LEWIS HAMILTON - WORLD CHAMPION
Well, let's face it, we'd been here before. For the 4th year in a row, the Formula 1 World championship went to the wire and for the second year in a row Lewis Hamilton was involved. Like his failiure last year, Lewis had to do the business in the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. Unlike last year though, he only had one challenger. Slight problem, that challenger was local golden boy Felippe Massa. However that didn't appear to be such a big problem as all Lewis had to do was finish in the top 5. With half the grid out to get him! In only his second year of Formula 1 Lewis was set to make some pretty serious history. He couldn't blow it again, could he?
Well Jenson had another bad day in qualifying, being forced to start P17. DC didn't do too badly in Q1 and survived but was never really in the mixer in Q2, the Scot forced to start the last race of his career in P14 and hoping for his luck to change during the race. Glock set the first Q3 time only to get hammered by Vettel and then the big guns came to the party. Massa went fastest and despite a late charge from Lewis held on to take his sixth pole of the season. Lewis however started P4 and that was satisfactory. If he stayed in 4th till the end of the race, mission accomplished. My only concern at that point was a certain Spanish moron in P6 possibly wanting to take him off.
In the race itself, well DC's race didn't last very long. He tangled with the two Williams at the first corner, game over. So all I can say now is, David Coulthard, it's been an honour. He made his debut for Williams in the Spanish Grand Prix of '94, replacing the late great Ayrton Senna after Williams worked out that running Damon Hill solo wasn't the greatest idea of all time. I was living in Scotland at the time so having not heard of the likes of Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart the idea of a Scottish F1 driver was interesting. Well DC didn't even finish in Spain '94 but was running in the points for a while, reached the podium by the end of his rookie year and won his first Grand Prix for Williams before leaving then at the end of '95.
He joined McLaren in '96 and thus started a messy partnership with Mika Hakkinen. After a relatively uneventful '96 season, DC wound up inheriting the mantle of British number in in '97 with Damon Hill on the fade. In an alternate reality DC is a double world champion rather than Hakkinen. In this reality, DC made the biggest mistake of his career in the Australian Grand Prix of '98 by honouring a pre-race bet he made with Hakkinen, gifting him a win and the Finn never looked back after that. David did go on to finish 2nd in the '01 world championship with Hakkinen on his way out and never bowed down to Michael Schumacher but if you'd have told me back in '95 that David Coulthard would reture without winning a world title then I wouldn't have believed you. His time at Red Bull turned out to be his own way of fading away. The greatest Brit since Stirling Moss not to have won the title? Sounds about right.
Back to the present day and Jenson survived the startline madness that resulted from a brief, freak shower minutes before the start and found himself in 14th before pitting for dry tryres. He managed to make his way back up the tail end of the grid only to pit again once for a regular fuel stop and once right at the end of the race for wet tyres at the rain came down yet again! His teammate Barrichello needing an extra stoop allowed him to slot into 13th place, I suppose it could have been worse. Another year that Jenson will want to forget though and Honda haven't even confirmed he'll have a drive for next season yet. The '09 car is meant to be one heck of a lot better than '08 though - I certainly hope so.
Lewis it seemed, was only driving for what he needed, fifth place. He remained solid in 4th for the early stages but a pit stop for dry tyres took him out of the picture before he made his way back up the field, squeezing past Fisichella of all people to retake 5th place. Job done, he cruised through the rest of the race in 5th...untill he had to pit for extreme wets and a dodgy pitstop left him down in 6th with only a few laps to go! The aim was to get past Vettel but he never looked anywhere near overtaking him! How the hell could he lose the championship like this? And then, two corners from the end, Glock, who'd stayed on dry tyres suddenly found himself unable to do anything, Lewis made it past him, took 5th place and the world witnessed a World championship being won in the most unreal way possible.
Not that that was much consolation to Massa. Credit where credit's due, the local boy had done the business in the race itself. Led from pole, was never in any danger and when he took the chequred flag, he was on course to take the world championship. Cue Brazilian party. Which continued even as Lewis crossed the line in 5th, it took a couple of minutes for the locals to realise that their guy had come up short. One seriously gutted Massa claimed his sixh win of the season but it'll surely go down as the most anti-climatic win of his career. Alonso went on to picked up second, Raikonen completed the podium ceremony in 3rd with Vettel grabbing 4th
So, what can I say? With 98 points Lewis Hamilton wins the 2008 world championship by one point. Tight, but he has actually done it! For starters, if you had told me back in '96 that the next British world champion would be someone who was just a kid in karts at the time, I wouldn't have believed you. I wouldn't have believed it would be over a decade till our next world champion. F1 journos were certainly claiming that this guy would be the 2008 World champion back in '06, when he was just in GP2. Did I believe them at the time? Did I hell? Somehow, he has done it though. All hail, the first Brit to have won the world title in only his second season. And all hail the youngest F1 world champion of all time.
And he has plenty of time to make more history!
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