The history of F1 is an epic narrative of heroism and technical ingenuity, interwoven with tragedy, politics and greed. Emasculated by the nanny-state culture and top-down regulation of the modern world, the spectre of death no longer hangs over the sport, but it has developed into the most competitive technological arms-race on the planet. In fact, F1 is the most sophisticated, multi-dimensional cultural activity on the surface of the Earth; no other activity features the intense combination of sport, technology, politics, and business which defines F1. Teams with annual budgets of $500,000,000, employ wind-tunnels which operate 24/7, and supercomputers which perform 10,000,000,000,000 floating-point operations per second, to equip their drivers with the means to maximally extend their biological bipedal locomotive capabilities. Years of practice honing kinaesthetic sensitivities, sensory feedback loops, reaction speeds, spatial pattern recognition, racecraft, and mind management skills, will culminate tomorrow when Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa compete to achieve their respective lifetime ambitions. 
It's just as well that the stewards of the Belgian Grand Prix stripped Lewis Hamilton of victory in that race, otherwise we wouldn't now be on the verge of another revenue-generating, mass television-audience finale to the F1 World Championship. Would we Bernie?
Lewis Hamilton Bernie Ecclestone
Surely even Bernie couldn't have scripted the last five minutes though, could he. Could he?
ReplyDeleteNever underestimate Bernie.
ReplyDeleteAm I right in saying that this is the first time that the championship has been won by a change-of-position at the last corner of the last lap of the last race?
If it's happened before, I certainly can't remember when.
ReplyDelete