just saying ‘he could have gone there’…really? You know that he turned down an actual offer?

          I think you are trying to rewrite history with your hypothesis that Ferrari considered but rejected JV, or that JV could have walked into a car at Mac.

          And JV never lost interest in anything but the distracting politics of F1.

          Also, you may have never heard the same ‘granny’ insinuation about the 96 and 97 Williams, but trust me it was there. And that was when I started to hammer home the point to people that virtually all WDC’s need the WCC winning car, and it was up to the drivers then to not squander it and to handle the pressure of having a WDC-potential package. Perhaps 2 years, 2 different Champions in 96 and 97 is different than 1 driver 4 years straight in terms of suggestions of a cakewalk, but anyway like I say I defended JV like a Champ when folks tried to tell me it was just the car.

          But I don’t rank SV’s race craft anywhere near JV’s, regardless of 4 unsquandered WDCs vs. 1.

          1. @Robbie Let me reiterate I thought JV was a good driver and definitely better than Damon Hill.

            I am not trying to rewrite history. All I am saying is that if JV was that Phenomenal then big teams other than Ferrari would have picked him up or as you said the Max Bernie Luca combo would have made him the Post Senna Icon. He had more ingredients than MS as far as Image is considered. He was Young. He gave a DH a run for Money in his debut year. He won WDC in year 2. MS tried to crash him out in 1997. So here you have the best Hero JV and the best villain MS. MS was very much hated by then. So if JV was more talented than MS , then Max and Bernie would have loved to make him the Post Senna ICON. Putting him in a Ferrari and a WDC though Ferrrari would Rekindle the Memoirs of his dad !!!!! So by all means if you are saying MS was the chosen one then JV had a better chance to be the chosen one if he was really that phenomenal. And all the teams turned their backs on him.

            Look at his Post 1997 performance. He did not win a Single Race after that.
            1998 – Winfield was dud. nothing much to say. Got a decent 5th.
            1999 – 2003. BAR. Nothing. Button drove the BAR in 2004 and was on the Podium many times with MS .
            2004 Renault – No Good. Next year Alonso goes on to win WDC
            2005 – 2006 – BMW Sauber – Nobody knew he existed.

            Again I don’t want do compare and Vettel and JV. that is more like Watermelons and Pineapple ( Pls don’t ask me who represents what. Just example :) )

    2. @xivizmath The Villeneuve line? First of all, its true name is the Fittipaldi line since he was the one who invented it. And I don’t remember LH signing up for a questionable project with huge ambitions but no clue whatsoever how to fulfill them

      1. @tmax Have to disagree. MS was in a debacle at Benetton, the media hounding the FIA as to how they could allow MS the WDC in 94 with so many illegalities going on and the whack on DH, after which I believe a decision was made to deflect this mess off their new icon as soon as possible by the move to Ferrari, all while JV was winning and under contracts in CART and getting a tryout at Williams.

        Everything else was timing. After Williams, JV decided to form his own team and thus made himself unavailable. He almost went to Renault but Honda promised him the world and so he decided to remain loyal and stick it out with the BAR project. After that there was 3 Renault races, then Sauber. Other top seats full. It’s about timing, and JV wasn’t available when certain top seats were, but then to assume it’s like snapping fingers and he should just be there is oversimplifying. It’s hindsight to say he or teams shoulda woulda coulda done this or that.

        And to even say ‘and all the teams turned their backs on him’ again has me of the opinion you are trying to write your own history and build a case against JV while saying you do rate him highly, when in fact he was involved in several teams in his career, spoken highly of by pretty much everyone he worked with that isn’t David Richards, and many would have had him had he been available or had he wanted to go to them. Had it been that simple.

        He was at Williams which was the right move as it garnered him his WDC, brought Honda back to F1, worked for Renault, and Sauber with BMW. Ferrari was never a thought because of their MS one rooster philosophy…so who are ALL the teams that turned their back on him? Said by you like they ripped off their sleeves in front of him and disowned him for shaming them by him daring to darken their doorstep.

        1. Hmmm, that sounds like a lot of Pollocks to me….

        2. @Robbie i did understand much of what you are trying to communicate things Like MS was a debacle at Benetton, Turning their back and lot more thing written out there.

          All I was trying to say was that JV was a good racer. But post 1997 he was a big failure.
          and he deserved more than one WDC !!!

          1. i did understand = i DID NOT understand.

    3. I do hope that Lewis can manage to sell more albums than JV did.

      1. As a ‘one-time champ’ (said by a poster like it is barely worth a mention) not to mention CART Champion and Indy 500 winner, JV has nothing to hang his head about. He’s got on his F1 resume the stuff that 99% of F1 drivers never achieve, and on his whole racing resume the stuff that 99.9% of drivers in the history of racing globally have never achieved. And it’s all well and good to look back in hindsight and be an armchair expert, but it is what it is. Nobody, that I’m aware of, has a crystal ball to protect them from taking risks.

