LEWIS HAMILTON : NOT THE GREATEST BY MILES.

Lewis Hamilton is obviously a good driver but is he really up there with the 'greatest' ?

Hamilton drives in an era obsessed with safety and at a time when technological advances have made racing cars completely different to those of past days. When Fangio and Moss, Brabham, Clark and Stewart were racing, they truly had to drive their cars; today, the driver has so much information and technological assistance that to even try to begin to compare modern drivers with those of 30, 40 or 50 years ago is a pointless exercise.

In terms of outright bravery, those of the 1950s and 1960s will always be superior; many died and others were severely injured while driving vehicles at breakneck speeds around dangerous circuits. Today, even crashing at 200 miles per hour is likely to result in little more than a few bruises; years ago, it would have meant certain, and often horrible, injuries and death, and yet the drivers still pushed their cars to the absolute limit and beyond.

For any sportsman to be considered 'great' they also have to pass one simple test, that of being magnanimous in defeat. On this measure, Hamilton fails miserably. When he wins, it's all smiles and great joy, but when he loses it's recriminations and sullenness. He looks for someone to blame or some conspiracy against him. Last year it was all about the desire of his German team to help his German team mate, Nico Rosberg; yesterday we heard him suggesting that Sebastian Vettel had deliberately crashed into him, a ludicrous notion as Vettel's only hope of winning the championship for himself was to win the race.

Hamilton is a fast driver but the silly suggestions that he's a great, even 'the greatest' are simply not supported by the facts. He's actually a classic example of a spoilt child who found success at too young an age and now sees it as his right, throwing tantrums whenever he doesn't get his way. One wonders what he'll do next year if Ferrari, Red Bull and even McLaren start beating him regularly. My bet is that he'd chuck his toys out of the pram, quit the sport altogether and go off in pursuit of some other arena in which he can be the centre of attention with no one to challenge him.

Sad.

LEWIS HAMILTON SHOULD BE SACKED.

One again, I find myself writing about Lewis Hamilton.

In yesterday's F1 season finale, Hamilton's only chance of winning the drivers' world championship was to win the race and hope that his team mate, Nico Rosberg, finished 4th or lower. Given the season-long supremacy of the Mercedes team, this was an unlikely scenario barring accidents, incidents or breakdowns. However, Hamilton has never been one not to look for alternatives.

Leading the race and with Rosberg not far behind, Hamilton began to play a dirty game which could even have handed race victory to Sebastian Vettel's fast approaching Ferrari. Instead of continuing to drive at his previous race-winning speed, Hamilton slowed down, knowing that Rosberg was hardly likely to try to overtake him and, even if he did, Hamilton's equally matched car would make it impossible. The consequence was that Vettel closed in and Max Verstappen, on worn tyres, wasn't far behind either; despite repeated and very clear instructions from his team's management, Hamilton refused to drive any faster in the hope that Rosberg would be overtaken and drop down to fourth place.

Hamilton's objective was clearly to win the world championship for himself though his lack of sportsmanship is plain for all to see; he did everything he could to place his team mate's second place in jeopardy. This negative tactic was distasteful to say the least and is certainly not something that drivers of earlier generations would have contemplated; the likes of Stirling Moss, Fangio, Brabham, Jim Clark and others, would surely have concentrated on their own race performance rather than trying to mess up anyone else's race. Sadly, today's generation do not seem to share the same values as those gladiators of the past.

Thankfully, Hamilton's behaviour did not achieve its desired result and Rosberg did finish second to claim the drivers' title. The atmosphere after the race was icy with Rosberg and Hamilton not speaking; Hamilton's subsequent congratulations to his team mate were uttered through gritted teeth and the play acting between them was painful to see. Rosberg clearly doesn't like Hamilton and Hamilton clearly hates and despises Rosberg.

Hamilton is simply not a team player. He is the Geoffrey Boycott of Formula 1, playing for himself and giving no thought to team mates and the hordes of others who have made his team's success possible. He is selfish and childish in his behaviour; he is like a spoilt child who screams and stamps his foot when things don't go his way and refuses to do what he's told whenever it doesn't suit him. His refusal to follow team orders in Abu Dhabi has caused a degree of unhappiness in his Mercedes team, with Toto Wolff, the team boss, saying that Hamilton's insubordination amounted to 'anarchy'. Clearly, there will be consequences though one has to wonder if Hamilton really cares. It's most unlikely that he'll be sacked or even suspended; a fine would be pretty meaningless given the wealth he's accumulated over recent years. What else is there ?

Formula I racing is a team sport and those who don't want to play it like that don't belong; I'd sack Hamilton and say good riddance. He may be a good driver, almost certainly one of the very best, but his divisiveness is there for all to see. It cannot be good for team morale or performance and they'd be much better off without him.

TIGER WOODS IS A LUCKY MAN.

In the past, sport was something enjoyed by young men, and rarely by young women, of means; it was an amateur pastime and was played for enojoyment and prestige.

 

Today is very different. Most sports have been 'professionalised' and are now played with money in mind. The way in which they are played, the rules and the the prizes are all determined by financial considerations. Consequently some sports, though certainly not all, have been corrupted and are no longer played in a sportsmanlike manner; cheating has become a normal part of the 'game' in some instances. The prime example has to be football in which the rules seem to be ignored most of the time, particularly those relating to the direct interactions between players. Cricket, too, is no longer played in the gentlemanly manner that it was in my youth and players will happily get away with anything they can.

 

Today, we've seen two instances of rule breaches in different sports which seem to have been treated very differently. In the Formula 1 Grand Prix qualifying round in China, the Red Bull driver Mark Webber, recognized as being one of the top drivers around, ran out of fuel; as the adjudicators monitor the fuel to ensure it is within prescribed standards, Webber failed to provide a sample and suffered the full penalty for his offence. He will start from last place in the race tomorrow. In the 'Masters' golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, Tiger Woods not only played a shot from an incorrect position but also returned an incorrect score; both of these are offences, the first having a standard penalty of 2 shots and the second of mandatory disqualification. At the discretion of the stewards, only the first has been applied, though the full story may not yet have been told.

 

In Formula 1, the stewards chose to be very hard on Webber, a man for whom little seems to go right; the rules are the rules. In Golf, a sport in which adherence to the rules is usually paramount, the stewards have chosen to be somewhat picky about which rules to follow. In fact, as more details are revealed, it seems that they may even have done their damnest to avoid doing anything in support of 'their man'. Woods clearly played from the wrong place and yet the rules official on the course said nothing; Woods reportedly told officials in the scoring hut what he had done and they did nothing. It was not until he told the press and public that the officials took any notice. Now they have done as little as they can; a 2 shot penalty but no disqualification.

 

There can be no doubt that what Woods did was wrong but it seems that he actually did all that he reasonably could have done to ensure that the officials knew exactly what had happened; it appears that he is not to blame for this debacle. Nonetheless, and I acknowledge that I do not like the man one little bit, he should have sought proper advice on the course and should have been disqualified for returning an inaccurate card. That he is happily playing the third round as I write tells me that the officials in Augusta have bowed to the financial and nationalistic pressures on them by allowing Woods to continue, albeit with a stroke penalty.

 

I had thought that golf was one of sports that was immune to corruption but now I begin to wonder. When money and, in the particular case of the USA, national pride are considered of over-riding importance, how can we be sure that adjudications on the application of the rules will be fair and just ? The simple answer is that we cannot.