Seriously. It doesn’t feel like a full calendar year since I sat down and wrote up my last Best/Worst of motorsport column.
It is though – I know because it’s always the last column I write before signing off for a short break in the New Year.
No mention, of course, of 2021 could be made without reference to the year before (2020) and the ‘bordering-on-classic’ 1993 film Groundhog Day.
According to Wikipedia, Groundhog Day references an old Pennsylvanian Dutch superstition whereby, if – on emerging from its burrow on Feb 02 (the so-called Groundhog Day) the Groundhog sees a shadow (i.e., if the sun is out) he will head back ‘inside’ for another six weeks, and the weather will remain cold and damp.
If, however, the weather is cold and damp – meaning no shadow from the sun – on Feb 02, the Groundhog will remain above ground and spring will come early.
In the movie (of the same name) Bill Murray plays a US TV weatherman who becomes trapped in a Groundhog Day of his own. The term Groundhog Day quickly becoming common slang for any activity which becomes monotonous and/or repetitive.
Like…..living life – as most of us have over the past two years here in NZ – under the shadow of the COVID-19 Coronavirus.
While on one level it’s actually been good for me (because as a journalist it’s my job to report ALL the news, the bad as well as the good, I don’t mind admitting that the sheer number of stories about events either cancelled outright or postponed (well) into the New Year has had a profound effect on my own mental well-being. And I’m just a messenger. I can’t imagine the effect of being forced to abandon plans for a major event, on a person who also has both a major emotional and financial commitment to just such an event.
So, that’s my #1 ‘Worst of’ moments in Kiwi Motorsport in 2021. The number of events forced to either be called off, or postponed thanks to lockdown rules. My list is far from comprehensive too, but includes Rod & Shelley Millen’s popular socially-based Leadfoot Festival, cancelled this year (2021) and again early next (2022),Targa NZ (cancelled in 2020 but this year’s event postponed until May 2022) plus the Battle of Jack’s Ridge (originally to be held again in November this year before first being postponed until Feb 05-06 2002, then finally cancelled outright (for 2021 anyway), the North Island Sprint Kart Championship titles meeting over Labour weekend (cancelled outright) plus the first continuous 24 Hours of NaZCAR event at Hampton Downs (twice postponed hs year but due to run over the Feb 19-20 weekend in 2022).
My second ‘Worst of’ for 2021 concerns the supposed pinnacle of our sport F1. The final round of the 2021 championship series had it all….if ‘it’ and ‘all’ meant turning the sport I have loved since I was a kid, into some sort of motorised equivalent of an ‘Octagon’ and a MMA bout.
Seriously, he might be wickedly quick behind the wheel of his Honda-engined Red Bull F1 car, particularly on a fresh set of Michelin slicks, but Max Verstappen is still a whiney, spoiled little wannabe who – IMHO – lacks the ‘gravitas’ of a true champion.
Fair enough, one such ‘true champion, the late, great Ayrton Senna, could also whine, moan, bitch and manipulate those around him ‘for Africa’ but he also had a maturity about him forged as he raced in the Junior formulae in the UK against the likes of Calvin Fish and Martin Brundle before his own meteoric rise from F3 to F1.
Verstappen, on the other hand, was ‘managed’ from the very beginning of his kart career – though in a recent interview his father Jos admitted to dispensing some tough love of his own after #1 son ruined his own and fellow front row starter (and briefly race leader), our own Daniel Bray’s chances of a podium in the final at the 2012 World KZ2 Cup meeting at Sarno in Italy (which you can enjoy here…)
There’s little ‘after you, Sir. No…I insist, after YOU!’ at this level in karting. In fact, Ayrton Senna said on more than one occasion that it was harder to win the world Karting title than it was the world F1 championship driver’s one.
Yet, despite his father’s admonishments (which I share with you below) I don’t see much difference between the ‘wunderkind’ of karting back in 2012 and the ‘enfant terrible’ of the current F1 grid.