        As to JV’s musical hobby, I love what JV said when he was told what MS said when they asked him what he thought about JV’s music career. When asked, MS said he wished JV better luck than he had had in F1, to which JV later replied that he took that as a big compliment, since he was a F1 World Champion.

        1. +1 Well said!

        2. Again @Robbie is referring to me as that poster who said one-time-champ. Please don’t twist my words.

          I clearly mentioned that when I refer to him as a one time champ was not because “it is barely worth a mention” but rather because i felt he deserved to be a WDC more than once and I clearly mentioned that in my comments.

          https://www.racefans.net/2013/12/28/f1-fanatic-round-up-2812/comment-page-1/#comment-1461677

          1. @tmax Fair comment. Although I do object to your saying JV was a big failure after his WDC. But I won’t go into a book of text to explain why. The book I wrote above was simply to try to describe the chronology of events to disprove the theory that ‘all’ the teams, as you said, turned their backs on him, including Ferrari. That is simply factually not the case.

            I agree wholeheartedly that JV deserved another WDC.

  6. That F1 doc sounds absolutely cracking, I’ve always preferred these to dramatised outputs like Rush. I remember a great documentary shown on the BBC a year or 2 ago, just about the time when I was really being drawn in to F1. ‘Formula 1: The Killer Years’ it was called. It detailed the horrific disregard of health and safety practice at the time, and revisited some of the fatal crashes endured in this period, with much input from Jackie Stewart and co regaling watchers with the stories of the nordschleife ‘green hell’. It ended with a clip I will never forgot and had no idea existed. It was David Purley trying in vain to right Roger Williamson’s fire-consumed car at Zandvoort ’73. The clip really speaks volumes for the ‘traditional’ malpractice in regards to health & safety back in the early years; seriously harrowing stuff and that alone should have gave people some perspective on what needed to happen for the future. Some people might moan about health and safety now, but as long as it prevents atrocities like that happening, I’m happy. I’m glad with the care exhibited in F1 at the moment and hope they continue to strive for increased safety and reliability. It’s a shame it took so many lives for things to really change

    1. I found that Killer Years documentary dramatised as well though, even though I agreed with the assessment of safety issues in F1 as put forward by the drivers in it.

    2. Jack (@jackisthestig)
      28th December 2013, 7:09

      I thought ‘Killer Years’ was woeful, just an hour long character assassination of Colin Chapman.

      1. I agree with your point about Colin Chapman. However, you you consider the documentary deeper, you will realise that the two who come out worst are Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosely. They were the two in charge but (in spite of their self congratulations later) they did nothing about safety until forced in to it by the likes of Jackie Stewart.

        1. Wasn’t Mosely only a team owner and subsequently legal advisor until the early ’90s? I don’t see how he was ‘in charge’ or came out worst at all.

          1. I don’t remember Mosely being a team owner, I only remember him being Ecclestones lawyer when Ecclestone had Brabham. That was what made the deal when the FIA (under Mosely) sold all the advertiseing rights to Ecclestone for a very low price so questionable.

          2. he owned March

  7. Is that a packet of fags in the background of Valtieri’s tweet?

    Hehe

    1. yep he only uses a little in his spliff’s

  8. Kids, cover your ears.

  9. I completely disagree with di Montezemolo. There’s an old expression: a camel is a horse designed by a committee. F1 will never move forward if decisions are left to a group of people, even if they are ‘experts’. The recent sloppy decision-making by the strategy group is evidence to this.

    1. F1 will always go backwards if decisions are left to one man whose sole motivation is profit.

      1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
        28th December 2013, 2:06

        But at the same time, you can’t really let the teams make the decisions because they’re hardwired to win. Teams don’t make decisions based on the good of the sport, they make decisions because they think it will help them gain an advantage over the rest.

        Ergo: Double Points at the final race.

        1. “To be, or not to be ? that is the question.”
          Chris, that is the problem, every body has a personal interest, unfortunately Bernies interest is in keeping as much of the revenue as he can, everybody elses interest is sacrificed on that altar. Double points has “Bernie” written all over it.

          1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
            28th December 2013, 3:42

            I’m sure Bernie played a role in this travesty that is “double points”, whether or not he was the orchestrator of it, I don’t know, you probably know more on the matter than me.

            But, didn’t all but one team (Red Bull) on the Strategy group board support the double points rule?

            Meaning they only supported the rule because it has the potential to defeat Sebastian. And I’ll bet that if say, Alonso had been the one dominating F1 the way Vettel has been, that Ferrari would have been the one to oppose double points, and Red Bull would have supported it.

