Lewis Hamilton outburst overshadows Monaco thriller

As if the Monaco Grand Prix had not already been dramatic enough, Lewis Hamilton's controversial comments afterwards will ensure it makes even bigger headlines across the world.

The McLaren driver quoted Ali G, the original spoof character dreamt up by Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen, as he railed against the decision by race stewards to call him to explain his part in two separate incidents during Sunday's event.

Hamilton pointed out to BBC F1 pit-lane reporter Lee McKenzie that it was the fifth time in six races this year he had been called to account for his actions, and she asked him why he thought that was.

"Maybe it's because I'm black," he said, laughing. "That's what Ali G said. I dunno."

"People want to see overtaking and racing and you get done for trying to put on a show and make a move," he continued. "Fair play. If I really feel I've gone too late and hit someone, I'll put my hand up and say I've caused the incident and been the stupid one."

Hamilton described his being called to account for incidents for which he felt was blameless as "a joke", and described the rivals in question - Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Williams novice Pastor Maldonado - as "stupid".

What was he going to do about the situation? "I'll just try and keep my mouth shut," he said.

It is too late for that, though, even though McLaren went into damage-limitation mode after the race.

"Immediately after the race he was very down," team principal Martin Whitmarsh said, "and during a post-race TV interview he made a poor joke about his penalties that referenced Ali G. However, I'm pleased to say that he chose to return to the track a little while later to speak to the stewards about the joke. They accepted his explanation."

Hamilton's remarks came at the end of a weekend when nothing seemed to go right for him.

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A wrong call to do only one run in qualifying led to him starting the race from ninth place, after he made a mistake and cut a chicane on his flying lap.

Trying to make up ground in the race, a brilliant early pass on Michael Schumacher was followed by the two collisions with Massa and Maldonado.

Sir Jackie Stewart talks about the importance of ridding yourself of emotion before stepping into a grand prix car, but it looked as if Hamilton had not taken the great man's advice on Sunday.

Hamilton has made himself one of global sport's highest profile figures thanks to his inspirational driving, and cool, youthful image. And he has established himself in the four and a half years of his career as unquestionably the greatest overtaker in F1, as well as arguably its out-and-out fastest driver.

But he did not earn that reputation with performances like that in Monaco on Sunday. BBC F1 commentator Martin Brundle described his late lunge down the inside of Massa as "clumsy" and his attempt to pass Maldonado later on was similarly optimistic.

When Hamilton watches the incidents back, I suspect he might agree, as he may well regret his post-race comments when he calms down after what was admittedly an intensely frustrating weekend. It remains to be seen whether they will get him into hot water with governing body the FIA.

In the days of the former president Max Mosley, there is no question Hamilton would have been called up to answer a charge of bringing the sport into disrepute. His successor Jean Todt has taken a less antagonistic approach, but has not yet had to deal with a similar incident.

Brundle said he thought Hamilton had let frustration creep into his driving, and it certainly looked that way.

He entered Monaco expecting to fight for victory and was quick throughout practice on a circuit he adores and on which he excels, only for it all to slip agonisingly through his fingers.

That frustration will be heightened by the fact that Vettel is now in what has to be considered a virtually unassailable position in the championship.

Hamilton is well aware of how good he is. He aches to add more crowns to the one he won in 2008, and even before Monaco it was obvious that the fact this season is likely to be another barren year was already bubbling provocatively inside him.

But the sooner he realises that his quest to win the multiple titles he feels he deserves will not be helped by this sort of reaction, the better it will be for him.

While luck appeared to desert Hamilton in Monaco, the angels are truly smiling on Vettel this season. And it is not even as if he needs them.

Time after time, circumstance has intervened to make the German's path to victory easier than it should have been, and Vettel has taken full advantage.

Vettel's victory in Monaco on Sunday, his first in the principality, was his fifth in six grands prix so far this season. Only Jim Clark, Nigel Mansell, Schumacher and Jenson Button have achieved that and all of them ended the season in question as champions.

Vettel now leads the championship by 58 points - that means Hamilton, his closest pursuer, would have to take two wins and a sixth place with the Red Bull driver not scoring just to draw level.

It is the sort of margin that can be closed only by a driver in the best car. The problem is that it is Vettel himself who enjoys that luxury and, boy, is he capitalising on it.

His and Red Bull's domination is being founded on their blistering superiority in qualifying. In races, as Sunday demonstrated yet again, the Red Bull is far more vulnerable.