I can remember other commentators royally slagging Lewis Hamilton off for what? Daring to wear his hair in corn braids and getting parts of his body inked (tattooed). And the year I was at the Aussie GP in Melbourne with the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival series squad, the local media was at it’s parochial ‘tut, tut, who farted?’ best when Hamilton ‘did a burn-out’ (chirped the tyres at best) as he left the circuit one evening.
However, right from get-go you (well, at least I do) get the distinct feeling that Hamilton actually ‘gets’ F1; that he understands implicitly the ephemeral role of a driver in it,
Both Hamilton and Verstappen had their driving careers fast-tracked for them since they first showed a hint of the talent they now have, but again, Hamilton – now 36 years of age – is at the peak of his career as both a driver and F1 ‘diplomat.’
Verstappen, on the other hand. Well, you only have to look at his stats – just a year after clashing with Kiwi Daniel Bray at Sarno in Italy at the KZ2 World CUP round, the then 15-year-old from Bree in Belgium who races on a Dutch licence, had won both the European KF2 (direct drive) and KZ (6-speed gearbox) series title as well as the 2013 World KZ1 class (6-seed gearbox) title at Varennes-sur-Allier in France.
The next year- 2014 – he was a member of the Red Bull Formula 3 single seater team, finishing third in the FIA European Formal3 championship and becoming – at just 16 years of age – the youngest ever driver to suit up and drive a pukka F1 car in a practise session for that year’s Japanese Grand Prix.
In 2015 he joined the Formula 1 paddock full time and in the seven seasons since has contested 141 races, winning 10 and/or finishing on the podium 18 times.
Not a ‘bad’ record, and there is little – in the stats anyway – to suggest that Max is – in some way – ‘unworthy’ of being the 2021 F1 World Champion.
Me? Speaking strictly personally here, I think that the 2021 World F1 Championship title should have remained with Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes-Benz for at least another year.
I do, for much the same reasons I think Daniel Bray was robbed of an opportunity to win a world title.
In Daniel’s case it was thanks to a move which, even with the benefit of hindsight was never really ‘on’ and was always going to end in tears – Max’s.
In Hamilton’s case it was more a combination of things; in particular, the way the Brit and his Mercedes-Benz team rallied behind ‘their man’ late in the season when the momentum had pendulum back in favour of Verstappen and Red Bull.
Hamilton was truly sublime in Brazil and – need I remind you – had the final race and a record-setting eighth championship title very much ’in the bag’ at Abu Dhabi until hapless Wiliams driver Nicholas Latifi clattered into the unforgiving concrete barriers with just five laps to go.
The resultant Safety Car period negated any advantage Hamilton might have thought have had over Verstappen, particularly once the latter had pitted for a new set of super-stickie slicks.
We all know what happened next, though, don’t we? That’s ‘right.
Nothing, zero, zilch. Until race director Michal Masa made a controversial call to stand the five or six lapped cars still circulating between Hamilton and Verstappen down, so that the pair could supposedly ‘settle their differences’ on a dramatic ‘no holds barred’ ‘winner takes all’ final lap.
Sadly, on tyres ‘well’ past their best Hamilton had absolutely zero chance of holding off a charging Verstappen on his fresh set of super stickies and when he next saw a chequered flag a minute or so later it was Verstappen, not Hamilton, who was 2021 Formula 1 World Drivers Champion…….
Interestingly enough my third ‘Worst of’ of 2021 also involved some last-minute last round shenanigans which fundamentally changed the order of things in my own little universe.
In saying that though, I feel like I covered the situation around ‘our own’ Liam Lawson’s shock loss of this years’ DTM title in Germany so comprehensively at the time that, really, I don’t think there is much more that I can add.
And if you don’t believe me? By all means check out the original article published on Tuesday October 12 this year (see: Nooooooooooooo! Lawson loses out as DTM title fight turns nasty)
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