          2. @tophercheese21 Isn’t the decision voted for unanimously by all? In that case, just because RedBull came out criticizing the double points first doesn’t mean they indeed opposed it in the strategy group.

        2. Chris (@tophercheese21)
          28th December 2013, 9:23

          @seahorse

          But doesn’t it seem a bit odd that Red Bull would vote for the double points rule, and then proceed to criticise it?

          1. Theres something fishy about this rule, we have had three (?) teams come out and criticise it, just weeks after it was unanimously voted.

        3. @tophercheese21 The thing is @hohum is correct, it is a Bernie thing with the double points and it became increasingly obvious when he wanted to expand it to three races. Also the money to be made in potentially charging these track groups/owners to become a special privileged golden ticket awarded final decider, only proves how profit driven is. Teams and drivers (especially Ferrari) complained that is made the sport a bigger gimmick and took away from Tradition and prestige of the sport. (obviously paraphrasing)

          I will agree that teams are not as bad as Bernie but still not nearly as impartial as the sport needs. The only way to make it work is have a group that is impartial and representatives from a teams as well that will sit down and iron out what is needed.

          1. More importantly it seems to be also FIA joint in nature as well, which is bad too considering what asinine decision they put forth.

          2. @magillagorilla, right Todt seems very keen to raise more $millions for the FIA which is a non-profit organisation, I’d like to think he was accumulating a war chest to take back control of F1 by declaring the deal whereby Max M. sold his one time business associate and good buddy Bernie E. the TV rights to F1 for $3m. pa. for 100 years, note, the rights were handed to Bernie or a company he owned and controlled, not to a teams organisation or a F1 co-operative venture, those rights now bring in over $1Billion pa., Sadly though my more sceptical self thinks Todt is just Empire building and the extra money will go on higher executive salaries and expenses and currying favour with the national chiefs who control the election of the FIA President.

  10. ShaneB457 (@shaneb12345678910)
    28th December 2013, 1:21

    No matter how good/bad the song is, he most definately enjoyed being involved in it, and there’s nothing wrong with doing something that you enjoy. So people shouldn’t bash him for doing it!

    1. I agree with you. I think it is good to do something he enjoys outside of racing. Its up to him to set his own priorities. We shall see if it will affect his driving.

    2. +1

      Nothing more to say then that really. Alonso opened up a museum like collection of all the things to do with him about 2 weeks back but nobody bats an eye lid at that ;)

  11. OK Valtteri is now the coolest driver in my book, he’s even got a packet of cigarettes laying around! you see Lewis that’s how you spend your free time!!! :)

    1. Sorry to disappoint you, but it isn’t cigarettes. It’s salty liquorice

      1. Oh I see, very easy to confuse, still cool that he eats that though.

        1. I’ve tried it before, and it’s an acquired taste, to say the least.

          1. @prisoner-monkeys Liquorice is nice, but salmiakki is toxic. I have no idea how other Finns can eat it and even enjoy doing that.

          2. Don’t the Finns also eat Hakarl? Or is that just an icelandic thing?

          3. If you get the balance between sweet and salty right, it’s not half bad. But it’s a really fine balance, and difficult to achieve.

  12. “on this day” Jim Clark won many races in this manner but I don’t recall people complaining of boredom, of course most of the races Jim Clark didn’t win were DNFs so the possibillity of a last lap mechanical failure kept the tension high right to the end.

    1. I just wish that nowadays, even if we have dominance, that the sport wasn’t being spoiled by relentless FIA tinkering.

  13. Things are quiet so I am going to propose a hypothesis knowing that some of you will relish the excercize of proving me right or wrong:
    The heavy 7 point weighting for the winner over the second place getter played a big part in the early end to the WDC, earlier points allocations would probably have kept the championship alive longer.

    That is the challenge for you statisticians out there, I await your response and hope you enjoy the exercise.

    1. @hohum mmm you may be on to something here, and on that subject I also propose some tweaks to the DRS:
      It should only be activated when the car behind is actually behind, when both cars are side by side then the telemetry could deactivate it and both drivers can fight for position, also why 1 second for the detection? why not 0.8, 0.6?

    2. Ok, will bite. If you use the original proposal for points when the rules were changed in 2010: (25-20-15-10-8-6-5-3-2-1), then there is unsurprisingly almost no change. Title still wrapped up in India, and final points total for this year (Vettel to Alonso) is 395 vs 238, compared to 397 vs 242.

      If you use 2009 points system, then the title is still wrapped up in India, final points 160 to 100 (with 10 points for a win), still 6 wins difference ultimately.

      If you use the fota proposal from 09 (https://www.racefans.net/2009/03/05/what-will-be-in-fota's-‘future-of-f1’-announcement-today/)
      then it is exactly the same. Title in India, 189 vs 111 (12 points for a win), 6 wins difference.