This time, a mix-up at Vettel's first pit stop meant he rejoined on the harder of the two tyre choices, the softs, when Red Bull had been intending to put him on the super-softs, which his closest pursuer Button chose to fit at his first stop.

The mistake made, Red Bull altered their strategy, in light of a mid-race safety car period, and decided to try to make it to the end of the race on those tyres.

That meant Vettel entered the final 30 laps of the race with tyres that were already 32 laps old and with two of F1's finest drivers closing in fast on fresher rubber.

The tyres on Fernando Alonso's Ferrari were 17 laps younger than Vettel's, Button's a full 31; and with a little less than 20 laps to go the three of them were running nose to tail.

Vettel, driving brilliantly as he has all year, had held them off relatively comfortably until a big crash involving Hamilton, Vitaly Petrov, Jaime Alguersuari and Adrian Sutil brought out the safety car again and subsequently the red flag.

The 20-minute stoppage before the race was resumed robbed millions of viewers around the world of what promised to be a spectacular climax to the race - it meant all the drivers could fit fresh tyres and Vettel survived the last eight laps of the re-started race without incident.

It will never be known whether he could have held off Alonso and Button had the race not been stopped.

But McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale told BBC pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz that by their calculations Vettel's tyres had no more than three more laps before they "dropped off the cliff", as F1 teams have taken to describing the moment the Pirellis that have done so much for the racing this year finally lose all their grip.

If Neale was right, even at Monaco Vettel would surely not have been able to hold Alonso and Button back.

Even Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted luck had shone on his team, saying the red flag was a "reprieve".

It was just the latest example of a recurring phenomenon this year. For all Vettel's searing qualifying pace, he is vulnerable in races, but events are transpiring to give him the breathing space he needs to keep winning.

Monaco followed Australia, Malaysia and Turkey this year as a race in which he might have faced a more serious challenge but didn't.

The championship may already appear to be a formality but the races themselves are making up for it with a combination of action and unpredictability that F1 has never seen before.

Next up is the Canadian Grand Prix, on one of the least favourable tracks for Red Bull, the long straights at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve favouring the extra power of McLaren's Mercedes engine and Ferrari over the Renault in the Red Bull.

Last year, Red Bull could manage only fourth and fifth in Montreal, behind Hamilton, Button and Alonso, in a race that prompted the decision to ask new supplier Pirelli to produce tyres that degraded rapidly.

The unique track surface there made the super-durable Bridgestones used last year behave like the Pirellis are doing at every race this season, and prompted the most exciting grand prix of the year.

If that happened when the racing was sometimes processional, even if the title fight was thrilling, the mind boggles at what could happen there in 2011.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/05/hamilton.html

Rob Slotemaker Moises Solana Alex SolerRoig Raymond Sommer Vincenzo Sospiri

Michael Schumacher finally finds his form

In all the excitement following Jenson Button's stunning fightback from last place to victory in the Canadian Grand Prix, one man has been overlooked.

Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher put in by far his most convincing performance since he came out of retirement at the beginning of last year, narrowly missing out on a podium position.

The German legend's race in Montreal was a far cry from some of his lacklustre showings in the last 15 months. Competitively fast and assured in his handling of rivals on the track, he looked like he belonged at the front of a grand prix. And it has been a long time since anyone could confidently say that.

Could this be the beginnings of some consistent form from Schumacher, even a sign that he may yet recover the former greatness that won him a record seven world titles and 91 victories in his first career in Formula 1?

His team principal Ross Brawn, the man who masterminded all of Schumacher's world championships, knows him better than most. He told BBC Sport in an exclusive interview that he had "always had the confidence" Schumacher would make a success of his comeback.

"I wouldn't say (it's) a breakthrough because that's too strong a word," Brawn said, "but there have always been some niggling reasons why Michael's not had the best opportunities to demonstrate what he can do.

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"He's had the odd 'mare of a race, which every racing driver does, but of course when he has one it tends to get focused on.

"But there have been lots of races where his times in the races have been pretty comparable with Nico (Rosberg, his team-mate) but they've not reflected in final results."

Brawn describes Schumacher's drive in Montreal as "some vintage Michael, particularly some of his racecraft and overtaking manoeuvres during the race". And that was indeed one of the most striking aspects of his performance.

At times during his comeback, Schumacher has looked at sea alongside his younger rivals - the most recent example being an embarrassing performance in Turkey.

But in Canada he was fair and robust - positioning his car perfectly in defence, feisty but precise and calculating in attack - and was heavily involved in the sort of strategic decisions with which he and Brawn used to make their rivals look flat-footed.