      In fact, I can’t find a points system used in F1 to date (https://www.racefans.net/2009/12/22/think-the-new-f1-points-system-is-weird-weve-seen-much-stranger-than-that/)
      that doesn’t result in the title being won by Vettel in India, with the exception of the 1991 points system, where Vettel would have won a race earlier in Japan. Note that for the earlier systems, I didn’t take the best x number of results or points for fastest laps, as was done in the 50s.

      Big difference between first and second might have made a difference in other years (haven’t checked), but this year it made no difference, they were too dominant.

      1. You must take in account that it only happens rarely a driver wins 10+ races in a season. Therefore in a much more normal season, let’s say 2012, it would maybe change something.

      2. I thank you for your hard work @toro-steve, I thought the 28% winners loading might have compacted things, but as you say there’s no stopping Vettel.

    3. I race in several leagues online on several games. Most use the F1 rulebook except for one rule, the points. As our seasons aren’t 20 races but always between 10 and 13 we use two different points formats. One is that of the MotoGP, which keeps the tension in the championship for sure. Only 5 points for the winnner more compared to the second placed man. Another points format we use is the next, giving 16 points to the winner and 12 to second and 10 to third.

      (MotoGP points: 25 20 16 13 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1)
      (League points: 16 12 10 8 6 5 4 3 2 1)

      I think there are several better formats than this one, to mention one, the format they come from.

  14. Dear Luca di Montezemolo

    You seem to not understand the trends. F1 was popular quite a while ago when young people wanted to own convertible sports cars and the dream was to own a supercar. Those cars had a kind of F1 feel. In the 90’s rally became popular and the trend was to own a Celica or a Subaru WRX with a touch of Lancer. Now the trend is hot hatchbacks. Cars that can be heavily modified to go as quick as a supercar and cost less than a tenth of the price of a Ferrari. Blame Fast and the Furious and R&B for that one. While F1 is trying to push into a “Road Relevant” direction it is the supercars that get that technology not cheap modifiable cars. If you want new young Ferrari fans then build a cheap hot hatch with a big sound system.

    F1 is a complex sport by nature as it should be. The focus should be aimed at getting the young technically minded people with an interest with engineering to follow. The ones who would one day be designing the cars. So having some design contests for those kinds of people would bring in quite a few.

    But if you really want to get everyday young person then do the following. Have Lewis Hamilton’s stylist change the all the drivers to look like Lewis. Get all the drivers to go out with American pop stars. Get all the drivers to release R&B on itunes. Give the drivers modified hatchbacks and make them take part in illegal street racing. When it comes to racing. Long lasting tires and no pitstops that way there is never a question of what position a driver is in. Make the winner score 100 points and scale it back. Give points for everything. More scantily dressed women around the pits. Sit back and watch a lot of dedicated fans find a new sport to follow.

    1. yappy, your Honda V-tec R would not be pulling 9000 rpm if Honda had not been racing MotoGP and F1.

      1. @hohum Took me awhile to work out your response. Active suspension, DRS, launch control. We could give lots of examples going one way or the other. Kind of irrelevant when I was posting about marketing trends rather than “How similar is my car to an F1 car”

      2. @hohum

        I did not mean to sound so harsh. My point is that F1 bigwigs should spend more thought into how to keep the existing fans like us who get up at odd hours on the morning to watch races and visit websites out of season. Instead of coming up with sideshow rules to attract people who aren’t that interested. F1 is an engineering sport, sell it to those kinds of people.

        1. S’ ok. were actually on the same page, sort of.

    2. Not sure that you nailed it. I have next to no idea of what young car enthusiasts are after, I have never been one (I got to F1 through aviation and paper modelling), so I am not going to argue your observation, but I have a feeling that it is just secondary to the main problem: I did notice that while most of my classmates were talking cars and wanted to sit behind the wheel, my daughter’s classmates are talking games, graphic cards and processor clocks and want to sit in front of a monitor. This trend changed a lot, not just interest in F1. There is overall less interest in knowing how things work, in putting things together, and consequently less interest in engineering (other than CE). In my country, boys magazines that previously catered to boys interested in nature and technology and “do-it-yourself” projects like paper-and-glue models either went bust or changed into “lifestyle” magazines with large chunks devoted to game and movie reviews.
      To reach this new generation, a completely new approach should be adopted, one that starts with rich web contents – exactly the opposite to what FIA is doing with its strict licensing policy.

      1. @ph, maybe what F1 needs are drivers that date pop stars and record vocal tracks !

  15. Mine you, usually I’m more of the 80s pop music and very different genres, I liked the song. I doubt it cost him any more prep time than going to a exhibition of his own career, getting back surgery or doing a triathlon.

    That being said, he needs to work on his lyrics. Not like I’d share the first lyrics I ever wrote, so props to that.

    1. Bloody hell, I should proofread my entire posts, not skip the first lines…

    2. @npf1 As I understand, the song is not his, as is the case for most ‘marquee’ non-rock musicians.

  16. Lewis being a pop artist just solidified my dislike for him.

    He is the most uncool guy on the grid. Maybe even in the whole of F1. Ever.

    1. Yeah. I don’t dislike him, I don’t dislike any of the drivers as I havent met one of them, but Lewis is going in the exact opposite direction he thinks he’s going in.

      He wants to be ”cool” and at the moment, everyone thinks he’s so far from cool he’s got a bungalow in Mt Etna.

      1. @ukphillie

        In Mount Etna? Wow, he has got a load of money, so you hike up the mountain, jump over the wall, dodge the lasers, mind the guards, get to the secret passageway, input the code, scramble down the tunnel, jump over the pools of molten magma and then arrive at the house. Even then you have to have a face check to see if you are not Adrian Sutil.

        1. Are you Nic Hamilton?

    2. Since it’s not him (he’s confirmed he doesn’t even know the artist), you fail with the best of them.

    3. It wasn’t Lewis. How do you feel about him now?

  17. Todays update possesses an interesting juxtaposition of what drivers do in their off time; Lewis Hamilton indulging his love of R&B whilst Valtteri Bottas is driving a computer simulated car.
    Whilst I am sure Lewis’ fame and fortune played some role in his ability to appear on this artists’ single (which, I have no doubt is not to my personal musical preference) l think it is a positive thing that he has a ‘life’ outside Formula One, even if his hobby/interests do seem remarkably self indulgent at times.
    Then we have a TwitPic of Valtteri Bottas doing ‘more of the same’. Is he a boring little tic or just extremely dedicated? The truth is probably a bit of both – not that that’s a bad thing. In motorsport I always hope/like to believe that the combatants are fully dedicated because they may indeed end up paying the ultimate price, as that doco featured in the Reuters article will testify to.
    (Did anyone spot the Monty Python ref?)

  18. I don’t understand what the COTD is trying to say. How can anyone compare 1988 with 2013? in 2013 Senna and Prost fought tooth in nail for the title in equal machinery 8 wins Vs 7 which also happened to be one of the best cars in human history. There’s really no comparison whatsoever. A valid comparison would be 1992. Everyone still remembers it as one of the dullest seasons ever, despite(again everyone’s) admiration of the Williams car

    So, without a doubt even in 2035 we will remember how awful the 2013 season was, and we will also remember the RB9 as a super great car and SV as a great driver of that car. But nobody will ever forget the dullness of this season, sorry to disappoint you @ardenflo

    1. Basically what I’m saying. For any non-McLaren fan, knowing the MP4 would swipe the victory away as easy as it is looked for SV to take those 9 in a row 1988 might have been an even duller season. Now we speak of legends like Prost and Senna because of those cars.

      1. ‘1988 might have been an even duller season’

        But it wasn’t. It was, imho, exactly as F1 should be. Even if a team dominates, there should always be two gladiators on the team free to compete against each other. So while you pretty much got to expect a Mac to win, you didn’t know which one, so even with a dominant team you weren’t robbed of real racing in the pinnacle of racing. The polar opposite being MS/Ferrari where a decision was made in the boardroom to have MS’s teammates contracted to not compete and the result was a true snorefest and the viewing audience was robbed.

        For whatever reason, SV/MW/RBR just didn’t carry the same feel with MW either not being WDC material in the end, or the car just never suiting him quite as well either by design or by accident, but in the end SV was not really pressured by him, during an era of fake DRS passing, and delta time running, which I blame just as much for a dull 2013 as SV having no real competition.

      2. @ardenflo So you think that had this been a fantastic fight between Webber and Vettel for the championship in a RB9 other teams fans would still find it boring? Cannot agree with that view, since there’s no separation here between the “oh my team isn’t winning” and the “oh the racing is rubbish” views. The worst seasons are those who share both and 2013 falls into that category, and it’s so happened that because two of the greatest drivers ever were team-mates then 1988 doesn’t. Only Vettel fans could’ve enjoyed 2013, for purely partisan reasons.

    2. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      28th December 2013, 14:24

      @montreal95 well, it’s not Sebastian’s fault to beat Mark during all the seasons they were teammates. It’s impossible to ask a driver to be “worse” (except in Austria 2002 and Germany 2010), and it would be delusional to ask Mark to level-up his game, so it wasn’t Mark’s fault either. Maybe it’s RB fault who could have hired the second best driver available (Kimi? Romaiin?, we know Alonso is tied to Ferrari) but decided not to because they are WCC year after year with the SV / MW line-up?