"If I had to comment," says Brawn, "I think that side of him is better than it used to be because I suppose maybe having to fight your way through or battling in the pack there is more opportunity to demonstrate those skills. But his manoeuvres at the starts of races or the occasions when he demonstrates his race-craft on the track have been quite entertaining this year."

The key call in Canada - in which Schumacher was instrumental - was being the first car to switch to intermediate tyres from full wets after the restart which followed the two-hour race stoppage. That enabled him to be second to championship leader Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull as the field prepared for the final re-start.

A podium would have been a fitting reward, but he lost out to Button and Red Bull's Mark Webber thanks partially to the DRS overtaking device arguably making passing a little too easy in Canada and his second place became a close fourth at the flag. So it is little wonder Schumacher was, as Brawn puts it, "very, very frustrated".

Brawn, though, does not see this as the watershed moment in Schumacher's comeback one might imagine it could be.

"He's a very experienced, confident guy anyway," Brawn says, "so I don't think it will make a dramatic difference to his confidence or his belief in his ability to do it.

"It's a useful boost but I don't think he's a guy who needed something to flip him from one side to another. I don't think he was in a bad position and needed a good result to put him in a good position. He's always been in a pretty good position.

"The main thing is we need to give him a better car. There was a period in the race when the car was probably as good as anyone's and he was the quickest car. If we give him the equipment, he's demonstrated he's as quick as anyone."

Ah, but there's the rub. Has he, really?

In Canada, Schumacher qualified within a hair's breadth of Rosberg and was quicker than him through most the race.

Rosberg, though, had his own problems - his wet tyres were over-pressured, causing him to lose grip, and later on his car sustained significant damage to its floor, costing him key aerodynamic downforce, after he was hit from behind by Adrian Sutil's Force India. So, as Brawn says, "it wasn't an easy race (in which) to compare (the drivers)".

The facts are that Schumacher has generally been out-paced by Rosberg in their 26 races as team-mates. The qualifying record this year stands at six-one in favour of Rosberg, although the two are equal on points so far, which is a big change from last year, when Schumacher was out-scored two to one.

And beyond that there is the question of how good Rosberg is. Has he matured into a world-class F1 driver who can be talked of in the same breath as the sport's current big three - Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Vettel? Or is he - as one paddock wag put it recently - "one of the not-quite-good-enough best drivers in the world"?

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Many questions arise out of this. Is Schumacher doing the job of a man who deserves his place in F1? In Canada, the answer was certainly yes. Does he justify being considered in the top 10? Is he as good as he was? If not, will he ever be?

"That's always the interesting debate," Brawn admits, "because Nico is a reference that's in a little bit of a vacuum because he has not come up against the strongest drivers on a regular basis in the past. But he has matured and improved a lot over the last couple of years, so he's a very strong reference.

"You can play that comparison game any way you like.

"Where is Michael compared to where he was? Is the fact that Nico outqualifies him more often than not a demonstration that Michael is a bit slower than he was or that Nico is an exceptionally quick driver?

"Who knows? I don't have any way of calculating that equation. It's a comparison in a vacuum.

"All I do know is if we get the car better we've got two drivers who can produce the results. It's down to us to improve the car and give them that opportunity."

Mercedes bosses have understandably been reluctant so far to engage in this debate so perhaps the fact Brawn is now willing to give it a go tells you all you need to know about the point Schumacher arrived at in Montreal.

When Schumacher returned to F1 in 2010, Mercedes said he had signed a three-year contract but he has struggled so much at times that there has been constant speculation about whether he will see it out.

If he carries on in the vein of Canada, those doubts will all go away. And Brawn says Mercedes - the team and the wider car company - are happy he is able to perform at the level they require him to be.

"There is no question about that," he says. "Every team wants an unfair advantage, where they can have an average car and the driver takes care of the rest.

"Our car might be even worse than we think and we've got the two fastest drivers in F1. Who knows? We won't know.

"All we know is we're not winning races at the moment and we don't need to change the drivers to fix that, all we need to do is have a faster car."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/in_all_the_excitement_followin.html

Brian Naylor Mike Nazaruk Tiff Needell Jac Nelleman Patrick Neve

Button strengthens position with McLaren after Ferrari flirting

It must have been a confusing month for .  Aside from his whirlwind win at the the 2009 world champion has hit the headlines as he apparently sits in the middle of a tug of war between

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/wuZH4D1-R8I/button-strengthens-position-with-mclaren-after-ferrari-flirting

Tony Shelly Jo Siffert Andre Simon Rob Slotemaker Moises Solana