      1. @omarr-pepper Absolutely no blaming Seb for that. But that wasn’t the problem with COTD I was disputing. If I wasn’t clear enough I’m sorry. I was disputing the notion that you can compare 2013 with 1988. You can totally compare it to 1992. 1988, no way! Webber most definitely wasn’t Vettel’s Prost. I am a huge fan of MW but he was never on that level. 1988 is a bad example because of the unique situation when two drivers who are in almost everyone’s list of “greatest ever” ended up as team-mates.

  19. So what if Lewis is deciding to become a popstar? I don’t give a monkey what he does off the track as long as he drives well on it.

    He can do what he likes. I’d rather him do that rather than risk his limbs doing rallying over the winter.

    1. Nobody cares what he does off-track. It is the fact that he let’s himself being influenced the most easyily and it shows in his racing.

      1. @ardenflo

        It is the fact that he let’s himself being influenced the most easyily and it shows in his racing.

        Presumptuous fact of the day goes to…

        In my mind, Hamilton had a great season, and drove very well for most of it. New team, developed for different drivers, and beat his teammate. If this was 2011 I would completely agree with you, but the last two seasons he has been on form, especially 2012 where the WDC was there for the taking but reliability issues cost him. I don’t think fans realise you can drive well without winning every race or making a tonne of overtakes.

        1. I know but I also mean this in a positive way. If everything off-track is going well, he drives better too.

        2. OmarR-Pepper (@)
          28th December 2013, 14:34

          In my mind, Hamilton had a great season,

          @timi in your mind maybe… he ended up 4th (thanks to Kimi’s surgery), so here it’s him year after year:
          2007: 2nd (really promising)
          2008: Champion (the youngest ever champion, he’ll be a multiple WDC and a legend)
          2009: 5th (maybe a bad year, he will bounce back)
          2010: 4th (you see? he started to recover)
          2011: 5th (Oh no, this is worrying)
          2012: 4th (and the 2nd WDC?)
          2013: “5th” (it has become a pattern)
          I really don’t understand why people keep considering Lewis on the same level of Vettel and Alonso, when clearly he hasn’t, I’m not saying he´s bad, he’s really good, but not superb anymore.

          1. @omarr-pepper Maybe “great” was an exaggeration, but you can’t say it wasn’t a good season. Having driven at one team his whole F1 career, made a move to a new team, got however many poles, and a win in his first season there. As well as beating his team mate who has been at the team for years.. I don’t get how you can look at that and say it isn’t good lol, that makes no sense at all.

            My comment wasn’t a view of his career as a whole though, it was of this/last season (always confuses me how to refer to the latest season). But just taking a season’s results is naiive. I’ll do what you did, but with actual evaluation and not just the result, starting 2009.

            09: Mclaren produced an awful car, not worthy of competing for wins until mid season. Brawn miles ahead, same with RBR 2nd half season.
            10: Refuelling banned, RBR had pole every race bar 2. If you look at the results that season, hamilton was very consistent. note: he came 4th yes, but there were 12 points between 2nd and 4th. [Oh no, horrible pattern forming right? lol].
            11: He lost his head haha. Not much more to add,- very bad season.
            12: Could have won the WDC,- retired from the lead 3 times.. blah blah, drove a v solid season.
            13: 4th, Mercedes lost a lot of ground in the second half of the season. But as I said beat his team mate in the first season at new team. Can’t complain.

            And you’re just putting words in my mouth, I didn’t even compare him to Seb or Alonso! And I never said he was superb, you might have read someone else’s comment there buddy…

          2. It’s fair to say he is not quite on the level of Vettel, Alonso and Raikkonen just yet, but showed signs of being there in 2007 and for a few years after that.. perhaps he just needs things to come together. Along with Hulk (hard to say if he is better or worse, as his car is slower, but many place him 4th best this year and Lewis 5th, Rosberg 6th, Grosjean 7th and Button 8th) – so when Kimi, Button, Alonso and Massa retire, we’ll be into a battle between Vettel, Lewis, Hulk, Grosjean, the best upcoming drivers etc.

            Lewis will still have a few years to be in that select top 3, but lets hope he hasn’t peaked already. He is starting to lose consistency as he gets older (which puts the elite drivers in that top 3).

  20. Regarding the documentary 1: I reckoned it would be a documentary that focuses mainly on the fatalities. And unfortunately my fear has come true. I am sick and tired of media looking back at the 1960s and 1970s and only picking out the fatalities. Of course there were a lot of drivers who died and of course this has to be acknowledged (which has been done excessively), but that period has so much more to offer than just that.

    The thing that strikes me most about the 1960s are the heroic stories, made possible by a much simpler formula. Clark’s recovery from a lap down to almost win the 1967 Italian GP, Rindt winning the 1970 Monaco GP by overtaking Brabham in the final corner, Stewart with a V8 battling against the big V12 engines to finish second in the 1970 Italian GP.. I could go on for quite some time.

    But the thing I like most about that period of time is the bond between drivers and their families: why isn’t there a documentary that depicts these friendships?

    I’ll tell you why: because these documentary makers don’t give a monkey’s toss about the true meaning of F1 anno 1960, 1970. The shots of Purley trying to rescue Williamson are what makes people watch the documentary, so that’s what they’ll get. Why can’t there be someone with a genuine love of classic F1 that can paint the true picture of F1 back then?

    1. @andae23 Amen. I love the pictures of the GPDA meetings from those days; friends hanging out. Nowadays, they hardly even interact on the podium..

      I guess tragedy sells more than camaraderie. I’d love to see someone like Joe Saward or Peter Windsor tackle a documentary on F1 in the 60s and 70s. Of course death will be an element, as you can’t talk to Jackie Stewart about Cevert without talking about the tragedy of his death; but I’m more interested in people like Ickx, Brabham, Hill, Stewart, Fittipaldi and F1 was like, than another shot of a burning wreck or the same talk about ‘the circuits were not as safe as they are now’.

  21. Wow, Nicole really did a number on Lewis! Now what?? Lewis out to form his own boy-band?? I am a bit disapointed in Lewis, it seems he has too many things on his mind. This might definitely be the reason for his inconsistency. He needs to prioritize!

    On another note… One would think that with the money Bottas has, he could at least get the f1 steering wheel from thrustmaster! geeeez…

    1. “Lewis out to form his own boy-band?? I am a bit disapointed in Lewis, it seems he has too many things on his mind.”

      Lol, what a load of horse ****.

      You think F1 drivers have to think about driving at every moment of the day, even in the off-season? They are normal people with normal hobbies. All drivers have hobbies, its just the media don’t care about the other drivers hobbies and therefore you don’t hear about them.

      Stop being a **** and let Lewis live his life, he knows how to go fast in a race car without it having to consume his day from the moment he opens his eyes to the moment he sleeps.

      1. Well Vettel seems to live and breathe F1 off track and keeps his distractions to a minimum.

        So….It would appear that not only are you rude and aggressive, you are also wrong.

        1. Paul Ogbeiwi (@)
          28th December 2013, 17:01

          LOL any proof perhaps? You have a handle on his day to day activities/hobbies?

        2. Again, what a load of horse ****.

          You know Vettel has a girlfriend right? you think they don’t have a normal relationship where they go places? You think Vettel sits on his own 24 hours a day thinking about what rear third spring setting he needs? lol, you are proper delusional.

          And I think if you actually do a bit of reading, you’ll see Vettel has plenty of hobbies outside of racing that keeps him occupied. As has every driver in history.

    2. Paul Ogbeiwi (@)
      28th December 2013, 17:00

      I’m also dissapointed in Alonso for opening his own exhibition.

      1. The charity where the ticket money goes is not.

        1. Paul Ogbeiwi (@)
          28th December 2013, 17:13

          Oh, so its not a sign of Alonso lacking focus? When Hamilton thought about the same sometime ago that was his judgement!

    3. G27 is alright, I have a G25. Not sure if others are better (e.g. Thrusty). The real question is, what sim/game was he driving!

  22. “[Hamilton] is featured singing lyrics such as ‘Why don’t you give love another try?’ ‘Baby, you should let me be the one’, and ‘I ‘aint nothing like those other guys.

    Rumour has it that Rosberg plans to respond with “Hit me Lewis one more time”.

    1. Lol so you are suggesting LH was singing those lines to NR (aka Britney)?

      ‘Why don’t you give love another try, Nico, and stay behind again when ordered.’

      ‘Baby, you should let me be the number one.’

      ‘I ain’t nothing like those other guys, so don’t drop the soap.’

  23. I remember when everyone hated Senna. Those old enough to have watched him can deny it all they like, but Senna was thought of exactly the same as Vettel when he was in his prime.

    It winds me up when my fellow Brits or Europeans go on about how great Senna was, even though they were the one’s booing him and ripping on him ‘cos he destroyed their hero Mansell for the best part of a decade.
    Now they all love him, obsessed even, Senna is the Godwins Law of F1, any argument ends with ”Well Senna did this, Senna did that”

    Well….I loved him in 1990 and I love him now, not a bandwagon jumper like 90% of the rest of you.

    Same with Vettel, you’ll all jump on the bandwagon in 20 years and say how great he was and how it was one of the best era’s of F1 blah blah.

    The RB9 and the MP4-4 are both classic, dominant cars that should go down in history. And Vettel is one of the greatest drivers in history.

    I’ve just finished building the bandwagon….You can all jump on in 2030.

    1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      28th December 2013, 14:44

      @ukphillie here in Latin America, and for sure in Japan, people worshiped Senna. but thanks for the update, I didn’t know Senna was hated in Europe back in the 90s.
      And I would be proud in 2030 to say I was Vettel’s fan before he got his first Red Bull car. It all started with his great performances in 2008, the year when I was disssapointed of Kimi. How great was Italy and Brazil for Seb that year!

      1. I have actually only became a Vettel fan this year, the only thing stopping me from cheering him on every race is my love for McLaren. Vettel at McLaren is my biggest dream.

        Yeah in UK Senna was vilified almost every race. He was treat a lot worse than Vettel is now in fact. I can’t say for sure the rest of Europe had the same attitude but the French and Germans couldn’t have been massive fans with Prost and later Schumacher going up against him.

        It just shows how time changes views. Vettel will be talked about in the same breath as Senna, Prost, Fangio, Clark….one day. I guarantee it.

        1. For me, if we were to take SV’s career so far, the only context for putting him with Senna, Prost, Fangio, and Clark, would be in numbers, but certainly not in terms of race craft. And that’s an unfortunate side-effect of today’s F1 that is shamefully being forgotten. Race craft is being replaced with guaranteed DRS passing, and lottery tires that hopefully will at least be less lottery like for 2014.

          Without the massive danger Fangio and Clark faced, and the massive competition physically and mentally on and off the track that Senna and Prost faced, SV’s experience has been tame, and that is said without trying to take away his 4 WDC’s. It’s just an inevitable fact.

        2. What a load of rubbish…

          1. @Baron

            Yeah, erm…..No.

            As I said, deny it all you like, that’s how it was?

            In denial or too young to remember? Either way you’re argument really was a thought provoker…Oh wait, no…It was a load of rubbish :)

          2. Senna wasn’t particularly ‘vilified’ until he and Prost decided to completely ignore everyone else decide two world championships their way. Senna was a sore loser and bad sportsman; Prost was an equally poor loser but both men had undeniable talent behind the wheel of an F1 car. Todays’ pilots are far better team players and all round sportsmen than those two ever were. As good in the driving dept? Not hardly.

    2. Nope. For me…loved Senna…and for now I will never consider SV as being able to stand in his shadow. Greatness is simply not something that can be achieved while being a passenger monitoring tire conditions and being told over the radio when you can compete, and don’t even get me started on DRS passes and how they shape a race even for passes that are not done using DRS.

      If F1 continues their trends of late, there won’t be an entity called F1 before long, and so the only way people will look back at 2013 with admiration is that ‘at least back then they had F1, dumbed down as it was.’

      1. Yes but you don’t get DRS in P1…………

      2. doesn’t say much for Alonso either… even less successful than Vettel.

        1. You mean taking two championships from the most successful driver in the history of F1, going up against Schumacher, Villeuneve, Raikkonen and Montoya? And doing that back in the days of tyre war and no DRS?

          1. @breno – And Vettel in only 3 pre-DRS years already became champion, fighting against a strong teammate and 3 WDCs, Alonso, Hamilton and Button. In the other 2 years he already became the youngest race winner for STR and championship runner-up. And a “tyre war” isn’t a criteria to be boasting about, in comparison to the identical Bridgestones of ’07-10.

  24. will 2038 be a season dominated by someone?
    2013- sebastian vettel 13/19 wins
    1988- mclaren 15/16 wins
    1963- jim clark 7/10 wins

    ALL 25 apart…..

  25. Um considering the fact they’ve now taken the song offline, gone after the youtube videos and deleted the dailyhatemail article, I’m going to have to presume that was a Demo or not something that was intended for release. It doesn’t sound like its been through final mastering to polish it off yet, the Auto-Tune is so obvious it’s on the verge of being used as an effect in its own right! It actually has the potential to be a good R&B song, generic tripe that I personally can’t stand but decent for what it is. Though one entire verse of Lew’s falsetto was pretty painful!!!

  26. It’s all a hoax, Lewis just posted this on his twitter
    “Hey all. Have just heard that someone has put a song out saying it’s me..LMAO I’ve never met this girl Ana nor heard of her. #***”

  27. According to Lewis’ Twitter account that’s not him singing, nor has he heard of the girl who he’s supposedly dueting with…

    1. Even the page in the daily fail is gone. All those posts critical of Lewis because of a story in one of the worse papers in the world.

      1. Not to mention on this site.

        Hopefully this article is removed.

  28. given that none of this is TRUE w/r/t Hamilton, why doesn’t @keithcollatine CORRECT THE HEADLINE? If the Guardian can make a correction when it reports totally bogus information as fact, then why can’t this site????

  29. he should stick to racing

  30. As for the pop song story, the biggest tell that it is fake is that Hamilton, who has never stayed his thumbs from a self-promoting tweet, was not hyping the song for weeks in the internet.

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